Lucjan Suski is the co-founder and CEO of Surfer, an all-in-one platform for keyword research, content creation, optimization and search engine optimization (SEO) growth management.
When did you initially get interested in search engine optimization?
SEO has always fascinated me from the perspective of a product person. Most of the tools that were built in this space had inferior UX compared to what I was used to working as a Product Engineer for several product startups across different fields. I also knew that SEOs use their tools heavily, and usage is directly connected to revenue, that’s why I started to dig deeper.
Could you share the genesis story behind the launch of Surfer?
Back in 2016, after a couple of years working as a Product Engineer, I started to entertain the idea of a startup as a technical co-founder. During that time, my brother Michal was hired as an SEO Specialist in KS, a marketing agency founded by our friend Slawek Czajkowski. Michal quickly climbed the ladder and became Head of SEO, and I started to pick his brain about the problems he faced every day at work and ways to improve the performance of SEO teams. Some were obvious. For example, a not-very-innovative thing like a rank tracker crossed our minds, but we quickly settled on something really unique – an on-page optimization tool that automatically analyzed hundreds of ranking factors to see what really makes a difference when it comes to ranking. Within a few weeks, I put together a prototype that was immediately adopted by the agency, and the rest is history.
