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After working together for almost 10 years to build up one of the first SaaS eCommerce platforms that captured over $1B in online sales for their clients, Finch founders Eric and Bjorn grew increasingly frustrated by not being able to find partners that could deliver predictable, consistent, and profitable paid search advertising solutions for their clients. Paid search represents the largest online advertising channel for most businesses today.

It seemed the bigger the upfront promise, the bigger the upfront fees that partners would charge – only there were no repercussions when the partner failed to meet their promise. In an industry filled with aggressive upfront promises, upfront fees, monthly minimum payments, and two-year contracts, they found that the average client relationship lasted about 8 months. Clearly the wrong balance existed in the vendor-client relationships with the client taking all the risk and the vendor locking in their own revenues regardless of performance. This is where Finch found its start.

Maximizing client revenues while minimizing costs should be the core of managing the advertising budget for a client. It is that simple; provide more for less. In mapping out the competitive landscape and talking to many companies active in the PPC channel, we saw clear trends; companies want the following:

• Transparency in how their money is spent
• Control of the creative aspects of advertising
• Automation of the quantitative parts
• Accountability from the vendor to deliver results

Out of this came a cloud-based, SaaS model application that manages paid search budgets in a non-disruptive way for clients. We quickly realized that what the market wants is something that is easy to work with, produces rapid results, and is predictable. We spent 10 years building software to streamline eCommerce from multiple channels such as eBay, Amazon, and Google and therefore understood not only the value of simplicity, but also that the simplest solutions are the hardest to build.

With this new beginning we had the luxury of time by not having external investors requiring revenue growth before we were ready, and this allowed the product to mature before we took on too many clients. We started with only a few clients and went on a relentless pursuit of removing friction all the way from the sign up process through the continuous runtime optimization. Friction is what makes a business hard to run, hard to be a client, and hard to sell and support. As we removed friction points along the way, we brought on more clients to work with and that helped us push the product further.

We decided early on to enter the market in stealth mode. Paid search management is a highly competitive landscape, but with very little differentiation between most of the companies – very much a commoditized market with surprisingly little technology at play. Most PPC solutions have a very high factor of manual work as the foundation. We were accustomed to solving problems with automation and process, and realized this matched very well with what the market wanted. Our product roadmap took shape.

The end result is a product that maximizes volume (leads or revenues) at the ideal cost target for our clients. We give the clients an upfront analysis of what we will do, why we will do it, and what to expect. We do the analysis, restructure their campaigns (to get better data for optimization) and launch most new clients inside 48 hours – in an industry that averages over 2 months to launch a new client. We typically deliver results inside two weeks while giving the clients full transparency into everything we do. The only effort the client has to put forth is to spend 2 minutes giving us the information we need to do the analysis, give us access to their accounts through the Google partner program, and accept the audit analysis. After the launch, the client only needs to spend 15 minutes per week to run the account, independent of size.

We put a lot of effort into choosing our company name. While reflecting on our evolutionary approach to paid search management, we considered what Charles Darwin described as Natural Selection; where it is not the strongest that survives, but the most adaptable. It describes perfectly how Finch structures, collects data, and adapts bids to the market as it changes. The most adaptable species that Darwin identified and studied was the finch. We are the finches of paid search management!

Our go-to-market model was driven by three factors:

1. Listen to what the market wanted and what they disliked from current vendors
2. Differentiate ourselves from the competitors where it mattered the most
3. Make it easy to become a client and effortless to stay a client

The stealth mode approach worked very well! By partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs in select international markets, we were able to validate our product while growing our customer base under the radar. Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, and Switzerland were our initial markets where we received tremendous validation for our model.

These partners are exceptional in their ability to enter markets with a new product. They took our proven product to market and built up a sizable client base. This helped Finch obtain a global presence while working with the best people in each market. What seemed like a risky model for us when we started proved to be a highly effective way to expand quickly inside each market.

We entered the market with a product with many special features:

• Clients could be live within 24 hours
• We show results within two weeks
• We provide clear before/after reporting
• No effort or workload on the client

Additionally, we entered with the most competitive business terms in the market:

• No upfront fees
• No monthly minimum fees
• No long term contract
• Only performance based pricing where the client gains more business and has more money in their pockets after paying us our performance based fees

We opened up our web site to each of the countries, but kept finch.com behind a password until now. With the launch of finch.com, we are entering the U.S. market and will aggressively keep growing our international presence. Today Finch has over 200 clients worldwide, including major brands such as Zurich Insurance and Peugeot cars. It is a mature product that has proven to stand up to, and has already successfully replaced most major competitors. It is fun to launch a business when you know it delivers and addresses the exact needs of the market.

We will be rapidly expanding our sales team in the U.S. and will keep looking for exceptional individuals to take us to international markets in countries where we do not yet have a presence. The icing on the cake is the thrill of working with amazing people who are driven and capable: together we have created very sizable opportunities to prosper through entering a mature market with a game changing approach.

As we exceeded 200 clients, the need to expand the core Finch team became obvious and we were able to attract the best people in our network to join us. Together we are building a company that stands the test of time and delivers unique value to our clients.

The feeling of being ready to hit the market is amazing. If you want to learn more, read about the Finch process and join the growing number of clients getting more for less.