How I Founded and Sold My UX Research SaaS Company for $810M

UserZoom’s journey began like many tech startups do, rooted in a need to address a significant gap in the market. In the aftermath of the dot-com crash, UserZoom was born out of the need to improve how online services were built, focusing specifically on user experience.

This story tracks the transformation of UserZoom from a small consultancy in Spain to a key player in user experience.

The year was 2001, and the digital world was licking its wounds after the dot-com bubble burst. Companies had invested heavily in online presences that prioritized flair over functionality, leaving a landscape of user-unfriendly websites that failed to meet business goals. In Spain, Alfonso and his co-founders were consulting for these troubled projects, noticing a recurring theme: no one was really thinking about the end-user.

“We saw these flashy websites everywhere, trying to dazzle with looks but not really caring if they were actually usable,” Alfonso recalls. “That’s when we knew something had to change.”

The trio started a consultancy called Xperience Consulting focused on what was then a novel concept: usability testing. They worked closely with companies to understand their customers’ real needs and preferences, a radical shift from the prevailing ‘build it and they will come’ mentality. 
Keep in mind this was happening in the early 2000’s so there was no way to do remote testing and every usability test was run in labs in Madrid and Barcelona.

During its first few years Xperience Consulting was only focused on Spanish companies. When they partnered with UX Alliance, a network of companies doing similar work across different countries they started to work with international companies. 

“This alliance was our springboard into working with bigger names internationally,” Alfonso shares. “American corporations, UK firms, German businesses—they all started to see the value in what we offered.”

As the consultancy grew, the founders saw an opportunity to scale their impact beyond one-off consulting projects. “We were stuck in the lab all day, testing and tweaking. It was essential but so tedious,” Alfonso explained. 

The seed of UserZoom was planted as a tool to streamline their own processes, allowing remote usability testing—a groundbreaking idea years before Zoom and Google Meet became mainstream tools. 

“It wasn’t about starting a software company initially,” Alfonso says. “It was about creating a tool that would make our consulting work more efficient, letting us collect data and feedback without having users physically in the lab.”

Also it wasn’t an instant switch; for about two or three years Xperience Consulting and UserZoom overlapped. 

Rolling out a new product is never easy, and for UserZoom, the early days were about proving the concept. 

Soon after the idea of building a separate company, Alfonso moved from Spain to USA, a much more mature and sophisticated market when it comes to digital experience. 

Google, one of their major early customers, came into the picture with a specific request. “They said, ‘We love this; we don’t have to travel, and we can get more data. But can we run it ourselves?’ That was a turning point,” Alfonso recounts. It took UserZoom almost 1 year to provide Google with the kind of solution they wanted. At that point, UserZoom pivoted towards a SaaS model, enabling clients to conduct their own tests via the cloud. 

Understanding the ideal customer profile was a pivotal moment for UserZoom.

Alfonso explains, “When we started the transition to a software company, we knew we needed to pinpoint exactly who would benefit most from our product. This wasn’t just about size or industry but about recognizing which customers would see the most value in comprehensive UX testing.”

At the beginning of UserZoom, the company used to take any kind of clients: from small $5.000 projects up to $50.000. But they needed to nail the ideal customer. 

The ICP for UserZoom turned out to be large enterprises with substantial online traffic and a clear ROI from improving their digital user experience.  

These were companies that needed to ensure their digital platforms performed impeccably because any friction could lead to significant losses in revenue or customer satisfaction. Initially, these companies included sectors like banking, insurance, retail, and travel—industries where online interactions were rapidly becoming the norm. 

There is another reason: these industries basically provide commodity services so companies can only stand out if they give a superior customer experience or get some kind of insight into what their customers really want. 

“The key to our ICP was understanding not just who needed our product, but who would be committed to using it extensively,” Alfonso stated. “These companies weren’t just looking to run a usability test once a year; they needed continuous insights to stay competitive.”

UserZoom’s journey from an idea to a successful business was marked by a phase of intense bootstrapping. Xperience Consulting was doing quite well financially, comfortably bringing in around $3 million annually.

The consultancy’s success provided a solid financial foundation, allowing the founders to fund the growth of UserZoom out of their own pockets for the first few years. 

“We hustled non-stop, attending events, writing content, and engaging directly with potential clients,” Alfonso recalls. 
From 2007 to 2014 UserZoom was completely bootstrapped going from 0 to $12M ARR in revenue.

As UserZoom began to show potential for greater growth and wider market application, the need for external funding became clear: “There comes a point where to truly compete on a global stage and to accelerate growth, external capital is essential,” Alfonso acknowledged. The decision to seek funding was strategic, aimed at scaling operations, expanding the team, and boosting market penetration, especially in competitive markets like the United States.

 

Competing against well-funded rivals and expanding internationally required more than just grit; it needed capital, especially after companies like User Testing raised money from top names like Accel. 

Over the next few years, UserZoom raised a total of $137 million in three different rounds.

Eventually, in 2022 the company was sold for $810 million to Thoma Bravo, a tech-focused private equity firm, and later merged with its former competitor, UserTesting.