Thoughts on Fathom Online...

News today about my company Fathom Online... we sold it to Geary Interactive, a San Diego-based interactive advertising agency. There have been a lot of questions to me over the past four months about why I, a founding member of the management team, left Fathom. Most people assumed it was because the company was not doing well. On the contrary, Fathom was/is headed in a direction that would provide it a much more stable base from which to grow and I am proud of my efforts to diversify the business and create the basis from which to grow in this new, exciting entity.

In 2006 when I took over as General Manager, the company had a single service offering, two main clients and one vendor. That was dangerous. Our move-forward plan was simple: be profitable and diversify risk.

Through the course of 2006/7, we drove into new revenue streams - SEO, Social Media and Analytics - while striving to aggressively add new business and new vendors to the roster. The net result at the end of 2007 was that we had multiple revenue streams, there was no client making up more than a reasonable amount of the revenue and a diversified set of vendors/partners. We had quietly re-built a very strong search and digital media agency with a great client-base and fresh talent.

So why did I leave Fathom in November? The combined Geary/Fathom entity provides a broad mix of services that clients are going to need to succeed with digital marketing. But that is not my direction. I thrive working with new and small businesses to help solve scaling and operational challenges - - that might include marketing, but it might also include product management or organizational development or some other operational challenge. And as I mentioned earlier, that is just what I am doing - - following my passion to help new and small businesses achieve their dream.