Zauber is now Flowics
Or how we pivoted from a services company to
a SaaS company in 18 months.
Nearly 2 years ago, in June 2013, Zauber released Flowics to the market and was accepted into the selected group of companies in the Twitter Certified Program. It’s been an amazing journey and I couldn’t be happier with our achievements so far. In 18 months, we pivoted from a services-based company to a SaaS technology company. On this post, I want to share this experience with you, both as an entrepreneur and as the startup CEO.
Flowics was started and built within a special area, known as the “Lab”, at Zauber, the software development company I co-founded 7 years ago together with Juan, Mariano, Martin, Andres and Fernando. For 5 years, we ran a very healthy business, based on the provision of high-end software development services. By the beginning of 2012, our services business was doing great, but we felt that we needed something more to make a real impact as entrepreneurs.
Pushed by our vision to build products that could reach and appeal to a global audience, and our desire to move away from our comfort zone, we decided to embark on a new venture.
With the support of our investors (we raised USD 1 M in seed investment in January 2012 from angels and AxVentures-Pymar VC Fund), we set out to establish the “Lab” with the purpose of exploring product ideas around Big Data and Social, two areas in which we already had vast experience. This way, we set the ground for a new business unit at Zauber, which would be running in parallel to our services and consultancy area.
We built an amazing team and worked really hard. We tested different ideas, built, rebuilt and discarded prototypes. And 1.5 years later, we were becoming one of the first two companies in Latin America to join the Twitter Certified Program. Even more, one year after that, we were also joining the selected group of companies in the Facebook Media Solutions program.
While building the Flowics platform and expanding our footprint in the market, from 2012 to 2014, our services business unit continued to provide high-end software development services to selected clients in the US, mainly in the Silicon Valley, including IDEO, MuleSoft and Steelcase, among others.
Flowics resulted in a great product, with a growing customer base and promising results: 8x sales growth Q1–2014 vs Q1–2015. Due to this facts, 6 months ago, we took probably one of the most radical and important decisions in the life of Zauber: we decided to shut down our services business and focus all our resources on our new SaaS business built around Flowics.
After a 3-month transition phase in Q4–2104, during which we honored and finished all our contracts with existing services’ clients, we started 2015 with a new company organization and business model, allocating all the resources of the company to work on the Flowics platform and the global expansion of our business.
Flowics has now been used by nearly 200 clients in 20 countries, including leading brands and agencies like Pepsi, Danone, Red Bull, Digitas, Leo Burnett and Ogilvy; important media groups like Grupo Globo, Caracol TV, Al Jazeera, Grupo Clarin, RTVE, FOX Networks, and leading sports organisations such us the French Federation of Tennis (FFT), German Federation of Soccer (DFB) and FC Barcelona, just to name a few.
We established offices and sales operations in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico DF, Barcelona and Mumbai (New York City coming soon). And we are a recognized global leader in the Social Engagement and Curation space.
Zauber is now Flowics. A new era in the history of our company has started and we cannot be more excited about it. It hasn’t been easy and many people advised against our plan, but thanks to the hard work of an amazing team and the support and guidance of our advisors and investors, we have managed to take our company to the next level.
In the coming days, you’ll hear more from us, as we rollout some important changes in terms of branding and we unveil the most important product updates to the Flowics platform ever released, with dozens of new features and modules. Stay tuned for more!
By the way, we are hiring! If you are a software engineer, you can join our development studio in Buenos Aires. If you love sales, social and digital marketing, you can join our Sales and Account Executives team in São Paulo or New York City.
