SiteWit

Ricardo Lasa and his co-founder Don saw a clear gap in the market: small business owners struggled to manage their Google AdWords and Google Shopping campaigns effectively. Rather than hiring expensive marketing professionals, they could build an automated machine learning engine that would optimize campaigns better than a human ever could. This wasn't a first rodeo for Ricardo—it was his fourth venture—but it represented a fundamental shift in bringing enterprise-grade marketing automation to the SMB market.

The pair started building the core engine in 2010, spending three full years in development before launching in late 2013. The complexity was real: they had to build a sophisticated machine learning algorithm capable of automating paid search optimization entirely. Initially, they targeted the enterprise side, helping optimize very high-level campaigns, but around 2015 they pivoted down to the SMB market where they discovered product-market fit. To fund this long development cycle, Ricardo leveraged his experience as a serial founder and raised capital in small chunks. "We raised in small chunks of like half a million," he explained. "We never did like big, big races. We've always been racing basically between half a million, two million and a half." This patient capital approach—$7M total raised across three term sheets—allowed them to build intentionally without pressure to scale prematurely.

SiteWit's growth strategy centered entirely on partnerships rather than direct sales. Ricardo and Don worked directly on integrating with major website builder platforms—Wix, Weebly, Yola, Equin—and other major players in the ecosystem. This channel partner approach meant that new customers came pre-integrated into platforms they already used. Instead of charging a flat monthly fee, they monetized through a 20% revenue share on ad spend: if a customer spent $300 on Google AdWords, SiteWit took $60 and Google received $240. The average customer paid them $30-60 per month net, making the unit economics straightforward for partnership calculations.

The partnership-first approach proved transformative. By August 2017, they were running $150k MRR. A year later—just as major platform integrations went live—they had doubled to $300k MRR, representing 100% YoY growth. Churn varied significantly by cohort: free website builder users showed brutal 50%+ annual churn, but e-commerce customers (Google Shopping side) churned far less than 30%, while general services-based AdWords customers sat around 30-45% annual logo churn. Ricardo attributed this to attribution clarity: "Companies that actually know exactly how much money they put in and how much money they put out, tend to churn way less." His team of 20 (mostly in Tampa) maintained a lean, focused operation. "Stay small, don't over hire and keep those folks close as you build out that almost like SWAT team approach," became his mantra.

SiteWit crossed 10,000 paying customers and achieved a $300k MRR run rate ($3.6M ARR), prompting a Series B raise. In the final stages of closing a $5M round at a $36M valuation, the company was poised to become "the largest independent marketing platform in the world" in its specific vertical—automated, self-serve Google advertising for SMBs. Notably, Ricardo raised this new round entirely from existing investors who had stuck with him since earlier series, a sign of deep trust and aligned incentives. With major platform partnerships finally launching after years of integration work, SiteWit was entering a new growth phase built on predictable, recurring revenue tied directly to customer ad spend.