Spring 2006. It was a time when the internet looked wildly different than it does today.
If you wanted to see what your friends were up to, you were probably navigating the chaotic pages of MySpace. If you wanted to get somewhere new, you didn't look at a smartphone—the first iPhone hadn’t even been announced yet—you printed out turn-by-turn directions from MapQuest. And if you wanted a laugh, you might have loaded up a video on a brand-new, independent website called YouTube, which was just over a year old.
It was in this digital landscape that Service Direct was born.
Two decades have flown by, and while the tech world around us has transformed beyond recognition, what we set out to do in the spring of 2006 has stayed remarkably constant. We wanted to build a better way to connect local service businesses with the customers who needed them most, and we wanted to do it with absolute transparency and tangible results.
Looking back over 20 years, it’s incredible to see how much we’ve evolved, and how much that core mission remains exactly the same.
Service Direct’s origin story starts with a bold bet.
In year one, we decided to tackle the massive gap in digital marketing for home and professional services. We literally pulled all the full-page ads out of the local Yellow Pages, plastered them all over our office wall, and recognized that this giant book was about to become a relic of the past.
In those early days, we were just trying to monetize traffic by building local websites and driving search traffic to them. We called contractors directly, offering everything from graphic design to SEO, until we heard a universal truth from our clients: “I’ll just pay you if you can get me good calls.”
That realization changed everything, shifting our focus away from selling services and toward delivering actual results.
From day one, we made a choice that would define our entire trajectory: we built this company from the ground up, on our own dime, with absolutely zero outside money. No venture capital, no private equity, no board of directors looking for a quick exit.
Staying bootstrapped meant we had to grow organically, but more importantly, it meant we got to build this company on our terms. From the beginning, every feature we’ve developed and every risk we’ve taken has been to benefit our clients and our team, not to hit an arbitrary quarterly target for investors.
Of course, maintaining that independence meant our technology had to constantly evolve alongside the business. We’ve spent the past 20 years building, scaling, and occasionally tearing down what we built to make room for the future.
Every long-standing business has a few turning points that change its trajectory forever. For us, a few major milestones stand out:
The First Real Office & Outside Hires: Moving out of makeshift spaces and hiring our very first team members—people we didn’t know previously, who took a leap of faith to join our vision—changed us from a project into a true company.
Early Strategic Partnerships: Landing a few key partnerships early on gave us the widespread exposure and credibility we needed to compete with the industry giants.
The “New” mySD Platform: Re-engineering our core platform into the modern mySD interface gave our clients unprecedented control and visibility into their phone call lead generation.
The Resilience of 2020: When the pandemic threw the world into chaos in 2020, we faced immense challenges. But out of that uncertainty came one of our greatest successes: the launch of our Marketplace platform, which completely transformed how we distribute and scale high-quality calls.
Today, 20 years in, Service Direct occupies a unique and powerful position in the industry; proof that a customer-first, bootstrapped model can outlast the hype cycles.
You don’t reach a 20-year anniversary alone, and we have a lot of people to thank.
First and foremost is the team we’ve built, past and present. They are the true heartbeat of Service Direct. Staying independent is exactly what allowed us to build this team our way: fostering a culture where people genuinely care about the work they do, support one another, and stick around for the long haul.
We also owe an immense debt of gratitude to our clients, especially our long-tenured partners who have trusted us with their business growth for years, through every iteration of our platform.
And finally, to our partners, vendors, and publishers: thank you for collaborating with us and helping us keep the wheels turning seamlessly day in and day out.
While 20 years is a milestone worth celebrating, we are spending much more time looking forward than looking back.
The next frontier for us is deeply tied to how technology is shifting. We are actively weaving AI into our core systems to improve how we operate internally and, more importantly, how we deliver precise, high-intent calls for our clients.
According to Co-founder and CTO, John Turpin, this new wave of AI feels similar in its wide-ranging potential impact. As a company, we’re trying to figure out how to best implement it.
“I have enjoyed working with my talented and thoughtful colleagues as we've implemented AI solutions in our products. We have been able to solve large problems with less effort and prototype potential solutions rapidly, garnering immediate feedback and better direction.”
- John Turpin, Co-Founder & CTO
But these advancements don’t come without a cost: lots of effort and resources are still required to create enterprise-quality solutions to our problems.
John said there is no doubt in his mind that AI is here to stay as part of the ever-growing technological footprint in all our lives.
We’re also expanding our footprint across the ecosystem. We are working with more clients and publishers than ever before, expanding our reach to help businesses scale from local SMBs to massive enterprises.
“In working with businesses of all shapes and sizes over the last 20 years, we’ve discovered that there are companies that are truly in growth mode, and there are companies that aren’t,” said Matt Buchanan, Co-founder and CGO. “Our platform works the best for those businesses that are seeking growth, willing to consistently invest in that growth, and want a partner that can help them achieve their goals.”
A key tenet of our platform is that it not only generates valuable calls that turn into customers but also provides data and insights to help growth-minded clients make better decisions, reduce operational inefficiencies, and ultimately drive more revenue and profit.
Through all of this growth, one thing will remain entirely unchanged: we are still bootstrapped, still fiercely independent, and still making long-term calls based on what’s right for our ecosystem and our customers, not what looks good on a pitch deck.
“I'm proud that over twenty years we've been able to build a culture where people genuinely care about the work and about each other, and about the clients and partners we serve. That's not something you can manufacture."
- Brian Abernethy, Co-Founder & CEO
Brian goes on, saying that trust has to be earned over time, and it could only happen because we have been free to do things the right way, respond to what actually matters, and stay true to what we believe in. Everything we've accomplished is the direct result of that independence.
Just as we did back in the spring of 2006, we’re logging in every day, ready to build, innovate, and connect. The tech might look a whole lot sharper than it did in the days of MySpace and flip phones, but our commitment to your business remains exactly the same.
Here’s to two decades of partnership, and to everything still to come!