Small Business Q&A: Steve Collins from Swrve

In a week that saw 1,300 jobs announced by Apple and Indeed, Kehlan Kirwan talked with Steve Collins, CTO of Irish company Swrve, which announced a $30m investment and the acquisition of American business Apaptiv.io.

So, what does Swrve do?

We started Swrve in 2010 and we provide software services to mobile app developers around the world. We just announced our Series C round of funding which will bring $30m of investment into the company.

On top of that we have also acquired American company Apaptiv.io who are based in Los Angeles. The new acquisition will help us to develop and expand our offering to customers and allow us to offer more to app developers.

So was this acquisition a land grab or a technology buy?

Primarily, it was to get a piece of technology and also the people behind it as well; to get their expertise. So what Swrve has built is a platform that allows app developers to communicate directly with the users of the applications. So we receive a lot of data from users.

We then take that data and find out what is the context of the user and what is the most relevant thing for that app to do in order to better react to the needs of the person using it.

That can make it easier for brands to advertise to that user and make things like offers or discounts more relevant. This also allows the optimum feedback as to user interface experience and how navigable that is or can be.

Now Adaptiv, the company we just acquired in LA, their expertise is in connecting different sources of information and making that available to the mobile app developers. So imagine lots of websites around the world and lots of them would have APIs (Application Program Interface) all with different sources of information.

So say for example the Weather Channel tells people the weather in different locations around the world. We pull in all that data through Adaptiv, we then take that data and bring into the Swrve sphere and update the app in real time so that becomes relevant to the user.

How did you find the right company to fit into what you were doing?

This is always something we keep our eyes open for. There are two ways of growing, particularly in the tech space, organically or high-speed growth. Organically we have grown over the past number of years and we’ve had great team with us at Swrve in order for us to do that.

However sometimes you identify technologies that complement very nicely with what you are doing. The important thing as well is that the team within that company needs to be complementary as well. So the combination of both of those just gives you an acceleration within a marketplace.

We actually had another acquisition earlier this year with Converser, an Irish-based company. That team is now fully folded into Swrve and based here in our Dublin offices.

So we launched what they brought to the company inside three months. In that time we acquired them, moved them into Swrve and made what they did part of our offering to customers.

Again, we did this with Adaptiv too so we have experience in searching out companies who fit our mandate but ones that have the personnel to fit with us as well. So the team is just as important as the technology and when it came to Adaptiv it was a no-brainer really.

So you rate people as highly as the technology they have?

Very much so. You never buy just technology, you also buy the capabilities. The capability is the state of the technology now and into the future, but also the people behind it. Fundamentality, technology is driven by people and in Swrve we very strongly recognise that — having built engineering teams before.

Your ability to innovate, your ability to create products and your ability to interact with customers and deliver the right product is entirely a function of the team you have. You can have all the ideas and the vision in the world and it translates into nothing unless you have the team that can translate their skills into your technology.

So we’ve built our teams around how they complement each other and that complementing has translated into growth. That has allowed us to achieve great things.

Technology is a fast paced environment as well, Does that mean ideas get discarded just as quickly as technology moves on?

Absolutely. I think as a platform and a product you have to be prepared to evolve very quickly indeed. You need to ensure that you have information flowing in from the market, whether it’s directly from the sales team, customers or your engineering team. So when you have your platform you need to be agile and react to the market place.

You also need to balance that with some strategic long-term goals, because the worst thing you can do is to chop and change in the context of the marketplace. That means you can be very reactive without ever achieving the long term goal of delivering something of value. So the challenge for us is to move within the market place but have a vision and a structure about where we’re going.

You’ve gone through several investment rounds too, does it get easier every time to get that investment?

I don’t think it’s ever a question of anything becoming easier. Certain things are a help. Your track record, what you’ve done with previous investments and the team you have on board, as I mentioned earlier. You don’t get in the door these days with some VCs and investors unless you have, at the very least, those things behind you. I would certainly never say that an investment has ever been easier than the one before.

The prerequisites of the investment are different and are always driven by future growth. So you’re building upon where you are now. So as you look for later stage investments you’re looking for a larger amount of money but you’re also building much bigger things for the company. As a result you’re held under a higher degree of scrutiny as the investments get bigger and so does your ambition for the company.

You need to show that the company has moved on to the next phase, that your revenue traction is as it should be, You need to show that the investment is worth it for everybody around the table.

So it is never easy to get investment again and again, but as long as you’re hitting all the points that the investor is looking for it makes for a good start.

So it’s always a challenge every time you go back to the table looking for investment, but if you can show what you’ve done with previous investments, and then demonstrate that you can build upon that again, then investors will come on board and buy into that vision too.

For more information go to www.swrve.com