Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast?
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.
Chapter 2: Who is Oleg Nenov and what is Fidelity Media?
Hello, everybody. My guest today is Oleg Nenov. He is the CEO and founder of a company called Fidelity Media. He started as a telecommunication engineer and switched to analytics pretty fast. Now they're analyzing mobile network throughput, daily load, and other technical parameters. In 2007, he started Fidelity Media as an advertising network.
His team was busy with websites, representation, and ad operations mostly. So when RTB appeared, that was quite logical that they continued, obviously, to go into the supply side, platform side of things. Oleg, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes.
Chapter 3: How did Oleg transition from engineering to analytics?
Hello, everybody. All right. Everything is correct. So decode that bio for me in layman's terms. What does Fidelity Media do and what's your business model? The business model is monetization. We help publishers to monetize their inventory. Okay, and you take just a cut of spend through the platform? That's correct. We take a small part of revenue. About how much? From customers. About how much?
What percentage? It's 30%. 30%? Yes. And walk me through more of the backstory here. What year did you launch the company in, and what are you at today in terms of total team size? Well, we started in 2007.
Chapter 4: What business model does Fidelity Media use for monetization?
We started as an advertising network. We were engaged in website representation that day. We were presented to sites worldwide and as well as delivering Russian audience visiting English-speaking websites to Russian agencies. That day, such inventory was not so easily accessible as now. About four or five years ago, we started with a real-time bidding. We started building our own platform.
That's RTB, right? Real-time bidding? Yes, that's right. Real-time bidding is RTB. And for the moment, we supply side platform built on top of this framework on RTB basis. Okay. And over the past 12 months, how much volume did you process? Over a month, I can say that... For the moment, we have about 5 billion bid requests per month. We've grown five times last year. In terms of revenue?
In terms of inventory reach. Which is what, bid requests? Bid requests, number of bid requests.
Chapter 5: How much revenue does Fidelity Media generate annually?
One cost rates our network. as number 51 US network. Okay. And what does that translate to, though, in terms of actual money processed through your system, ad spend? Can you repeat this question? Sure. Over the past 12 months, how much total ad spend has gone through your platform? It's not too much. Let's think about... Like a million, 10 million, 100 million? Mm-hmm.
Oh, like about how much there you cut out? How much what? Repeat that. How much? Ah, it's something about 1 million. Okay. So about 1 million going through your platform, you take 30%, which means you've made about $300,000 over the past 12 months. Is that accurate? Yes, that's accurate, but that's gross. We should...
Chapter 6: What challenges does Fidelity Media face in the advertising space?
uh care of um servers for example uh i have colleagues who need to take part of money etc yep now have you bootstrapped this company or have you raised capital no uh we we didn't uh when we started we decided not to apply to raise any capital All we did is made on our own funds, from the pocket, from reinvestments, from current activity. Okay, good.
So you're bootstrapped, so you're in full control. Do you own 100%? No, no, I have... um other co-owners okay now this is a very competitive space um how are you winning even the million dollars in ad volume going through you why are why are spenders advertisers putting it through you versus somebody else uh we just try to offer some modern things like access via header bidding.
It's modern technology for the moment. And we are one of the, let's say, 60 companies who built a header bidding adapter. So it allows us to offer access in such a way for different publishers from Alexa top 100. Guys, big news. Last month was a huge month for the company I recently acquired, which was www.thetopinbox.com. I liked the company so much when I met the person who created it.
It lets you send emails later on Gmail, set up reminders like snooze almost to keep your inbox clean. Do things like send auto follow-ups and do open tracking so you know when your emails get opened. It's great if you're in sales or CEO or trying to be more productive. So listen, I bought the whole company on the spot and I want to tell you how I did it.
I've showed the deal, by the way, to big smart people, private equity firms, VCs, and they're dumbfounded. They go, Nathan, how did you do this? We've never seen a deal like this. How did you do this? So I did an unbelievable deal and I wanna show you the income report. So for me to send you the income report, go to www.thetopinbox.com, click the red button that says, install this on Gmail.
And when you do that, my email will appear. It'll appear in a little Gmail pop-up window. Send me an email and I'll reply immediately with the income report. And you can see how I'm buying and growing small B2B SaaS companies. That's www.thetopinbox.com. Totally free to try and use. www.thetopinbox.com. If somebody offered you $300,000 to acquire the company, would you sell? I would.
think about it. I will talk with this guy, of course. How many, how many partners do you have? Uh, I have one partner. Okay. And you guys split 50. Uh, uh, I will, uh, I will not answer this question if I, if I can, um, hope you understand.
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Chapter 7: How does Oleg plan to grow his company in a competitive market?
And he's not involved into day-to-day operations. Okay. So, so did you buy him out earlier on? Uh, No, no. We have monthly discussions about the company. We have some help in other ways. But why is he on the cap table? Was he an early founder? How did he get a chunk of equity? Early founder. Oh, okay. Got it. And he went off and did his own thing.
Today, he's not with the company, but he still owns a chunk of it. Yes. Yes. I see. I see. Interesting. So, I mean, how do you, I mean, I hate to be so blunt, but you're a very small player in this space in terms of the volume going through your platform. I mean, how do you win? How do you get up to a hundred million in volume? Um, I'm afraid I cannot say right now how to do this.
Um, uh, for the moment, uh, advertising space changing very fast. We face a lot of things like a lot of bots, a lot of transparency tools, etc. And we should fight with a lot of things right now. So it's more hard-paced to grow up to 100 million than 10 years ago when we started.
Chapter 8: What advice does Oleg wish he could give his younger self?
Yeah. How old are you, Oleg? I'm 40 years. So you're going to live for another 50 or 60 years. Why not get the hell out of this business and go launch your next thing? I'm thinking about it also. You should let me sell the company. I'll get you a great deal. And then you'll give me a big, beautiful check at the end as a thank you. How's that sound? It sounds good.
We should discuss it after the conversation. All right. Oleg, where are you guys based today and what's your team size? Our team is not so big. It's just 10 people. A couple of them in San Francisco, mostly sales. Okay. And the majority of staff located in Kaliningrad. Okay, and where is it? You said they're based in San Fran and Kalangrad? Yes, that's right.
And you said seven people are on the sales team? No, just a couple. A couple in San Francisco, one do sales, one some law things, et cetera. All right, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what is your favorite business book? Uh, I could name, uh, the lean startup. I like this. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? Um, I have no such one. Okay.
Uh, I, um, I like phrases by, uh, Henry Ford. Number three, what's your favorite online tool?
grammarly i'm not native speaker so it's useful tool for me you speak well by the way i appreciate you doing this in english because i would be totally lost i assume your native language is russian yeah well that's right you don't want me speaking russian trust me uh so thank you for speaking like english and you're doing a great job but number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night uh
how many hours um of sleep six six eight sometimes okay and what's your situation are you married or single and do you have kids yes i have two kids two daughters okay so married and two kids yes married and two kids and one dog and you said you're 40 years old yes okay last question oleg what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um I don't feel that I'm ready to give bits of advice.
Not advice or a regret, just something you wish you knew back then. Well, do the same, meet the same people, read more books. There you guys have Oleg. We would have read more books back in the day. In the meantime, he launched his company in 2007, Fidelity Media. They process over 5 billion bid requests per month and they've grown that 5X year over year.
Today, they're doing about a million dollars in volume over the past 12 months. They make money by taking 30% of that volume. So they did about 300 grand in net revenue. That's obviously before salaries and other expenses. They're totally bootstrapped. Oleg, thank you for taking us to the top. Thank you very much. Have a great day.
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