The leading Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti published an annual Finnish company ranking featuring the most financially successful companies in the country. Each company’s financial performance is assessed in six different categories, including revenue growth and profitability.
Supermetrics topping the list
Helsinki-based SaaS company Supermetrics topped the list with with 1.6 million revenue and a 52% net profit margin. Founded by Mikael Thuneberg, who in 2009 wrote scripts for fetching Google Analytics API data into Excel, the company was quoted as #1 solution for accessing GA from Excel in the official Google Analytics Blog. They’re most well known for their Google Sheets add-on, which was selected as the best SEM reporting tool at SMX East, one of the most prestigious digital marketing conferences, in 2016. It helps marketers pull any online advertising, SEO, web analytics and social media data into Google Sheets for analysis and reporting. Supermetrics connects to nearly 40 marketing platforms, including Google Analytics, Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Linkedin and Doubleclick. Supermetrics’ customers include big corporates like the BBC, PBS, Dyson, Rovio and Unibet, non-profits like the Red Cross, Unicef and Greenpeace, as well as many of the leading digital marketing agencies like iProspect.
We asked Supermetrics what helped make it to the top of the Finnish company ranking. Here is what their secret sauce is made of.
Focus on Customers
“We had a strong focus on our customers, not investors. It made a difference that the only outside influence we had was from customers. We’re contrarians to the popular startup belief ‘always be raising’. ” said Mikael Thuneberg, the Supermetrics CEO, “It (the customer-centric focus) gave us positive pressures to grow our top-line revenues very very fast. More importantly, it helped us find product-market-fit early, build a great product that went viral, find the right growth channels and avoid premature scaling”
Bet on ecosystem early
One of Supermetrics’ tactics that could be useful for other startups was to bet on an ecosystem before it became too crowded. They entered the Chrome Store as one of the first Google Sheets add-ons. The product solved a concrete problem, getting business data into Google Sheets, which most people used to do by manually copy pasting data or importing CSV files. Supermetrics also targeted the right people, with online marketers and startup people both among the top three segments of Google Sheets users.
No sales people
Supermetrics allowed to automate reporting processes and to easily share them with colleagues and clients. This explains the reason why it became viral with zero sales people involved.
“An interesting fact about Supermetrics is that we got where we are today with zero sales people. Our customer acquisition is 100% through marketing, largely via referrals and recommendations from existing happy users,” explains Thuneberg.
“Our door is always open to talented developers, marketers, designers and in the future also sales people.”
What’s next for Supermetrics
According to Thuneberg, Supermetrics will be rolling out exciting new products, investing heavily into its marketing engine and announcing a few strategic partnerships. The company is expected to double both its headcount and revenues in 2018. The company’s vision is to become the platform to connect where marketers have their data and where they want to use the data.
“Our door is always open to talented developers, marketers, designers and in the future also sales people. Anyone who is interested in becoming part of our success story is welcome to hit us up” he added. “Or simply come to our cool office in the center of Helsinki on a Friday afternoon to join our weekly football tournament, take a couple of beers and have fun with our team!”
