The Maropost Story: From Start-up to Global Leader Without a Single Investment Dollar

Going from a start-up to a global leader without investment can be challenging – but not impossible. It requires hard work, dedication, creativity… and patience. 

In 2011, Ross Andrew Paquette founded Maropost intending to create a marketing automation and customer engagement platform to help businesses streamline their marketing efforts and drive revenue growth.

Ross had previously founded several other companies in the technology and marketing space. He also worked as a digital marketing consultant. Through his endeavors, he saw a need for a platform allowing businesses to manage all their marketing channels in one place and provide advanced capabilities for personalization and targeting.

Maropost began as a small start-up with just a handful of employees working out of a co-working space in Toronto, Canada. Ross built the company on Ruby on Rails, but its technical co-founder left, leaving the company needing more technological capability. However, the inital setback did not deter Ross and his team. Fortunately, the company discovered a new co-founder through a freelancer on Upwork (formerly oDesk) and the team continued to work hard to develop and refine the platform, adding new features and capabilities.

Maropost’s platform began to offer an integrated solution that enabled businesses to manage all their marketing channels in one place, including email, SMS, social media, push notifications, and more. The platform also included advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, such as predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms, to help businesses personalize their marketing campaigns and improve their targeting and segmentation.

Despite the initial setback with their technical co-founder, Maropost continued to grow and attract new customers. But there were several more challenges to come. The company experienced a significant peak-to-trough roller coaster and sold 25% to two private equity firms. Growth declined from 250%+ to below 10% within a few quarters, putting the company dangerously close to flatlining. Fortunately, the original Maropost team then bought out the investors, and the company returned to its former glory days of hyper-growth and profitability.

Maropost’s commitment to innovation might be what particularly sets it apart from others in the space, however. The company invests heavily in research and development and always looks for ways to improve its platform and better serve its customers. 

This is evidenced in the most recent Maropost developments. In the last two years alone, Maropost has acquired three other large technology companies, in a bid to complete its offering. 

With these acquisitions (Neto, Retail Express, and Findify) Maropost has been able to create a solution which is now much more than just marketing. Maropost Commerce Cloud is now the only B2B and multi-channel ecommerce platform that offers a one-stop-shop solution for ecommerce, inventory management, order management, and shipping labelling.

In addition, it now includes an exceptional omnichannel Advanced POS software (formerly Retail Express) as well as a top-of-the-line site search capability (formerly Findify), which offers AI-powered search, merchandising, recommendations, and collections.

While Maropost remains a leading provider of marketing automation and customer engagement solutions, with thousands of customers worldwide, its new, unified platform is surely set to catapult the company to even greater heights, rivalling the success of other ecommerce platforms such as Shopify.

Despite the challenges Maropost faced along the way, Ross Andrew Paquette’s vision of creating a platform to help businesses streamline their marketing efforts and drive revenue growth has become a reality – and is set for an even brighter future.

For those interested in learning more about Maropost and staying up-to-date on the latest news, follow the company on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. These social media channels offer a great way to connect with the Maropost community, engage with industry experts, and discover new marketing tips and strategies. Take advantage of this opportunity to join the conversation, and learn from one of the world’s leading tech companies.