In Memoriam:
Get Satisfaction (2007–2015)
Our journey comes to its end
As of today, the previous company I co-founded will become part of another organization. Get Satisfaction, launched provocatively as People-Powered Customer Service in the full bloom of Web 2.0 idealism, has just announced that it is being purchased by social media monitoring company, Sprinklr.
The founding team and I moved on from the company years ago, but the experience remains an exclamation mark in all of our careers for one reason or another. Indeed, I still count the early days of Get Satisfaction as some of the best and most thrilling days of my career. I’m filled with many emotions at its passing (which my co-founders and I will no doubt unpack in coming days), but today I’m warmly remembering the audacity of the quest we started on back in 2007, and the many talented and committed team members I had the pleasure of working with over the years.
There are many reasons people start companies. For me and my mates it was a fire in our belly to build an idea whose time we knew had come–businesses could be made more human (read: empathetic, ethical) if we could help them talk like normal people with their customers on the Internet. These were the days before Twitter and Facebook had emerged as major forces, but I’ll never forget how effortless it was to develop a shared vision with my teammates–Lane Becker, Amy Muller, Jonathan Grubb, Leslie Chicoine, Ted Grubb, Scott Fleckenstein, Cameron Walters–every one of whom has gone on to do brilliant things.
Today we take for granted the open conversations between people and brands on social media. It’s easy to forget that this willingness for companies to discuss their dirty laundry in public was considered unthinkable only a few years ago. I’ll always be proud of the work we did to pioneer these ideas about transparency and candor, whether on our product ( the ubiquitous Feedback Tab), or in the business community (Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit).
We also threw some great parties along the way. ☺
Get Satisfaction earned its share of scars as an eight-year-old startup that survived financial crises, multiple CEO changes, and broadside attacks by Jason Fried. Yet it also attracted a large and humbling array of early advisors, investors, and supporters–too many to name in this post–that I would be honored to work with again.
As a founder and a parent, I can say startups are really nothing like children. This is obvious, of course, but you often hear founders use these kinds of overblown analogies. It’s more apt to compare them to a treehouse patched together with dodgy old planks and rusty nails where the kids play, unwatched. At their best, startups bring a few like-minded crazies together around ideas that matter, and make some magic.
We had our share of magic at Get Satisfaction. For that I’m grateful.
Finally, my very best wishes to the team at Get Satisfaction that is now heading into a new chapter with Sprinklr.
