Bootstrapping a Highly Profitable Company in Social Media Marketing: Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford (Part 4)

Jamie Tedford: We took a step back at that moment and thought, “We’re sitting on a tremendous amount of equity value.” We had now become, not just a strategic partner of Facebook, but we had also accessed the Twitter platform as well as LinkedIn and thought about how we could become the preeminent software for helping brands on-board content across social platforms. All of a sudden, the market changed again and we were ready to switch to ad tech. Although we had gotten to that advertising side of space, we had to grow quickly. It was at that point, almost three years ago now, that we decided to go out and think about some private equity funding to spur growth.

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you a few questions before we move on from this point. You said you had a bunch of publishing tools that Facebook did not have that you were providing like scheduling. Facebook, now, has all of that in place. Hootsuite has that available as well. Before you made the switch to ad tech, what were you doing in publishing tech to keep up with the times and those changes in the market?

Jamie Tedford: That’s a great question. It really is reflective of the fast pace that we have to work at. The understanding we have with the platforms that we build on is that we recognize that eventually many of the things that we build may be commoditized. We are on the leading edge with those partners in helping them create their API ecosystem to be better for everybody. We live in a high-pressure world in which we have to continue to innovate.

For us, out particular angle on publishing to avoid the commoditization that frankly had already begun to happen for Salesforce and Vitru was really to focus on local publishing. By that I mean working with national retail and multi-location brands to, not just publish to one single page, but also to plan and optimize content across thousands of store pages that is locally relevant and managed at the local level. That was really how we avoid commoditization. That’s focusing on how we bring data into our platform to make it smarter.

We could do programmatic and automated updates at the store level and say, “This product is on sale today for $6.95. Over at the store across town, it might be on sale for $7.” How do we use data to make this whole process more efficient at scale? That’s what we’re really talking about.

Sramana Mitra: You said two years back, you brought in private equity funding. Until that point, you were bootstrapped?

Jamie Tedford: Yes. We definitely did the round and talked to some Boston-based venture capitals. As the old saying goes, they only give you money when you don’t need it. It’s hard to get it when you do need it. It wasn’t something that I ever planned on. I didn’t build a business model that would rely on venture capital.

By the time I picked my head up and looked around and thought about what I would do with capital, we had built a profitable business and we had determined to reinvest those profits. Looking back, it was strategic and it allowed us to maintain control over our company. I read every other day stories of entrepreneurs with great ideas who took capital too early. They not only don’t have control over their debt, they’re not even part of their companies anymore.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping a Highly Profitable Company in Social Media Marketing: Brand Networks CEO Jamie Tedford
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