Meet our
family

Frustrated with their prospecting results, long-time friends Ryan Welmans and Rob Harlow come up with the idea of integrating social media with email to create a more powerful lead generation tool.

With the new discipline of “social prospecting” established, Sopro (a contraction of the two words) was registered at Company’s House in June. Rob’s brother Steve comes on board to manage Sales.

Sopro ends the year with one employee and 10 customers.

Ryan and Rob join Sopro full time, hiring Monika Joshevska to establish an Operations team in Skopje, North Macedonia.

The year ends with 15 staff, an office in Skopje, £300,000 revenue and a plan to double that revenue every year.

The Client Services department is created to manage the growing number of customers. The first developer is hired to support Rob. Staff numbers and turnover double and the Skopje team move to a larger office.

The plan comes together.

It’s a year of firsts. Our first UK office opens, in Brighton. Our first B2B Expo attended. The first of our free prospecting tools available (which planted the initial seed which would later grow into our first Saas platform.

With over 200 Clients, Sopro doubles its revenue to £1.25m.

Campaign Magazine names Sopro the “Tech Company of the year”. As Sopro emails its 1,000,000th prospect, Ryan and Rob start planning for a new SaaS-based prospecting platform.

Sopro’s parent company begins its startup incubation programme, signing up car sales platform GetItGone.com and sales service Pitch121. The year ends with a rooftop celebration at Sopro’s Skopje HQ and a new Brighton Office for the UK team.

With over 400 clients, Sopro doubles its revenue to £2.5m.

Sopro emails its 2,000,000th prospect just before Covid-19 hits the UK. The Brighton and Skopje offices celebrate Sopro’s 5th Birthday party over Zoom. Sopro hires its 100th employee.

Development on Outbase, Sopro’s SaaS-based B2B email marketing platform begins. Sopro doubles revenue to £5m.

As Sopro hires its 200th employee and Covid restrictions are eased, Ryan & Rob fly to Macedonia to meet 56 new starters.

The Founders Hub is launched with massive ambitions; to be the UK’s biggest free peer-to-peer community for business founders and to further enhance the startup incubation programme.

The Skopje team moves to its third office in Skopje’s equivalent of Piccadilly Circus: Macedonia Square. Outbase is launched.