Conductor, the leading SEO and content marketing technology company, has announced it has successfully completed a buyout of its business by existing leadership, employees and strategic outside investors. Martech News, The deal will result in over 250 employee co-founders, each given founder-preferred shares — a new class of stock — and a majority ownership stake in the company Martech.
As a result, Conductor will be fully divested from The We Company (“WeWork”), and will operate independently after nearly two years of rapid growth as a subsidiary. Conductor will continue to service its growing roster of over 400 enterprise customers including Citibank, Samsung, and SAP.
Financing for the transaction was provided by Conductor CEO and Co-founder Seth Besmertnik and COO and now Co-founder Selina Eizik, along with long-time strategic advisor and investor Jason Finger, Managing Partner of The Finger Group, and founder and former CEO of Seamless (NYSE:GRUB).
Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik said: “We’re grateful for our time with WeWork, during which we’ve been able to invest aggressively in R&D, doubling the size of our team with world-class talent that helps our customers achieve success everyday. People don’t want to be advertised to or sold to anymore. Our solutions make it easier for brands to deliver marketing that is helpful and valuable. It’s marketing that consumers actually seek out.”
Conductor’s SEO and content marketing technology is leveraged by thousands of marketers at companies like Visa, Casper and Slack. Its software and services give brands the ability to organically reach consumers who are searching over 20 billion times a day on platforms like Google, YouTube and Amazon Alexa. Conductor enables enterprises to know what consumers are searching for so they can lower acquisition costs and build brand loyalty by providing content in these moments.
“At Conductor, we’ve always believed culture is the foundation to building a great company. With our new equity model, we’re able to deeply ground our cultural approach with a corporate structure that makes this extremely real. In this new model, our people will have the right to appoint a representative on the Board of Directors, hold the senior most class of stock in the company and be treated commensurately with their significant contributions. I have no doubt this new approach will massively benefit our customers. People-First. Customer-First,” says Besmertnik.
Finger, who will join the company’s Board said, “Marketing is a trillion dollar-a-year industry, yet businesses have become too dependent on traditional methods that customers are now rejecting. When doing my research on the business, the feedback that I received from Conductor’s clients was outstanding. I also liked that Conductor’s technology drove revenue while helping consumers at the same time. Further, Seth and I share a passion for a people-first company culture, where employees are not simply an essential component of a company but, rather, the essential component. I believe this unique ownership structure will be a model for company carve-outs and founder buyouts and buybacks in the future.”
“We want to thank Seth and his team for all their contributions to WeWork and we look forward to witnessing all that he and the Conductor team will accomplish in the years ahead,” said WeWork’s co-CEO Artie Minson.
Conductor CEO and Co-founder Seth Besmertnik is available to interview.