Siteworx President Tim McLaughlin talks private equity, expansion

Tim McLaughlin, president of Siteworx, says his company is hiring 10 people a week.

If you aren't hip-deep in the world of web design and content management, you may not have heard of Reston-based Siteworx LLC. I spoke with Tim McLaughlin, president and founder of the company, about the company's plans.

Late last year, Siteworx took an infusion of private equity cash from RLH Equity Partners that promises to increase its visibility in Greater Washington's tech community.

On the nature of the RLH deal:

"It is an investment, it was not a buyout. Basically all the management at Siteworx, including myself, is staying in place, and we all still own shares in the company. It?s basically money that was put into the company to help support continued aggressive growth."

On why they brought in private equity:

"That was the challenge, as we continue to grow at the pace that we are ? which is 45 percent year-over-year growth - there was increasingly larger and larger investments around opening new offices, bringing in new groups of people. We are hiring 10 people a week at this point now. And so that risk was increasing. We looked at outside investors who are interested in supporting that growth from a financial perspective, and also to potentially do some small acquisitions.?

On why management sold shares in the deal:

"You're not getting out of the game, but you're taking some chips off the table so you don?t have to lose sleep at night about everything. You can still lose sleep about some things, but the fact is that it spreads out your risk. And so as an entrepreneur, you pretty much have all your eggs in one basket, which is fine to a point, but once you got some success, you want to at least know that you are not going to go in 150 percent on everything that you?re doing all the time. This way you can put a little money aside for the family and keep on going with what your doing without having the stress of increasingly large bets.?

Bill Flook covers technology, biotech and venture capital.

Source: http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/vertical_47/~3/9hpRfcoUyEw/qa-siteworx-president-tim-mclaughlin.html

lent la times nerlens noel