Taming the Hydra: Integrating 48 Acquisitions Without Breaking Revenue
PE-backed B2C marketing technology company
When Rapid Growth Creates Operational Chaos
A PE-backed marketing technology company executed an aggressive acquisition strategy, purchasing 48 brands over three years. The growth was impressive—but it created an integration nightmare that threatened the entire portfolio's value.
The technical landscape was fragmented beyond control:
- 200+ websites scattered across 24 different hosting providers
- 20 different ecommerce platforms with completely siloed customer data
- 10 separate customer service systems with no unified view
- 25 different landing page builders with inconsistent tech stacks
- 5 database systems and 12 programming languages across the portfolio
Without centralized reporting, executives had no real-time view of what was working across 48 brands. Financial reports took weeks to compile manually.
Customer data was completely siloed. A customer buying from Brand A had zero visibility to Brand B, eliminating massive revenue opportunities.
PE firms walked away from acquisition discussions—they couldn't figure out how to control the 'hydra' of disparate systems and saw it as too risky.
Two-Phase Integration Without Breaking Revenue
As CTO, I architected a deliberate two-phase strategy that prioritized business continuity above all else. The guiding principle: we don't change anything unless it increases revenue.
Unified Data Architecture
What we built: Created a centralized transaction database capturing real-time sales across all 48 brands, plus a BigQuery data lake with 500M historical records going back to 2018.
Impact: Executives got daily dashboard updates by 9am, replacing weeks-long manual reporting processes.
AI-Powered Customer Service
What we built: Replaced 100 customer service agents with a custom LLM trained on 4 years of historical tickets, SOPs, and Q&As. Deployed in just 6 weeks.
Impact: 90% cost reduction in customer service with no decline in customer satisfaction. Team reduced from 100 agents to 7.
Platform Consolidation
What we built: Systematically consolidated 24 hosting providers, 20 ecommerce platforms, and 25 ESPs into unified infrastructure.
Impact: 40% total operational cost reduction through infrastructure consolidation and automation.
Cross-Brand Revenue Engine
What we built: Architected a transaction engine enabling brands to cross-sell to each other's customer bases while maintaining separate fulfillment.
Impact: Enabled cross-brand marketing flywheel that drove 30% average organic growth across portfolio brands.
Measurable Impact Across Every Metric
Successfully integrated 48 separate companies with zero revenue disruption during integration cycles.
Consolidated 24 hosting providers, 20 ecommerce platforms, and replaced 100 CS agents with AI.
Cross-brand marketing flywheel drove sustained growth across portfolio brands.
Supported 3.1M annual transactions across unified platform with 99.9% uptime.
Facing a complex integration challenge?
Whether you're scaling through acquisitions, consolidating platforms, or transforming technical chaos into competitive advantage, I bring the rare combination of technical depth and business acumen needed to deliver measurable results.