Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Was this was a 3-month acceleration program?

Roy Peleg: No, it was a 4-month program.

Sramana Mitra: Then you went back to Israel?

Roy Peleg: Yes. The business started growing a bit, but not too much. With the feedback that we got and the additional focus on our business model, we gradually added more people to the team. Every time the revenue increased, we just took on another employee. We were breaking even every month.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the revenue. How many publishers did you have? What level of publisher inventory were you representing? It sounds like you were becoming more and more of an ad network.

Roy Peleg: Back then, we are talking about a few dozen [publishers].

Sramana Mitra: What kind of scale are we talking? How many unique visitors per site?

Roy Peleg: It’s a bit hard to remember. I can tell you that in 2014, we finished the year with gross revenue of about $300,000.

Sramana Mitra: From the ad network business model?

Roy Peleg: It was actually a mix, but a majority of revenue was coming from revenue share deals. When you talk about revenue share, it’s top line revenue. While I’m talking about $300,000, we take just a small cut and give most of it to the publisher.

Sramana Mitra: In 2015, how much did you do in top line revenue and what was your real revenue?

Roy Peleg: About a third or $100,000.

Sramana Mitra: That’s 2015?

Roy Peleg: 2014.

Sramana Mitra: So what happens in 2015?

Roy Peleg: We improved our offering. Back then we had about four or five ad products for monetizing a site. We added new ad products. We also gave up on the idea of a self-serve solution for small publishers. The amount of time that we were investing in supporting small publishers was the same amount of time that we would need to invest in the mid-tier ones.

Sramana Mitra: That’s right.

Roy Peleg: We just decided to move to the mid-tier. In addition, we decided not to spend so much time supporting the user. They kept asking for additional features. We found ourselves, behind the scenes, adding another tweak or control to allow them to make that change on their own. After doing it for a few months, we just decided, “Hey, it makes more sense to do it as a managed solution. Why don’t you just give us a call and tell us how you would like it to be done?” I would say that making this decision of going off the self-serve and focusing on the mid-tier is the key that put us on the path for rapid growth.

Sramana Mitra: I could have told you that if you came to me 10 years back. Over the years, I have been pitched for so many of these tools. I don’t even have the time to consider small publishers. I can imagine the kind of sales cycle and time that you’ve wasted on small publishers just to close 10 deals.

Roy Peleg: You are completely correct. It took us time, but we were humble enough to change the strategy after one and a half years.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io
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