Metaphorically speaking, navigating a vast sea of tech solutions can be a challenging endeavor; even worse, searching for the right tech consumer. Fortunately, Tonya Turrell, Founder and CEO of The Launchpad has developed a solution, a matchmaking platform (technologymatch) that simplifies navigation by connecting IT buyers with the precise technology they need.
While running her third technology marketing agency, Turrell was inspired. “I had this idea for the matchmaking platform years ago… …and honestly, when we started the agency in 2020, I was shocked that no one had done anything like it yet, because it just makes so much sense. We had talked about it for years.” The platform matches organizations that have a tech need with innovative tech providers who have the perfect solution.
While she had zero interest in running another agency, the Launchpad was born out of her desire to self-seed her vision. “When we started this agency in 2020, it wasn’t to start an agency; it was always to start the marketplace.” Likewise, Turrell, a 26 year veteran in the B2B lead generation space, knew the agency could serve another purpose; she could reconnect with technology clients from her past. She also wanted to bring back together her core team to build the platform with a high multiplier.
Turrell is accomplishing her vision on all fronts. “As of June, we have self-funded about $2M. We have been our own seed investor. We’ve spent the last three years investing agency profits and my own personal finances to fund this vision.”
Turrell adds, “I’ve put all my personal finances and retirement in, leveraged all my assets and bootstrapped for 3 years because I believe in this and know it will take off. I know this is what is needed in the space by both technology providers and IT buyers.” It’s important to note that she should ‘know,’ she took The Launchpad to #123 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies.
The platform is coming along, too, even if it has taken much longer than Turrell planned, “it was so much more complex than I thought it would be. You know, I think a good analogy is Google. Like, if you look at Google, it’s just a search bar. It’s the simplest front end in the world, which was my vision. Can we make it super simple? I didn’t realize that would mean a full year of design and now two years of development to make the front end elegant and intuitive as well as make the back end be able to do what we need it to do.”
Turrell adds, “Sometimes when I get on design review calls with our engineers, I’ll ask for what I think is a simple design change, and then they show me the knock-on effect of all the additional development that has to happen on the back end to make that simple change. I get impatient and want to see the full vision brought to life, but when they show me, I go, ‘I get it now!’”
With hardwork, patience, and intelligence, Tonya Turrell’s vision came to fruition with the Beta release this January 2023. And, not only are they already revenue-generating, but they have driven 20,000 connections between technology buyers and sellers in the marketplace. Impressively, to date, they have generated more than $43B in sales pipeline for their technology clients.
Turrell gives tons of credit to The Launchpad’s CTO and co-founder, Jacob Kapostins, who has played a pivotal role in building a top-notch engineering team, guiding the platform’s design and development, and directing the building of a supreme digital marketplace product.
The Launchpad team is phasing out the agency and transitioning into a software as a service (SaaS) distribution model. “As we transition away from the agency, we are sharing resources so that we can transition resources over to the SaaS side of the business once the agency is wrapped up, and that in itself has been a challenge, keeping the agency going and profitable enough to continue to fund the platform. That has really been my motivation for funding.”
Many will continue to try and navigate the sea of tech solutions the old-fashioned way. But why, when there is a much simpler and much more effective way? Thanks to Tonya Turrell and her team with the first-of-its-kind platform, technologymatch.com is seamlessly connecting the right buyer with the right product.
Find out more today at The Launchpad.
