January, 2022 - Today we are announcing our acquisition of Appchemist, a HubSpot focused app development firm led by Dax Miller and Tyron Foston.
As part of this acquisition, both Dax and Tyron will both be joining Aptitude 8 as Head of Product and Chief Technology Officer. With this acquisition we have formally launched a new business called A8 Labs, which will be focused on building products in the HubSpot ecosystem.
There are a few key reasons we’ve decided to make this investment into the HubSpot app ecosystem and I wanted to share them with our team, our customers, our partners, and our prospects. With this news, it is important for me to note that we're still focused on professional services at our core, and we believe A8 Labs will further the interests of the 3 main constituencies we care about.
For Customers and Prospects
Lowering your Costs
Professional services is absolutely still Aptitude 8's focus. However, services have a few drawbacks for both us and our customers. The first is that everything is bespoke to each customer, and therefore expensive. We are great at what we do, and while we have internal frameworks, schematics and best practices, we still have to build each solution for each customer each time. This increases costs for us, and for our customers.
With the Appchemist team, we can bring you software products with low monthly costs and build custom solutions around those products to fit your needs. We are already doing this with our first app, associ8, and we look forward to both offering solutions around Appchemist's existing applications; RealCity, Customer Portal, SuperGroups and Clone Attack, as well as building additional applications in the same vein.
Expanding our service offering
Aptitude 8 excels at harnessing CRM technology and adapting it to business needs. Sometimes this is insufficient to bring you the solution you require, and custom development, extensibility, or integration is required to achieve your goals. By bringing on true technical and product leadership to the A8 team, we will be able to deliver on these customer needs better than ever before.
If you have your own application, integration, extension, or other solution you are looking to build, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're ready to make it a reality.
For Current Employees and Prospective Team Members
Career Development Opportunities
This acquisition and the business opportunities it creates will not be a distraction from our core business. It fits very much into our flywheel and we expect it to further propel us towards our long term goals. At Aptitude 8 we strive to give our team a clear promotional and growth path for their roles, and this acquisition allows us to expand that. In addition to services leadership roles, A8 team members will now have the opportunity to work on new product launches, and even lead products that we spin out from the portfolio into full fledged companies as executives and even CEOs and Founders.
While we have always strived to be the best employer in the HubSpot ecosystem for people that want to grow their skills and work on the most interesting projects the market has to offer, our new technology arm will further the opportunities for our team to hone their skills as best in class CRM platform professionals. This furthers our mission to be a career defining company for our employees.
Join our technology team
We are looking to expand our product and engineering team over the next 12 months and are looking to hire onto this team, as well as across our core services business. If you're an internal service team member and you want to move to this side of the business, talk to your team lead about what skills are needed to make that happen.
If you're a prospective applicant, or reading this and working with another solutions provider, I encourage you to reach out as well.
In the last 2 years we have scaled from 0-30 employees, become an elite partner, surpassed $3mm in revenue, acquired Appchemist, and have no intention of slowing down. We need developers, product managers, salespeople, trainers, implementation experts, and service professionals to build alongside us into the future.
Come join us and be a part of the team everyone watches.
Equity and Ownership
Services businesses don't carry a ton of equity value. It's why A8 provides performance driven comp plans in favor of phantom stock or other ownership vehicles over the core services business for employees. Stock in services businesses just doesn't really drive value for our team.
The Appchemist acquisition changes that paradigm. All A8 full time employees have received ownership over products we build with this new acquisition. More importantly, this ownership will be separate from the core services business, allowing for micro exits and liquidity events divorced from the core services business, realizing real gains without needing the whole business to sell. View more under the "for investors'' section for details on how this benefits you.
For Investors
Best Bet on the HubSpot Ecosystem
Our new products will all be built "outside" of the core Aptitude 8 Services business. We have created a new entity with A8 Labs as a venture studio under which we will hold all of our software products. Everyone on the cap table will own pieces of the products inside the portfolio. A8 Labs is purpose built to capitalize on the $12.5 billion opportunity in the HubSpot ecosystem and we firmly believe our team is best suited to capture a big slice of it.
While we are not actively seeking investment, it's likely we will open up a round in the near future. If you are interested in discussing being a part of it, reach out to me directly.
Diversified Interests
Because A8 ventures will hold a variety of different HubSpot applications under its umbrella, it's a great place to put investment dollars while diversifying the risk associated with platform applications. The nature of platform businesses is that while they benefit from faster time to market and a pre-existing TAM, they're always at risk of getting de-platformed by HubSpot itself. A8 Labs will have a variety of applications in its portfolio, providing investors with a diverse set of interests while still capitalizing on HubSpot's massive ecosystem growth.
We're just getting started.
