Stackla: A message from Stackla’s Founders, Damien Mahoney and Peter Cassidy
Last week, we announced to the world that Stackla had been acquired.
As founders, it’s the kind of announcement you envisage from the earliest of days of building a start-up—each version of the future changing and adapting as the business evolves and along with it, its potential.
Yet when that long-anticipated announcement happens, you’re so absorbed in the work of simply getting the deal done that the announcement itself seems to pass you by.
With the dust settling, and having been overwhelmed with messages of support and encouragement in the past few days, we want to take a moment to share our excitement for the future.
For some, partnering with a commerce experience platform may not have seemed the immediate and obvious path for Stackla to take. But we are more convinced now than ever that it is. The distinction between content and commerce is becoming increasingly blurred and we believe that it’s at this intersection—where authentic, social content meets the most natural commerce experiences—the greatest opportunities lie.
And the vision is applicable outside of just the retail space. As businesses worldwide rapidly race to optimize their direct-to-consumer models, industries like travel and hospitality, entertainment, education and many more will be taking their learnings (and technologies) from the retail sector.
Nosto is perfectly positioned ahead of these tailwinds. They have an enormously powerful (yet ridiculously intuitive) platform which drives quite astounding uplifts in performance by personalizing the customer experience.
Like us, they’re a truly global organization with teams located across Europe, North America and APAC. Like us, they invest heavily in bleeding edge technology as well as platform scalability and reliability. Like us, they work with many of the world’s most recognisable brands, like Gymshark, Billabong and New Era.
But equally important to us is our cultural alignment. We share a no-nonsense (“no bullshit” in Aussie circles) approach to getting work done. We leave our egos at the door and empower our teams to be the architects of their own success. Put simply: we get along great, and that counts for a lot in this fast-paced world of remote work and global collaboration.
On that note, we want to take a moment to thank the folks at Nosto for believing in this shared vision and putting in the work to make it a reality. To Jim, Juha and everyone else in the Nosto leadership team, it’s been an absolute pleasure so far, and we’re only getting started.
It’s a new beginning for Stackla but it also marks the end of a big chapter.
We began this journey—quite literally—having never heard of SaaS (software-as-a-service), never built a product, sold technology or run a company.
Upon reflection, what we have learned in this journey is actually quite mind-boggling but would have been an impossibility without the support we received at every step along the way.
A big thank you must go to our investors and board members, those who put their money where their mouth is and bet on us against the odds. As always, there are simply too many to mention but our major investor, Bailador, supported us across multiple rounds (financially, strategically and personally) and deserves a special nod—especially our Chairman, Paul Wilson. There were many uncomfortable times but never any uncomfortable conversations.
Of course, nothing would be possible without the ongoing support of our customers and partners. For some, we provide a valuable, reliable service and that is all they wish for. But for many others, they have become our biggest champions, helping direct our product investment, espousing our value at industry events as well as providing glowing case studies and endorsements whenever called upon. A handful are still with us from our earliest days nearly nine years ago; this is a special group and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
But most of all, we must thank our Stacklamites, past and present.
Without a doubt the most rewarding experiences for us have been building relationships and lifelong friendships with those who helped build Stackla alongside us. Many have moved on, taking learnings from their time with us to start their own businesses or take leadership roles in other SaaS companies.
Others have stayed the course with us for the long haul—like Ray and Vari in our founding tech team or Jock, Liz and Zach who were founding members of the UK and US offices. And, of course, our long tenured leaders—Andy Mallinson and Steven Birchall—who have probably carried more titles and roles in this organisaton than we (or even they) can remember, but without whom we would have fallen into a heap many times over.
To every Stacklamite, past and present, thank you! You will always be part of the Stackla family and our doors are always open to you to reach out whenever you need us (or #morecowbell).
Now we set our sights on the next phase of our journey. We have (as our old mate Todd Revolt would often say) set ourselves a big, hairy, audacious goal: becoming the global leader in commerce experience. We will be investing in our team, our tech and getting closer to our customers than ever before to build the first solution to combine the power of personalization with the scale and authenticity of user-generated content.
Now LET’S GOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!