Radian6 Technologies set for a banner year

Business: Social media monitoring service expects to add 80-plus employees in 2010By John Pollack, Telegraph Journal | Link to original article

It looks like it’s going to be a big year for Radian6 Technologies Inc.

Last week the software firm announced “its biggest product launch” since the business was founded in late 2006, and the company expects to roughly double its work force this calendar year, chief executive Marcel LeBrun says.

“Our customer base is growing significantly,” he says. “We’re adding hundreds of customers every quarter.”

The company’s revenue increased 600 per cent in 2009 over 2008, LeBrun says, though he won’t reveal how much the privately-held company made last year.

The company signed its first customer for its social media monitoring service in January, 2008.

Radian6 hired 60 new employees in 2009 to end the year with 85 employees and plans to hire more than 80 this year and all but a handful will be based in New Brunswick.

“We’re at about 100 now in March,” LeBrun says.

The new positions will be added to every aspect of the business, from research and development to administration, with most new jobs going to sales and customer support.

“It’s more closely tied to handling customer growth,” LeBrun says, adding it’s the most pressing issue for the firm.

He plans to expand his more than 35-person R&D department by about 50 per cent.

“To keep a leadership position we need to outpace and continue to innovate,” he says.

While the firm won’t double the number of programmers and engineers it employs, it does plan to double the department’s spending this year.

“We hope to continue to announce new features (to the Radian6 Engagement Console) every six to eight weeks,” LeBrun says.

On Wednesday the firm announced new software that integrates its brand monitoring service with the users’ Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Buzz and Flickr accounts.

The firm hopes this will replace other social media clients, such as TweetDeck or HootSuite, as the all-encompassing business communication software as widely-used and important as the telephone.

It’s commonly said most businesses will fail within the first few years, but if LeBrun’s plans come to fruition, Radian6 will employ roughly 165 at the four-year mark.

On top of that the firm was profitable last year, its second year of sales, LeBrun says.

This is a significant achievement, says Gerry Pond, a prominent technology veteran in the province, and chairman of Radian6.

“I’ve been involved in seven startups. This is by far the fastest lift I’ve ever seen,” he says. “It’s probably in the same category of startups everywhere else.”

Most software firms can be expected to turn a profit within the three- to five-year range, he says.

Pond is one of about half-a-dozen angel investors that helped the company get off the ground in the early days before LeBrun and his executive team went on to raise more than $9 million in further equity funding.

“In the first year of operation Mariner Partners (Inc.) was the incubator of the company, (Radian6),” says Pond, who is often identified by his chairman role at Mariner. “We provided executive support on a fee-for-service basis, but it was a pretty good deal as you can imagine.”

After that year Radian6 took a few of Mariner’s employees with it, including LeBrun who was a vice-president before leaving.

Now at the helm of a software company signing some of the largest American-based brands, such as Dell, Microsoft and Pepsi, LeBrun considers his company to be the leader in an emerging but rapidly expanding niche market.

Ninety per cent of Radian6’s business is in the United States, where LeBrun says most of the companies behind the biggest global brands are based, but he has his eyes on being the leader in other international markets as they develop.

“We’ve put a lot of R&D dollars on being a global product,” he says, adding the software can monitor brands in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and major European languages.

Radian6 has one or two employees in many major American cities and partners – mostly independent consultants – in many European countries, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia.