2019 PBN Fastest Growing Companies: $250,000 to $5M
1. Swoogo
CEO (or equivalent): Leonora Valvo, founder and CEO
2018 Revenue: $2,024,618
2016 Revenue: $370,461
Revenue growth: 446.5%
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SWOOGO IS a Rhode Island-based event-marketing software company that creates programs for businesses that speed up and streamline registration workflows for conferences and large meetings.
And Swoogo has done well since its founding in 2015, with more than a $1.6 million increase in annual sales from 2016 to 2018.
Leonora Valvo, of Warren, launched the virtual company with Tim Cummins, who worked for her in her last business venture. Valvo has started many companies in her 35-year career, including launching software firms in the last 15 years. In one case, she started a company raising $15 million in series A and series B venture capital.
For Swoogo, she did things radically different: No venture capital.
“We are completely customer-revenue funded,” Valvo said of the subscription-based software service with annually billed rates ranging from $6,600 to $24,000 (and more for larger users). “That’s unusual, and so is the fact we’re profitable without venture capital; most companies run unprofitably for years using venture capital.”
Also unusual, Valvo said, is the fact that it’s “very, very rare to find a singular solo female founder of a tech firm.”
As to Swoogo’s rapid growth in such a short period of time, Valvo said it’s due to “business experience, a unicorn product developer, a stellar reputation in our industry and filling a gap in the market.”
Valvo said she and Cummins have brought their own “superpowers” to bear in their early years of Swoogo.
She has a knack for “taking a product and bringing it to market, building a company around a product, building teams, channels,” she said. “I have a lot of experience having done it successfully for years.”
Cummins has the skills to take “a business concept and what we’re trying to accomplish and turning it into code. He brought that experience from our past company,” she said.
Valvo also brings a reputation of customer service from the past companies she’s built, adding that “reputation stays with you. We never oversell, for example, which is common in tech. Our sales team doesn’t say ‘yes’ to something we can’t do. We don’t do that; we deliver on our promises.”
Swoogo also fills a gap in software event planning, she said. “One benefit of competing with my old company is we can see where the tech is getting old, where the opportunity is. My industry really grew up in 2006, event tech wasn’t even a category then. It was a nascent industry.”
With Swoogo, “We said, ‘What’s missing?’ and knew what the pain points for our customers were from working at our past company. We didn’t rest on our laurels. The way we charge customers is different than the rest of the industry; we make our subscriptions prepaid so we operate on customer revenue. It’s just thinking differently.”
The biggest challenge to Swoogo’s growth had been a lawsuit filed by a main competitor – for whom she and Cummins had worked – with pockets deep enough to slow them down, Valvo said.
“But we overcame that by being right and honest,” she said. “It was expensive, but that was our main challenge. It slowed us down, which it was intended to do. But it didn’t stop us.”
Swoogo has grown its clients list, which has included Domino’s, Expedia, The New York Times and E-Trade. The company will continue “to grow manageably, not putting undo strain on our team,” Valvo said.
And her team of 23 employees spread around the world has stayed with Swoogo, she said, in part because the company offers 100% health insurance coverage for solo policyholders.
“I’m a people-first business leader,” she explained. “If you get the right people who see and share your vision and values, they’ll care about your customers. I feel very grateful I’m able to find the sort of people who share my vision and are extremely loyal and talented.”
