- The co-founders of Conductor announced they have bought back the company from WeWork
Conductor — a leading SEO and content marketing technology company — announced that it has completed a buyout of its business by existing leadership, employees, and strategic outside investors. And this deal will result in over 250 employee co-founders, each given founder-preferred shares — a new class of stock — and a majority ownership stake in the company.
Through this deal, Conductor will be fully divested from The We Company (known as “WeWork”) and will operate independently after nearly two years of rapid growth as a subsidiary. And Conductor will continue to service its growing roster of over 400 enterprise customers including Citibank, Samsung, and SAP.
The financing for this transaction was provided by Conductor CEO and Co-founder Seth Besmertnik and COO and now Co-founder Selina Eizi, along with long-time strategic advisor and investor Jason Finger, the Managing Partner of The Finger Group and founder and former CEO of Seamless.
“We’re grateful for our time with WeWork, during which we’ve been able to invest aggressively in R&D, doubling the size of our team with world-class talent that helps our customers achieve success everyday. People don’t want to be advertised to or sold to anymore. Our solutions make it easier for brands to deliver marketing that is helpful and valuable. It’s marketing that consumers actually seek out,” said Besmertnik.
Conductor’s SEO and content marketing technology is utilized by thousands of marketers at companies like Visa, Casper, and Slack. And its software and services provide brands the ability to organically reach consumers who are searching over 20 billion times a day on platforms like Google, YouTube, and Amazon Alexa. And Conductor enables enterprises to know what consumers are looking for so that they can lower acquisition costs and build brand loyalty by providing content in these moments.
“At Conductor, we’ve always believed culture is the foundation to building a great company. With our new equity model, we’re able to deeply ground our cultural approach with a corporate structure that makes this extremely real. In this new model, our people will have the right to appoint a representative on the Board of Directors, hold the senior most class of stock in the company and be treated commensurately with their significant contributions. I have no doubt this new approach will massively benefit our customers. People-First. Customer-First,” added Besmertnik.
Finger is joining the company board as well.
“Marketing is a trillion dollar-a-year industry, yet businesses have become too dependent on traditional methods that customers are now rejecting. When doing my research on the business, the feedback that I received from Conductor’s clients was outstanding,” explained Finger. “I also liked that Conductor’s technology drove revenue while helping consumers at the same time. Further, Seth and I share a passion for a people-first company culture, where employees are not simply an essential component of a company but, rather, the essential component. I believe this unique ownership structure will be a model for company carve-outs and founder buyouts and buybacks in the future.”
And WeWork co-CEO Artie Minson wished the Conductor team good luck in the years ahead.
“We want to thank Seth and his team for all their contributions to WeWork and we look forward to witnessing all that he and the Conductor team will accomplish in the years ahead,” stated WeWork co-CEO Artie Minson.
