Blog: The events that have shaped Sift’s (first) 15 years

Obviously any company that’s lived through a 15 year period has some stories to tell. So, as we celebrate Sift’s 15 year anniversary with events in London and Bristol, this post looks back at what were the events that have served to shape the Sift of 2011?

1. Aug 1996 – foundation of company by Andrew Gray, David Gilroy and Ben Heald.  Starting a business is always a leap of faith.  If you’ve not done it before, much easier to do with a couple of others.
2. May 1997 – launch of The Prudent Surfer newsletter.  The first year of Sift was spent developing a technical concept for Internet portals for niche groups.  A year on, we needed to launch something and we were still some way off having a viable web proposition.  Having followed the success of Seidman’s Online Information Insider, I started The Prudent Surfer, a weekly email newsletter commenting on the comings and goings of the UK accountancy profession from an online perspective.  Six months later, this begat AccountingWEB, and through various incarnations the present AccountingWEB activities.  It also lead to our first external client in late 1997 – a contract to redevelop the website of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
3. 1998/9 – launch of HRZone, TrainingZone, AccountingWEB.com, PracticeWEB, TravelMole & PropertyBull.  With an eye on staking our claim to some space on the digital high street, we put as many irons in the fire as we could.  Often using my mates as launch editors, or in AccountingWEB.com’s case, someone we barely knew.
4. Mar 2000 – offer from Freeserve of £60m.  With our portfolio of online business communities, we were right in the eye of the dot com boom (raising £2.5m from venture capitalists in Oct 1999) and attracted the attention of Freeserve soon after their flotation in 1999.  Such was the mood of the time, we turned the (share–based) offer down!
5. Oct 2000 – 2^nd round fund-raising of £5m.  Post the Freeserve offer, there was talk of the second round being at a pre-money of £30 – 40m.  Eventually we got it away at a pre-money of £15m.  At the time, we debated whether to wait until 2001.  By then valuations had plummeted and we’d either have had to accept much more significant dilution or (more likely) raise much less and strive the business much harder to break even.  Given that in 2000 we only generated revenues of £977k (with a loss of £2.7m) this would have been extremely bloody and Sift would possibly not have survived.
6. 2001 – launch of SiftGroups.  Initial clients were ThePublican.com (Quantum) and TheLaywer.com (Centaur).
7. 2001 & 2002 – getting to break even.  Post the 2^nd round fund-raising, we set an explicit target to get to break even with £1m in the bank.  From a monthly loss of £400k in January 2001, we got to break even in September 2002; to some extent through revenue growth, but also through redundancies and cut-backs.
8. Sep 2002 – Ben Heald appointed (the 3^rd) CEO of the business, following a mini night of the long knives!
9. Oct 2005 – acquisition of whole of PracticeWEB from JV partner Vantis.  When Numerica (which had acquired our original JV partner Practice Track) was in turn bought by Vantis, we acquired the whole of PracticeWEB; after we exercised the Mexican stand-off clause (you tell us how much you would be prepared to either buy or sell your stake, either of which we can take up).
10. 2004 – 2007 failed technical projects.  We pursued first an outsourced Norwegian .NET route, and then had an in-house Java adventure; ending up losing almost $2m over the course of 3 years on investments in companies, people, platforms, etc.  The bizarre thing was we kept on winning and delivering plenty of new business throughout this period using our older Perl-based platform.  I have blogged about the first of these failed projects.
11. Jun 2006 – acquisition of Virtual Business Network from Tensails LLP.
12. 2007 – launch of Sift Media’s events division that now runs five major events: Business Cloud Summit, The Pitch, Social Business Strategy Summit, Software Satisfaction Awards & UK Public Sector Digital Awards.
13. Jun 2007 – acquisition of UK Business Forums from Richard Osborne.
14. Jan 2008 – adoption of Drupal as principal technology platform.  Having spent years pursuing a proprietary technology route (including 7 CTOs), we selected Drupal as the most suitable open source platform.  Drupal is now used throughout the company (although where appropriate SiftGroups also uses other technologies on client projects).  I have blogged about our adoption of Drupal.
15. Aug 2009 – move to new office near St Nicks market in Bristol.
16. Sep 2009 – acquisition of PublicTechnology.net from Chris Histed.
17. Sep 2010 – acquisition of Going Concern from Breaking Media.
18. 2009/10 – appointment of MDs to the business units.  This is the action that perhaps more than anything else has acted to energise the company over the last two years; and on which the future of the company stands.
19. Sep 2011 – acquisition of IFA Systems Ltd from Diana Baker.

     

These of course are mere milestones.  What has really got Sift to 2011 is its vision to help organisations engage with their audiences, a certain amount of tenacity and passion on behalf of the hundreds of people who’ve worked for the company, some VC cash and the usual smattering of serendipity.  What will take it forward is the fundamental belief in structuring the right teams and imbuing them with a passion for the company’s future. 

There will be more adventures yet!