In the spotlight: Growth journeys at Content Guru
When Content Guru, a leading provider of customer experience (CX) and AI solutions, sought an investment partner in 2018 they selected SEP due to their shared growth ambition and impressive track record in scaling enterprise software companies. SEP has supported Content Guru’s sustainable growth through innovation, board building and global expansion.
Sean Taylor, CEO and co-founder of Content Guru, has been a technology entrepreneur for more than 30 years. Here he speaks about global expansion and outlines the building blocks of the company’s success.
________________________________________________________________________________
Aim high
When we set up our first business (Redwood Technologies, parent of Content Guru) in 1993 we only had a handful of colleagues and £20,000 start-up capital. We set a revenue target of £1 million. People thought it was impossible to go from zero to £1 million but we made close to £900,000 in our first financial year.
When we started Content Guru in 2005, we knew that even if you fall short of an ambitious target, you can achieve a lot by going after it aggressively. If you lack belief and a strong shared vision, the likelihood of failure is extremely high - but if you have confidence and competence and drive towards a goal, your chances of success are so much higher.
Leading not bleeding edge
I used to work in Silicon Valley. It’s a hotbed of innovation and I’ve still got a childlike enthusiasm for technology - but tempered by experience. We have worked through several waves of world-changing technology, from the internet to cloud computing and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).
We have been very good at spotting important technology early. We believed in the ‘information superhighway’ when we set up our first business in 1993 - even though fewer than 1% of the global population was connected to the internet then.
We were very early into speech recognition and large language models too. We learned that you need to know the difference between leading edge and bleeding edge technology. When we delivered our first projects in the 1990s, the technology wasn’t ready, and it hurt the business badly.
Into the cloud
We were a very early adopter of cloud back in 2005. Our storm® cloud platform has now become world-leading for CX (customer experience) services and now our brain® AI orchestration software is seeing rapid adoption, with customers valuing its ability to help deliver improved customer experience at a lower cost point.
A quantum leap
We trademarked the name brain® with AI at the heart of it in 2006, long before AI was widely understood. Now, technologies such as generative and agentic AI are the next quantum leap for customer experience.
We are monetising AI in a very sensible way. We developed brain® into a powerful AI toolkit that enables intelligent automation in customer service. We separate the application layer from the underlying AI technology components. What the service needs to do tends to be fairly consistent but what AI technology can do is changing at a rapid pace, think for example of the very poor outcomes early chat bots delivered versus some of the experiences that can be created with ChatGPT. By separating the service from the underlying AI technology components, brain (excuse the pun) takes the headache away of constantly ensuring the service is working to the best performance level possible.
Using brain for AI services such as real-time transcription and summarisation have been game-changers for contact centre users, handling tedious and low-value activity (the transcribing of conversations) and ensuring consistency in the quality of interactions (with suggestions for follow-up actions) enable agents to focus fully on engaging with their customers.
Mission critical applications
We have a solid reputation for supporting mission critical services in the UK, where all emergency calls to an ambulance are processed through storm, as well as internationally. Nothing could be more important than ‘blue light’ services where the ability to respond to calls can mean life or death.
We recently helped two large police forces dramatically improve 999 call response times, benefitting communities and placing them top of the UK’s police emergency call response league table.
Learn from military history
Military history has an important lesson that also applies when you’re building a global business. It is wise not to engage on too many fronts simultaneously.
We have grown from a micro business to small, medium and now with over 500 employees, we classify as large. At one point we were spread too thinly, serving clients in over 60 countries but not dominating in any region.
When we partnered with SEP we decided to focus on a market, become leaders, then move to the next challenge, and soon, whether in a geographic territory or sector. We built the leading position in the UK market, then pushed to other European territories such as the Netherlands and Germany, before turning our attention to Asia-Pacific, with major success achieved in Japan and now we are focusing large, complex CX opportunities in the US.
Going global
As the popular Mike Tyson saying goes, “Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.” So, it’s important to adapt rapidly too. Our plan was to scale first in the UK, then in Europe and next to double down in the US. Whilst starting our US build-up, we were at a trade show in Las Vegas, where we met some attendees from a multi-billion-dollar turnover Japanese conglomerate call Rakuten. They invited us to tender for the opportunity to become their new cloud contact centre partner. We won that deal and pivoted our focus to Japan instead of the US and have now become one of the top five vendors in that market.
After becoming strong in the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific we turned our attention back to the US again.
