Inflection: The Hottest Bay Area Startup

Last Friday, my wife and I went to an amazing party at Pampas Palo Alto hosted by Inflection (formerly People Search Media). In my opinion, Inflection is the hottest startup in the Bay Area. I’m proud to say that I used to be Director of SEM at Inflection and am excited today to share my high level thoughts about the future of this fast-growing business.

I Used To Work At Inflection

PPC Ian and Matthew Monahan (CEO)

As mentioned in my post I own shares in Inflection, I used to work at Inflection and own shares in this awesome company. I’m a very proud shareholder, indeed. Inflection is one of the best companies I worked for and I had a true blast managing their entire search marketing team, the backbone of the business.

You can read all about Inflection on their corporate website and particularly their about us page. Inflection is a true force in the Bay Area right now. They operate some of the largest sites on the Internet such as Archives and People Smart. They are very profitable, and have an amazing team. Perhaps most excitingly, they just raised $30 million in funding and are moving to a new office because of their rapid growth. The best part of it all: Inflection did not need to raise funding, they were self funded and profitable from their early days due to good old fashioned sweat equity.

As portrayed throughout this post, Inflection threw an awesome party for both current employees and also graduates (like me) last Friday to celebrate their new office. They are truly growing fast!

Inflection Is An Amazing Employer and Investment

PPC Ian, Don, and Brian Monahan (VP & Co-Founder)

Anyone who says employee stock options are worthless is a fool! I feel strongly about this. When I was a senior at Stanford someone told me that I shouldn’t worry about stock options because they had friends who worked hard and their options didn’t pan out. Well, I proved them wrong and went onto several companies that each had major liquidity events. My options did extremely well! This is how I made it big in online marketing.

My advice: Ignore the naysayers. If you pick your employers wisely (which you can when you’re in PPC because of the huge demand for our profession), you can accumulate stock option positions that will become a great source of your income. In my opinion, Inflection is the perfect company to consider if you’re looking to accumulate some really special stock options. If you’re interested in a job at Inflection, you’ll definitely want to check out their careers page and benefits page. Also, please feel free to contact me and I can pass your resume along directly.

Pay Per Click Jobs Are Fun

Inflection Party at Pampas Palo Alto

I couldn’t be more excited about the pay per click career path. Over the years, I’ve attended a plethora of Inflection parties, just like the one featured in this post. I even joined Inflection in Las Vegas (paid for by the company) to celebrate a milestone.

My current job also provides truly amazing opportunities, I couldn’t be happier! We had a team offsite in Las Vegas, I get the opportunity to travel quite a bit, and I attend tons of conferences such as SMX West and SMX Advanced. Check out my post A day in the life of PPC Ian and you’ll see just how amazing the search marketing career path can be. My closing thoughts: This is the best career path around, and think strategically about your employer as an investment. Pick a winner like Inflection and you’ll make a very wise investment in your future and your happiness!

All images in this post © PPCIan.com

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a tremendous fan of stock options. One of the huge advantages to the corporate online marketing career path (as opposed to affiliate marketing) is the ability to accumulate stock in leading privately held companies that later have the opportunity for major liquidity events. Just recently, I wrote abut how I made it big in online marketing. How did I make it big? I cashed in on my NexTag and QuinStreet options! Today I’m excited to share another success story: I own very early stage shares in Inflection.com and according toTechCrunch Inflection.com just secured $30 million in funding. That’s right: Every private company I have worked for has turned into an investor’s dream. I love the online marketing career path!

I’m Not Writing This Post To Brag

Inflection

So I’m super excited but want to make it very clear from the start that I’m not here to brag. Rather, I’m here to empower and share the power of the online marketing career path with the world. I know I’ve mentioned this many times but I must underscore it again: Online marketing professionals are in demand, especially pay per click professionals. Due to this fact, you get your pick of which companies you want to work for. This abundance of choice (which 99 percent of the working world doesn’t have) affords you the opportunity to make wise investment decisions. View your employer as an investment opportunity and you too can have three amazing private company investments in a row, just like me! PPC is unlike any other career for this simple reason.

Hey Jon, Have Anything To Say This Time?

So after my recent post about making it big in online marketing I received several spam messages from someone named “Jon”. Jon did not provide a valid email address, but was quick to tell me that I did not make much on my QuinStreet stock (which is quite untrue). Hey Jon, this post is for you. Also, I think I know who you are. How are things going at your fourth tier ad network? I actually enjoy getting these types of messages. As my friend John Chow says in his book Make Money Online, haters are the number one leading indicator of your own personal success. Hence, the Inflection news coming in such a timely manner!

Inflection.com Rocks and They’re Going To Dominate

Ok, time for me to get serious again. I wanted to close out by talking a bit about Inflection.com and my personal experience there. Right before my current gig, I thoroughly enjoyed running Inflection.com’s paid search business as their Director of SEM. I’d like to close out with a few great things about Inflection:

The co-founders are awesome. Brian, my former boss, started the business in his Harvard dorm room. He joined forces with Matthew, his brother and serial entrepreneur, and started Inflection. They bootstrapped it and quickly turned the company into a 50 person cash machine. These guys know their stuff and I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so. It’s extremely rare to land 30 million funding in this economy.
The team is very seasoned (which is one of the big reasons they are doing so well)! I have two pieces of information to quickly prove this to you. First, their executive VP of business development used to be President of Match.com in its early days. Second, their VP of finance was VP of finance at Netflix and took that company public. When I was there, half the team were Stanford graduates like myself, how awesome.
Inflection’s products are cool. Just check out Archives.com!

Here’s to Inflection’s continued success! Want to work at this amazing company in the heart of Palo Alto near my alma mater Stanford University? Send me your resume to jobs@ppcian.com and let me help connect you!