Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Tipser CEO Marcus Jacobsson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m just stunned at how poorly monetized some of these media companies are. They’re sitting on the gold, but they’re unable to do anything with the gold. 

Marcus Jacobsson: That’s our mission.

Sramana Mitra: Where do you see open opportunities in this space?

Marcus Jacobsson: We see three waves in the e-commerce evolution. The first one was 20 years ago when Amazon managed to get all stores in one place, which is really convenient for the consumers and Amazon, but not so good for the merchants.

Ten years later, brands could independently drive traffic to their own shop with the rise of search engines and social media. What has happened now is that the surfaces are the destinations. This is the big trend going forward. Consumption is going to happen on the consumers’ terms. The consumers want zero friction. 

Sramana Mitra: That is going to be happening on the media side because consumers typically read about something on the media side.

Marcus Jacobsson: Exactly. They go where they get most inspired. The consumers want to consume there.

Sramana Mitra: I can’t tell you how deeply I resonate with your thesis.

Marcus Jacobsson: Thank you. Happy to hear that.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the company. How far along are you? What’s happening from a company-building point of view?

Marcus Jacobsson: It’s been a really exciting 10 years. We’re still just getting started. In the beginning, I thought that maybe we were being too visionary. We stubbornly stayed true to that vision. Five or six years after we started, we got our first contracts in Scandinavia. Then we just kept investing and scaling this. We managed to find some big contracts in Germany as the second market, and then in France and UK in the last year. The big goal, of course, for most entrepreneurs is to be able to launch in the United States.

Sramana Mitra: Have you got many media brands in the US?

Marcus Jacobsson: Ones that are official are Boston Digital Group and ShopStyle. 

Sramana Mitra: Are you a bootstrapped or funded company?

Marcus Jacobsson: I fully buy into your message of staying bootstrapped for as long as possible. We are bootstrapped. We got some family and friends funding a few years later. We’ve scaled since then. In total, we raised $30 million over the years. Now the focus is on scaling the US market. 

Sramana Mitra: The funding is from European investors?

Marcus Jacobsson: It’s mostly Scandinavian investors. We’re really well-known in Stockholm. It’s like a small Silicon Valley where successful unicorn entrepreneurs reinvest in the community. We have strong backers.

Sramana Mitra: What revenue level have you managed to get to before cracking the US market?

Marcus Jacobsson: We are around $10 million.

Sramana Mitra: Great. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Tipser CEO Marcus Jacobsson
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