How Surfer SEO rode the wave to $15M ARR — then sold in the AI era

The popular SEO tool Surfer began as a side project.

In 2017, co-founder Lucjan Suski was working at a small SEO agency in Poland. At the time, one of the industry’s hottest strategies was link building, he recalled. But the process — getting other websites to link back to yours to build search authority — was largely manual, error-prone and time-consuming.

Off the clock, Lucjan, a software developer, started building a solution. The side project would eventually become Surfer.

“You need to figure out a problem and how to solve it, but also pray that the market is ready for it,” he said.

The market was more than ready.

Lucjan’s brother Michał joined as co-founder, along with Sławomir Czajkowski. They were later joined by Tomasz Niezgoda and Kazimierz Pięta.

By 2025, Surfer had reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), with 12,000 customers worldwide and more than 300,000 monthly visitors, Lucjan told They Got Acquired. Active users totaled 150,000, according to the acquisition announcement.

How Surfer SEO caught momentum

Surfer evolved from a side project into a full-fledged SEO platform that helped users research, audit, write and optimize content.

Here’s how it worked: Surfer analyzed Google’s top-ranking articles for specific keywords to identify patterns. Using that data, the tool generated recommendations on keyword usage, content structure and even approximate word count.

What differentiated Surfer from other tools on the market was that it was easy to jump in and start using. Some more established tools had also gotten expensive.

“I saw other SEO software doing multi-step onboarding processes, but with SurferSEO, you could get started in five minutes,” Lucjan said in an interview for a Medium article. “Users could really see the value within minutes, especially SEO experts.”

For roughly two years, the team experimented with different ideas and directions before deliberately shifting into growth mode.

They spent some money on paid acquisition: By 2023, the company had spent less than $1 million on marketing while reaching $15 million in revenue.

They also focused on credibility and community, driving word of mouth and influencer marketing. Early influencer relationships in Poland helped Surfer expand into Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.

In fact, an industry influencer helped support the company’s sales and marketing efforts in exchange for a 10% equity stake, Lucjan told They Got Acquired.

“The most important thing we did was think about how we could become more credible, not just a small company from Poland,” Lucjan said.

One of the biggest inflection points came when the team was invited to the Chiang Mai SEO Conference, a well-known gathering of hundreds of SEO professionals.

“Everyone was talking about us and we weren’t expecting that reaction,” he said.

As momentum grew, Sufter, which was initially free to use, began monetizing.

An “early access plan” cost $500 for a full year of use. By 2025, the company offered three primary pricing tiers: Essential ($99/month), Scale ($219/month) and custom Enterprise pricing. It also launched a free Keyword Surfer Chrome extension, which showed basic search data directly in Google results.

The decision to de-risk: How Surfer SEO got acquired

By 2025, Surfer had reached meaningful scale as a bootstrapped company, and leadership began thinking about next steps.

One motivation for selling was reducing risk exposure. “Every shareholder had all their net worth in a single asset: Surfer,” Lucjan told They Got Acquired. “At some point, it becomes too risky.”

In October 2025, Surfer was acquired by Positive Group, a European platform for marketing automation and digital growth tools that has expanded through acquisitions. The sale price was not disclosed. Surfer was one of three companies Positive acquired in 2025.

On LinkedIn, Lucjan thanked Mike Korba, CCO and co-founder of User.com, for the introduction. User.com, a marketing platform, was acquired by Positive Group in 2023.

For Surfer, the appeal was acceleration.

Positive “provides the support and stability we need to move faster while continuing to deliver on the same mission and product vision,” according to the acquisition announcement. “This partnership isn’t about changing direction. It’s about accelerating what Surfer already stands for — data-driven content optimization that helps marketers achieve consistent, measurable results.”

The deal process, Lucjan said, was “very long, very intense, with lots of ups and downs.” For one, Surfer’s legal structure wasn’t aligned with the buyer’s preferences, and resolving the issue became part of negotiations that stretched over multiple months. Both sides had to make concessions, and at times, Lucjan wasn’t sure the acquisition would happen.

To further complicate the process, not all of Surfer’s shareholders were aligned on the conditions of the deal. “We had to work hard to get a greenlight from everyone,” Lucjan said.

He thanked GESSEL law firm and Surfer’s finance and legal teams for helping close the deal.

After the acquisition, Lucjan, Michał and Niezgoda stayed on with Positive Group.

Industry observers see the deal as part of a broader consolidating wave in SEO and marketing software.

“The Surfer SEO acquisition by Positive Group reflects where the marketing SaaS industry is headed: more integration, more automation, and more emphasis on AI,” Rankability reported.