Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much of what you are saying you do is done manually versus in software?

Brock Berry: The recommendation part of the software is completely automated via the technology software platform. The trafficking of all the campaigns that are sold is also automated right from the proposal to the ad-serving tools including the input into an order management system to keep track of the history and background changes to the campaign.

That is also automatically plugged into a reporting dashboard that can report all the platforms that the salesperson or advertiser purchases through the recommendation. It’s end-to-end automated. We do have people processes in there for campaign management and some of the other high-touch elements of a campaign.

Sramana Mitra: Take me back to when you started. What did you start with? What did you launch with from an MVP point of view and how did you get your first customers?

Brock Berry: That’s a great question.

Shelby Carlson: We started in the simplest of ways by begging for the opportunity. We have a local media company here in Denver called Voice Media Group. They have a lot of alternative newspapers around the country.

We knew that they had a great salesforce and that they had a great connection with the small to medium-sized business owners across the country. We offered them the opportunity to have a piece of the business if they gave us the opportunity to do this with us versus our competitors. They are still one of our largest partners and clients.

They needed to find a multi-million dollar revenue stream themselves. We provide that path. They provided us the salesforce. Together, we were able to start our company which now is connected with a hundred and thirty media companies across the country and five internationally.

Sramana Mitra: When you said you got this media company to work with you, did I hear you right that they invested?

Brock Berry: Yes. We structured what I would describe as a sweat equity relationship with them. Based on their sales volume, they would earn equity over a period of time. They were able to meet that volume and earn that share of the company.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful. You basically created some sort of success-based commission kind of thing in equity.

Brock Berry: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: Was the salesforce that this media company to sell into the local businesses in Colorado? What was the geographical reach of this media company?

Brock Berry: They had locations in Colorado, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston. We were able to cover a lot of markets with one single relationship. It was a really big opportunity for us to secure this relationship. They saw this as a really interesting way of parlaying what they were going to do anyway to get something that could be even more valuable over time.

Sramana Mitra: Shelby, you said that they were looking for a multi-million dollar revenue opportunity. What time-frame are we talking that this relationship took to turn into a multi-million revenue opportunity for the media company?

Shelby Carlson: One year.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson
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