The FedRAMP game-changer
We identified an opportunity to build a strong foundation in the US by moving into providing cloud-services to US government clients, leveraging the fact that we already supplied customer-premise solutions to certain high-profile US Federal Government clients. We targeted a very stringent security standard called FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program), a US federal government compliance program for security assessment and authorisation of cloud products and services.
We thought the process would take around nine months and cost $250,00 to $300,000, but it ended up taking over three years to receive authorisation and cost around $5 million. But FedRAMP is a game-changer.
We are not the only company to become FedRAMP authorised, but we are the only one authorised to provide a full suite of products to its ‘High’ level. That standard not only helps us with public sector opportunities but provides confidence in our quality to enterprise clients too.
Hitting new heights
In 2023 we won the biggest deal globally in our sector. We were up against the best in the world in an extremely tough tender for a big financial services organisation. We were able to prove we had the best solution, and won the >$100 million contract to roll out storm in tens of countries.
We are in an exciting space. Our run-rate has now passed $100 million per annum, and I see an opportunity to significantly increase this.
International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that the cloud contact centre marketplace will grow from $13 billion to $20 billion by 2027. On top of that, AI in the contact centre is forecast to grow from $6 billion to $19 billion. Together, the total marketplace is set to treble in value from $13 billion to $39 billion from 2024 to 2027. It’s an exciting market to be in with a leading product.
Choosing the right growth partner
When we decided to bring in a growth partner for the next stage of our journey in 2018, it had to be one that fitted our approach to scaling up - maintain, innovate and grow. We chose SEP because of a shared culture and their successful track record with multiple portfolio companies.
SEP is a growth-focused investor who has been very successful in scaling enterprise software businesses and have the right moral compass. They operate as a true partner.
SEP did not come with an inflexible playbook and tell us to rip up what we’d been doing successfully for years. We felt they’d enable us to maintain what was good and work on innovation so we could get better and grow faster in a sustainable, repeatable way.
We knew we’d be more than just a set of numbers but equally, we knew good numbers could be created by a great team working together.
Andrew Davison (SEP Partner) is an active board member; we speak every week, and we greatly value his strategic insights and global network, sharing a vision for scaling the business. A combination that has proven to be very successful.
"SEP is a growth-focused investor who has been very successful in scaling enterprise software businesses and have the right moral compass. They operate as a true partner."
In the spotlight: Growth journeys at Content Guru
When Content Guru, a leading provider of customer experience (CX) and AI solutions, sought an investment partner in 2018 they selected SEP due to their shared growth ambition and impressive track record in scaling enterprise software companies. SEP has supported Content Guru’s sustainable growth through innovation, board building and global expansion.
Sean Taylor, CEO and co-founder of Content Guru, has been a technology entrepreneur for more than 30 years. Here he speaks about global expansion and outlines the building blocks of the company’s success.
________________________________________________________________________________
Aim high
When we set up our first business (Redwood Technologies, parent of Content Guru) in 1993 we only had a handful of colleagues and £20,000 start-up capital. We set a revenue target of £1 million. People thought it was impossible to go from zero to £1 million but we made close to £900,000 in our first financial year.
When we started Content Guru in 2005, we knew that even if you fall short of an ambitious target, you can achieve a lot by going after it aggressively. If you lack belief and a strong shared vision, the likelihood of failure is extremely high - but if you have confidence and competence and drive towards a goal, your chances of success are so much higher.
Leading not bleeding edge
I used to work in Silicon Valley. It’s a hotbed of innovation and I’ve still got a childlike enthusiasm for technology - but tempered by experience. We have worked through several waves of world-changing technology, from the internet to cloud computing and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).
We have been very good at spotting important technology early. We believed in the ‘information superhighway’ when we set up our first business in 1993 - even though fewer than 1% of the global population was connected to the internet then.
We were very early into speech recognition and large language models too. We learned that you need to know the difference between leading edge and bleeding edge technology. When we delivered our first projects in the 1990s, the technology wasn’t ready, and it hurt the business badly.
Into the cloud
We were a very early adopter of cloud back in 2005. Our storm® cloud platform has now become world-leading for CX (customer experience) services and now our brain® AI orchestration software is seeing rapid adoption, with customers valuing its ability to help deliver improved customer experience at a lower cost point.
A quantum leap
We trademarked the name brain® with AI at the heart of it in 2006, long before AI was widely understood. Now, technologies such as generative and agentic AI are the next quantum leap for customer experience.
