We’re excited to announce that Rewardful is joining the SaaS.group family!
The story
When we started bootstrapping Rewardful in 2017 we never imagined it would grow as quickly as it has. We initially set out to solve our own problem: give SaaS companies a simple, cost-effective way to leverage affiliate and referral marketing. Most of the existing solutions were focused on one-time e-commerce sales, and the few solutions that did handle subscription sales were clunky and difficult to use.
Well, it turns out that a lot of other SaaS and subscription companies shared our frustration!
Rewardful has been growing exponentially since day one, and it’s been extremely gratifying to see the success our customers have had using our product. It’s not uncommon to see our customers generating 30% or more of their revenue from affiliate and referral marketing programs run on our platform. And some customers have used Rewardful to launch their product with absolutely astounding success.
About one year ago SaaS.group reached out to us and proposed a partnership. We immediately liked the team and had great conversations with them, but in the end we mutually agreed the timing was a bit too early and that we should revisit in the future.
Rewardful has grown over 5x since then, with no signs of slowing down. It became clear to us that we vastly underestimated the demand for an affiliate platform focused on SaaS and subscription businesses. Our vision for Rewardful grew more ambitious, and we decided to explore venture capital as a way to help us achieve that vision.
We were fairly far along with several leading VC firms when SaaS.group reached out to us again. The timing couldn’t have been better — we were starting to doubt that venture capital was the best option for us, but we still wanted a partner who could help us take Rewardful to the next level. After a few conversations with SaaS.group, it became clear they were the perfect partner for us and that the timing was right for us to join forces!
Why SaaS.group?
Over the years we’ve had many firms reach out wanting to invest in or acquire Rewardful, and we never took any of them very seriously. Aside from financial resources, most investors can’t add much value to the business. And we were extremely hesitant to sell the entire company — we were concerned that an acquirer wouldn’t care about Rewardful and our customers as much as we do, and might neglect or sunset the product. We’re proud of Rewardful and didn’t want to risk that outcome.
But SaaS.group is different. When they say “founder friendly”, they really mean it. They are founders themselves and have been in our shoes. We were amazed at how easygoing, trusting, and transparent they are.
Here are a few of their core principles that really resonated with us:
- No synergies: Your product remains a standalone business.
- No jerks: We like people who are driven, but we steer clear of anybody who makes work a miserable experience.
- Retain and grow company cultures: The way you do things has made you successful, so we won’t try to change it.
- Support autonomy and mastery: We empower leaders and teams to work independently, and support their efforts to get even better.
- Keep it simple: We like simple products, straightforward discussions, very few meetings, and simplifying just about anything else we can.
On top of being great people, they have deep expertise in both the SaaS and affiliate marketing industry. And as one of their portfolio companies we now have access to their team of experts in finance, hiring, analytics, design, devops, and more.
What's changing?
Nothing ... and everything :)
Rewardful will continue to be independently operated by us (the founders), but now we have tons of additional resources at our fingertips. We can strengthen our technology, ship product updates faster, and provide even better customer support. And more importantly, we can build out the tools and processes to help our customers succeed with affiliate marketing.
In short, it’s the same Rewardful you know and love — but with added horsepower. This is great news for the business and our customers, and we’re really excited to have SaaS.group help us write the next chapter of Rewardful.
There’s lots of cool stuff ahead — and if you’d like to be part of the journey, we’re hiring for a number of positions in engineering, marketing, and customer success! Drop us a line at hello@getrewardful.com if you’d like to join the team or learn more about the positions.
Onward!
