SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
819: AdTech: Bake Off Leads to Major Acquisition and $100m+ In Media Spend Under Management
21 Oct 2017
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
She built an amazing career at Advance, then went and did basically a bake-off and ended up saying, you know what? These Match guys, there's something special here.
Chapter 2: What is MatchCraft and what do they specialize in?
And the company that acquired Matchcraft, she now has joined the two founders, the two original founders over 20 years ago was when they launched it. They now run the dev team. Sandy is running everything else. They're growing at usually double what the industry is growing at, which is obviously great. 100 people. They've
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed. If you want to get access to the database I've created, with year-over-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points, you can go to getlatka.com. Here's the thing, though. This database, I keep it to myself.
It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each month. So we're full this month, but you can go to getlatka.com to get on the waiting list for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list. I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of.
You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at getblatka.com. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Sandy Lower. She's a mother, wife, dog lover, and leader of one of the best advertising technology teams in Silicon Beach.
Growing up in the media industry, she transitioned from client side to tech provider over two years ago. Her team strives daily to help local businesses globally find the best customers via her company, Matchcraft. Sandy, are you ready to take us to the top? Looking forward. Yes, we're going to have fun. So I have to ask you though, you say the best advertising technology teams in Silicon Beach.
What makes you the best?
Well, what we do is perform. I mean, it's all about keeping customers. And if you can't do that, then it's all for not. So we're best. We're the best because we perform and we have a lot of secret sauce. I'm sure you're going to try and dig into that. So I'll leave it there.
Good, good, good. So you said kind of keeping customers is critical. Obviously, a key measure of that is churn. So maybe we'll talk about that later on in the episode. But tell us first, what's Matchcraft doing? What's your revenue model? How do you make money?
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Chapter 3: How does MatchCraft ensure customer retention?
Okay, so it's not truly a SaaS model then. There's not like a flat fee per month. It's still tied to spend.
Media spend. It's all media spend, correct.
Okay, got it. So the SaaS model is on the low end is 7% of media spend?
No, that would be on the high end and then based on volume.
Okay, got it. So I'm going to repeat this back to make sure I understand it. On the managed service side, you go from anywhere from as little as 12% up to 17%. And then on the SaaS side, you'll go from up to 7%. Correct.
And again, we are privately held. You're already trying to dig into a bunch of information because you're really good at it.
Hey, thank you for the compliment.
You emphasize what? I said we're emphasis on private and privately held. We are and we take pride in that. And again, I just I'm going to stop there on any of our business model or financial. I think that gives you the scope and it helps your audience understand what it takes to play in our world. So we'll we'll.
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Chapter 4: How does MatchCraft's revenue model work?
Yeah, Sandy, I respect exactly what you're saying. However, I know my audience significantly better than you know them. And it's my job to make sure if I don't understand something, I ask you. And it's totally in every prerogative you have in your interest to say no if I ask you something that just doesn't make sense. Is that fair? Fair. Okay, good. So tell me more about your story.
You came in, you said two years ago, did they raise a bunch of capital and you were placed in by the VC firm? Why'd you join?
So very easy. I was on the client side. We were using we decided to look at digital solutions and my job working for advanced publication. Locations, Inc., I don't know if you're familiar, but for your audience that may or may not be. So they are privately held. It's family owned and operated out of New York. They own Condé Nast Magazine.
So Wired, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Glamour, it's all part of theirs, New Yorker. They were early investors in Reddit. They own Charter Communications. They're a large investor in Charter, as well as Discovery Channel. and Advanced Local. And that was my old stomping ground was Advanced Local. And that consists of statewide and regional news and information sites, over 50 million unique visitors.
They're the eighth largest news organization in the country. And my job was to make sure that the sellers in these digital local markets from coast to coast had the best solutions to march in and solve problems for
What do you mean sellers? Who's a seller?
Sales reps working for media companies in the local markets. So we had these regional markets. So in New Jersey, which is the largest of the markets, nj.com is a renowned website that is the largest in New Jersey. It's actually one of the largest in the country. and the different newspaper assets that they had.
So you have digital sellers that are selling both print and digital, so they're media sellers, and they need the best products to be able to walk in and be able to solve problems for local businesses. So they certainly have all this fantastic first party data based on all these unique visitors that they have to their owned and operated sites, their social play, all of this.
But you have to be able to understand that somebody is going to walk in and be able to offer that business the opportunity to run on Google and Bing. And if you aren't there and it was a strategic move for
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of MatchCraft's global reseller network?
So that's good.
That's good.
And then I have a husband and we have a 10 year old amazing yellow lab. Who's kind of our mascot for the company. We have bring your dog to work day three days a week.
So that is my yellow lab. That's great. So last question, Sandy, take us home. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Hmm. I would say to be humble and based on this lovely little podcast today, it's something I still need to learn. And, uh, why do you wait?
Why do you say that?
Because the other thing I tell you is this, and this is advice that I wish, I wish somebody would give it to me. Apparently beer doesn't really have enough calcium in it to build bone structure, which 20 years from now, you're going to need.
So you're saying you would have drank less in your twenties. Is that what I'm reading here? You guys heard it here first. Sandy is a party animal. Just kidding. She built an amazing career at Advance, then went and did basically a bake-off and ended up saying, you know what? These Match guys, there's something special here.
And the company that acquired Matchcraft, she now has joined the two founders, the two original founders over 20 years ago was when they launched it. They now run the dev team. Sandy is running everything else. They are growing at usually $10 double what the industry is growing at, which is obviously great.
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