Don’t Pivot Too Soon: ADARA Co-Founder and CTO Charles Mi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to 2008. You decided to do this vertical solution for the travel agency. Who were the first customers that you went after and who bought into your value proposition?

Charles Mi: The first customer we went after was US Airways, partly due to the personal relationship that Layton has with the US Airways marketing team. Part of it was that 2008 was a difficult time for airlines. Not a lot of people were travelling. A lot of airlines had gone for bankruptcy protection. That was also the time when the predominant airlines were looking for other sources of revenue. If you remember, that’s when they started charging you for bags. They started charging your first bag. They also charged your second bag. You also don’t get food for free anymore. Airlines were having trouble in sustaining themselves. They were looking for different ways to get their revenues.

That was the perfect storm for us. We came in saying, “You have your own traffic. You actually have a lot of data. We can help you monetize that. We can help you, not only to drive your revenue, but also to give you insights.” US Airways was the first one that we presented to. Being a traditional e-commerce site, they were very defensive. They held their customer’s data as close to their hearts as possible. So when we came in asking for their data, they were defensive at the beginning. We had to build trust through our product and technology. We said, “Your data will come with us and will never leave. We will you give you this transparency of how the data is being used.” Most importantly, our product is built around how we can connect data and make sure that data is being used correctly. It did take a while for them to come on.

Sramana Mitra: What was the pricing structure of your solution? Was it a SaaS product?

Charles Mi: Every time I’m using the US Airways data, US Airways will get a percentage of that revenue.

Sramana Mitra: Wait a minute. You were using US Airways data and you were offering that data out?

Charles Mi: Yes, ADARA offers ACCESS to US Airways data on behalf of US Airways themselves. US Airways has the standing right of approval for any marketer who wants to access their data. US Airways may even review and approve at the creative execution level. And to reiterate, ADARA does not collect any PII data.

An example would be if a hotel marketer is looking to reach travelers who need a hotel at some point in the future, they work with ADARA to execute a digital promotion leveraging US Airways data. The hotel marketer is wanting to reach US Airways travelers who booked a flight and may need a hotel at their destination. Marketers pay for the right to access this type of data, US Airways gets a certain percentage of this in this case.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Don’t Pivot Too Soon: ADARA Co-Founder and CTO Charles Mi
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