If Fluidware co-founder Aydin Mirzaee were to rate his online survey company’s acquisition by SurveyMonkey after the first three months, it would be close to a perfect 10.
“We saw several paths that would lead us to the next stage,” Fluidware’s former co-CEO said in an interview with OBJ on Thursday. “We just thought that out of all the different paths after evaluating everything, it just made a lot more sense, it was a lot more likely for us to be successful if we were to join SurveyMonkey.”
California-based SurveyMonkey acquired the Ottawa company in early August with the aim of expanding its international customer base and gaining a foothold in the enterprise survey market. So far, the deal has been a winner for both sides, Mr. Mirzaee said.
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Zaahra Mehsen was three years into a biology degree at a local university when she realized she wanted to take a different path. “I realized that it’s not my thing,”
“It was our sweet spot,” he said. “We get to continue doing what we love, except now we have a lot more resources. We’re all very excited about the future.”
Fluidware recently released the newest version of its flagship FluidSurveys cloud-based software. Mr. Mirzaee, who has been overseeing the local office’s integration into its new parent firm and will be in charge of product development in Ottawa, said the product includes more than 30 new features and has received “tremendously good” feedback from clients.
Fluidware is also getting set to expand its downtown office, which currently occupies about 10,000 square feet of space on a single floor of a building at 12 York St. The office, which employs about 75 people, is taking over part of the floor above, adding another 4,000 to 5,000 square feet to its footprint.
The office hired its first HR person this week, recently added a couple of salespeople and will be bringing “a significant number” of new staff on board in 2015, Mr. Mirzaee said.
“It looks very promising,” he said. “The numbers are still being finalized, but we’re going to see some aggressive growth right here in Ottawa starting next year.”
On average, revenues at the company have been doubling every year since its inception in 2008, and Mr. Mirzaee said he expects that trend to continue under the new ownership. In just three months, Fluidware has already landed deals “10 times larger” than any it had ever signed before, he said, because it now has access to its much larger parent’s client base.
“We get a lot more deal flow from the SurveyMonkey side,” he said. “Now our salespeople are able to sell both products.”
