Pingdom
The world’s biggest website monitoring company. Built from a basement in Västerås to 900,000 users in 8 years.
When I joined Pingdom in 2011, we were still small enough to share a taxi to lunch. Yet the developer community was already buzzing about the product. My mandate was to fan that early flame without letting the brand lose its handcrafted quality.
Success meant adding users. And add we did.
We kept the freemium model front and center, held prices low, and let the product’s stickiness handle conversions. Despite residing in a literal basement we decided to make it seem like we were way bigger than we were. Every pixel and line of copy had to feel world-class, so we studied the breakout tech stars of the day and matched their polish.
A lean budget and a promise never to sacrifice free users for quick revenue forced us to stay sharp and inventive.
What we built
We overhauled the visual identity, evolving from a startup aesthetic to a polished look developers could proudly display on a laptop sticker. I assembled a 15-person marketing team spanning Västerås and Stockholm in Sweden. Somehow we managed to combine spontaneous ideas with some kind of sprint thinking (even though we had never heard of sprints, really).
Podcast sponsorships, Hacker News AMAs, content built on our own data, and real salt of the earth emails maintained our credibility with the developer community. I also wrote and directed a series of playful product videos and built a live Internet Health Map that turned uptime data from millions of websites into real-time insights the tech press couldn’t resist.
In 2015, SolarWinds acquired Pingdom. I guided the brand through the transition all the way to SolarWinds’ return to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SWI. That also meant building a small team in Austin.
Company
Role
CMO, 2011–2019
Milestones
Built a developer-favorite uptime tool into a global SaaS brand with 900,000 users.
Customers included 85% of all Fortune 500 companies.
Increased revenue from 50 million SEK (2014) to 142 million (2018)
The Pingdom website went through many iterations over the years.
Highlights and wins
Over 8 years we grew from 30,000 users to 900,000 users. Revenue climbed from 50 million SEK in 2014 to 142 million SEK in 2018, a 184% increase. By the time I left, 85% of the Fortune 500 companies relied on Pingdom, with clients including Twitter, Dropbox, Apple, Spotify, and Pinterest. Alexa counted us among the world’s 1,000 most visited websites.
The Live Internet Health Map hit the front page of Hacker News, Techmeme, and The Verge, then crossed into the mainstream with coverage in The New York Times and the BBC.
Reflections
Pingdom proved that clever, iterative marketing can outperform brands with significantly larger budgets. Small, fast feedback loops mean fewer surprises and sharper decisions. The Live Internet Health Map began as a quick experiment and quickly became an overnight press magnet, it pulled in thousands of new users and the tech press couldn’t stop writing about it.
If I could replay the experience, I would still double down on community because developer loyalty compounds over time. Having that much data on how the internet actually behaves gave us something most brands don’t have: something genuinely worth saying.
Oh, and I would hire a data analyst sooner to sharpen every experiment. You can’t measure your way to good instincts. But you can definitely hire someone who helps.
There are so many stories to tell from the Pingdom offices. We were born to hack.
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“Not only is he a man of class and wit, but also a great designer and collaborator. When Jonas managed our marketing team, his skill and guidance consistently helped elevate our work to the next level. In short, Jonas knows what he’s doing!”
John Karlsson, Lead Designer
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