SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1061 We serve 2b impressions a day including MSN homepage
20 Jun 2018
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million.
I had no money when I started the company. It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs.
We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Eric Berry. He's the CEO and co-founder of TripleLift, the leading programmatic native ad platform.
Previously, Eric was leader at AppNexus and an attorney at Simpson, Thatcher, and Bartlett LLP. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from MIT and a JD from New York University School of Law. Eric, are you ready to take us to the top? I sure am. Okay, I'm glad you're a founder now. You're much cooler as a founder than I'm sure you were as a lawyer, right? Infinitely.
Infinitely. All right. Tell us about triple lift. Do you say you're the leading programmatic native ad platform measured by what?
Uh, so we are the largest in terms of the volume of ad impressions that we see on a daily basis, which is why. So, so if you take all the publishers that we work with, so we work with, uh, big publishers like MSNs homepage, Xfinity's homepage, Hearst, Condé, et cetera. Um,
We do native advertising, which are more integrated ads that match the unique look and feel and user experience of those publishers. And the best way to think about that is on Facebook, you have ads that sort of match the unique look and feel of Facebook. And that's generally a better experience for users. It's less disruptive. It's less annoying. There's less flashing or blinking.
And every publisher wants that kind of experience. But if every publisher tries to come up with their own proprietary ad format, publishers that aren't quite the scale of Facebook, advertisers wouldn't be able to create all those unique ad experiences. They wouldn't be able to create all the different.
What's your number though, Eric? What are you at in terms of daily impressions you're serving? We serve over 2 billion ad impressions a day. A day, and that puts you at the top of that list. For programmatic native advertising, that's right. Okay, tell me the story. How did you win the MSN homepage?
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Chapter 2: How did TripleLift become a leading programmatic native ad platform?
I see. And so it's very hard to say generally.
But generally what I'm looking at is the is the big header slideshow. There is a slide in there that says there's a sponsored yellow tag in the upper left. Is that you guys?
that that's often us. Yes.
I see. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, good. That helps us understand kind of, kind of what you're doing. Um, talk revenue to me. What's your model? Is it a, is it a cut of fees? Is there a SAS technology platform behind this? What is it?
So we work a lot of different ways with, uh, publishers, um, based on the, how the publisher wants to work with us. So the standard model is we'll take a revenue share with the publisher. Um, and, uh, we do work on a technology basis. So we license our technology to publishers that want to, uh, leverage what we do, uh, for their own site, for their own direct sales. What do you charge for that?
Uh, that's a CPM basis. So that runs, uh, it's comparable to other ad servers on the market. Um, and then we support private marketplace deals, which is a lower and fixed revenue share for programmatic deals that are facilitated by the publishers, sales teams through our exchange.
Okay. Um, can you give me a general size today of the company? So I don't have to go down each of these individual business models. Like, are you guys generally doing like 10 million, 50 million, a hundred million? Where are you generally?
The company did just under $100 million last year in revenue. We were profitable. And probably about two-thirds of that came through the programmatic business. Most of the rest came from the PMP business. What's PMP? Oh, I'm sorry. Private Marketplace. And then a relatively small percent came through the ad server, which largely is a piece of a more holistic relationship with publishers.
And what was 2016?
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Chapter 3: What metrics define the success of native advertising?
Yeah. Basically, we only really launched the company. So 2012, we got started. 2012, we ideated. 2013, we built out the product. 2014 was the first year in market. And so between 2014 and 2015, that was it for our traction. So when we raised in 2015, we were sort of going off of 2014 numbers. And we also didn't want to raise too much money.
Chapter 4: How did TripleLift win the MSN homepage partnership?
So if you look at ad tech historically, you see a number of companies that have raised a ton of money, 100 plus million dollars. And when you raise a ton of money, you have investors that require a ton of problems. Yeah, exactly. And we wanted to raise only the amount that we wanted to raise. So we took less than we could have.
And we also took it at a lower valuation than we could have because we wanted to keep the terms as simple as we could. So we have a very clean cap table, very clean terms and a very straightforward board relationship. And, you know, theoretically, we could have had a lot more money, but it had a lot more of a challenge running the company.
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Back in 2015, what valuation did you take that capital at?
That was around, well, we don't disclose it publicly, but standard multiple.
This is just between you and me and my podcast audience. It's basically private. Sure, sure.
Uh, you know, there's, there's a standard dilution that, uh, people look to when they raise rounds.
So you sold like 15% of the company, something like that around that. Yeah. Got it. And, and how are, you know, I know how a SAS company is modeled, but you're not pure play SAS. Is it typically a revenue multiple or an EBITDA multiple or something else?
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Chapter 5: What is TripleLift's revenue model and business structure?
And I use good notes, handwritten like pen notes on the iPad for everything. And it's really changed the entire way that I manage people.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Uh, so I have a kid who is one, uh, and so the answer is a lot fewer than I would like. How many? Last night, probably five. Okay.
All right. So situation is you're married, Linda, one kiddo, very young, about five hours of sleep. You're 37, right? I am. Last question. Take us back 17 years. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Uh, that he shouldn't go to law school.
There you guys have it from Eric. Eric, obviously a pretty rational guy. Maybe that's the lawyer background. But company launched in 2012. Again, growing very rapidly. 2014, first year in market. Today, again, growing, doubling over the past 13 months. Eric, thank you for taking us to the top.
Thank you. It's been great.
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