We are monetising AI in a very sensible way. We developed brain® into a powerful AI toolkit that enables intelligent automation in customer service. We separate the application layer from the underlying AI technology components. What the service needs to do tends to be fairly consistent but what AI technology can do is changing at a rapid pace, think for example of the very poor outcomes early chat bots delivered versus some of the experiences that can be created with ChatGPT. By separating the service from the underlying AI technology components, brain (excuse the pun) takes the headache away of constantly ensuring the service is working to the best performance level possible.
Using brain for AI services such as real-time transcription and summarisation have been game-changers for contact centre users, handling tedious and low-value activity (the transcribing of conversations) and ensuring consistency in the quality of interactions (with suggestions for follow-up actions) enable agents to focus fully on engaging with their customers.
Mission critical applications
We have a solid reputation for supporting mission critical services in the UK, where all emergency calls to an ambulance are processed through storm, as well as internationally. Nothing could be more important than ‘blue light’ services where the ability to respond to calls can mean life or death.
We recently helped two large police forces dramatically improve 999 call response times, benefitting communities and placing them top of the UK’s police emergency call response league table.
Learn from military history
Military history has an important lesson that also applies when you’re building a global business. It is wise not to engage on too many fronts simultaneously.
We have grown from a micro business to small, medium and now with over 500 employees, we classify as large. At one point we were spread too thinly, serving clients in over 60 countries but not dominating in any region.
When we partnered with SEP we decided to focus on a market, become leaders, then move to the next challenge, and soon, whether in a geographic territory or sector. We built the leading position in the UK market, then pushed to other European territories such as the Netherlands and Germany, before turning our attention to Asia-Pacific, with major success achieved in Japan and now we are focusing large, complex CX opportunities in the US.
Going global
As the popular Mike Tyson saying goes, “Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.” So, it’s important to adapt rapidly too. Our plan was to scale first in the UK, then in Europe and next to double down in the US. Whilst starting our US build-up, we were at a trade show in Las Vegas, where we met some attendees from a multi-billion-dollar turnover Japanese conglomerate call Rakuten. They invited us to tender for the opportunity to become their new cloud contact centre partner. We won that deal and pivoted our focus to Japan instead of the US and have now become one of the top five vendors in that market.
After becoming strong in the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific we turned our attention back to the US again.
The FedRAMP game-changer
We identified an opportunity to build a strong foundation in the US by moving into providing cloud-services to US government clients, leveraging the fact that we already supplied customer-premise solutions to certain high-profile US Federal Government clients. We targeted a very stringent security standard called FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program), a US federal government compliance program for security assessment and authorisation of cloud products and services.
We thought the process would take around nine months and cost $250,00 to $300,000, but it ended up taking over three years to receive authorisation and cost around $5 million. But FedRAMP is a game-changer.
We are not the only company to become FedRAMP authorised, but we are the only one authorised to provide a full suite of products to its ‘High’ level. That standard not only helps us with public sector opportunities but provides confidence in our quality to enterprise clients too.
Hitting new heights
In 2023 we won the biggest deal globally in our sector. We were up against the best in the world in an extremely tough tender for a big financial services organisation. We were able to prove we had the best solution, and won the >$100 million contract to roll out storm in tens of countries.
We are in an exciting space. Our run-rate has now passed $100 million per annum, and I see an opportunity to significantly increase this.
International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that the cloud contact centre marketplace will grow from $13 billion to $20 billion by 2027. On top of that, AI in the contact centre is forecast to grow from $6 billion to $19 billion. Together, the total marketplace is set to treble in value from $13 billion to $39 billion from 2024 to 2027. It’s an exciting market to be in with a leading product.
Choosing the right growth partner
When we decided to bring in a growth partner for the next stage of our journey in 2018, it had to be one that fitted our approach to scaling up - maintain, innovate and grow. We chose SEP because of a shared culture and their successful track record with multiple portfolio companies.
SEP is a growth-focused investor who has been very successful in scaling enterprise software businesses and have the right moral compass. They operate as a true partner.
SEP did not come with an inflexible playbook and tell us to rip up what we’d been doing successfully for years. We felt they’d enable us to maintain what was good and work on innovation so we could get better and grow faster in a sustainable, repeatable way.
We knew we’d be more than just a set of numbers but equally, we knew good numbers could be created by a great team working together.
Andrew Davison (SEP Partner) is an active board member; we speak every week, and we greatly value his strategic insights and global network, sharing a vision for scaling the business. A combination that has proven to be very successful.
