My unlikely journey launching an ad tech startup is a Dickens inspired tale of false starts, misfires and more disasters than most ventures can be expected to survive. This journey is going on 120 months from inspiration to a live system – a very long journey indeed. I failed to find the right team 2x. I stumbled about trying to explain how so much of adtech was problematic. I was lonely much of the time as my vision for a high quality adtech system sans the scale and surveillance element was seen as aberrant.
But probably one of my biggest mistakes was my misguided attempts to follow in the typical path of tech startups. You know what I mean. Hang out at the Meet-ups. Apply to every incubator and funding platform you can find. Fly to SF often enough times for frequent flyer miles that qualify for a trip to anywhere.
Truth be told, I largely failed in gaining traction with that world. Aside from the fact that I clearly don’t fit the CEO entrepreneur mold because I am not a programmer but – gasp – a marketer, When I pitched investors, I consistently saw a puzzled look on their face. Our venture didn’t exactly fit easily anywhere. We are part tech, part direct marketing and part media network. We are the proverbial round peg in what I imagined was a wall of brightly colored square cubby holes VCs use to organize startups into cubes marked media, ecommerce and mobile.
Trying to fit in was excruciating for investors and me. One investor wondered about my grey hair. Another chastised me for for being “so invested in client outcomes.” To add insult to injury, we focused on changing the business model of adtech but that was not what investors warmed up to. As I tried to conform to investor expectations, my pitches became laced with explanations or “apologies” about what we weren’t or why we didn’t. It was a frustrating time.
Yet, we carried on, driven on by a few true “mensches” who continued to support the venture despite every likelihood of failure. And now we are at a new stage in our company; a stage I could have only imagined at the beginning. We are ready to expand and grow our business with the launch of our new Topic Intelligence platform built to drive predictable and profitable acquisition. We have worked long and hard for this moment and it is sweet to be here despite our non-traditional road to venture success.
So in the spirit of the moment – I can finally let go a burdensome list of apologies I had constructed over time to explain why our venture is different.
The “I will ever again apologize for” list:
- Being a woman in a decidedly male dominated venture world.
- Being an older woman starting a venture who is not a serial entrepreneur.
- Creating a data marketing platform that is built to drive outcomes, not just clicks or impressions.
- Being deeply concerned with creating value for all stakeholders in marketing tech: advertisers, agencies and “Judy Consumer” – not one group at the expense of another.
- Being willing to invest in ad agencies even though it takes longer and is eminently more complicated.
- Being totally transparent with advertisers and agencies about how we make money for our clients and and how make money ourselves.
- Not being a “disruptive” technology but a marketing system meant to help marketers solve business problems. “Cool” is not the point.
- Not being satisfied with binary and mysterious digital impressions but working on delivering real consumers or customers whose real behaviors can be interpreted as real intent.
- Not playing the “standard” adtech scale and surveillance game but embracing a new marketing model that must outcome based.
- Not being what investors expect me to be but remaining true to whom I am.
In the end, not “fitting in” was probably the best thing to happen to our venture. We’ve launched our Topic Intelligence platform with a roster of clients that is growing every day. We didn’t give away the equity farm and because we are marketers, we know how to make $1 look like $10.
Most important though, I think being an outlier freed us from the tyranny of typical venture thinking to create as expansively as our vision and inspiration could take us. And it has taken us far without being brutalized by many dilution rounds.
I don’t know how our journey ends after 12 years of hard work and hard knocks but one thing I know for sure – I will never, ever again have to apologize for who I am (or not). That’s a win in my book.
