Last week we announced our 5th birthday. Looking back, the five years seems to have gone very fast but it is a milestone we are proud to have reached.

SLI was born out of the ashes of Globalbrain which had been sold to the then internet giant, NBCi. At it’s peak NBCi had been the 6th most visited site in the US. The founders of SLI saw that there was a huge opportunity to use the search technology we had developed for GlobalBrain/NBCi to improve site search. At the time site search on most sites was appalling. On average it is a lot better now – especially our customers’ sites :). But it is amazing how many sites out there still have terrible search.

August 2001 was in the middle of the dot com crash and just before September 11. It was a hard time to start a company and it was difficult to find customers. That experience has helped shape the culture of SLI. We treasured the customers we were able to get and did everything we could to look after them. We still have the culture of looking after our customers and I’m sure it will see us well into the future.

The future for SLI is exciting. We have been profitable for the last three years and our business is sustainable. We are almost doubling our customers each year. I’m looking forward to the next five years and want to thank the SLI team and our customers for a rewarding half decade.