Ep 189: Vlad Zhovtenko
Ads, Analytics & AI. How Distractions Rob Us of Ability to Think Deeply, Challenges of Tracking Marketing ROI & Creating B2B Content Optimized for ChatGPT
Vlad Zhovtenko is the founder and CEO of RedTrack, a leading ad tracking platform used by over 800 businesses to measure and optimize ad performance across 60,000 ad accounts worldwide. With deep experience in marketing technology, Vlad has built a solution that simplifies complex ad attribution, helping companies better understand their campaign ROI and maximize advertising budgets. The company recently raised 2.9mEUR to fulfill their mission.
On this episode we talk about:
How AI improves ad performance tracking and automates decision-making processes for marketers.
Why accurate tracking remains difficult across multiple touchpoints and devices.
Why B2B companies should embrace Black Friday.
Why smaller companies often overlook valuable tools and strategies for optimizing ad spend.
How tracking and observing data daily helps founders identify key patterns and make better decisions.
Resources referenced in the episode:
Book Scientific Advertising for ageless marketing wisdom - https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Advertising-Claude-C-Hopkins/dp/1453821082
We are on YouTube and Linkedin as well
Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA
Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/
Read the full episode transcript below
Janis Zeps (00:03.334)
Hello friends, we're back with another episode of Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast. We're building business, running a team, or just starting out in your career. We're to bring you scrappy and actionable insights to help you become more productive. My name is Janis Zeps, with me today, Uldis Teraudkalns as always. Hey.
Uldis (00:17.49)
Good morning.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (00:18.564)
Hello.
Janis Zeps (00:20.024)
Before we start, quick reminder, follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, helps more than you know. In exchange for that, you will find almost 190 episodes there covering all sorts of topics you need to become a scrappier and better version of yourself and life in business. So plenty to explore if this is first episode. Plus, if you follow us, you will be the first one to know when we drop new episodes every Tuesday. Open your Spotify, Apple Podcasts, click the follow button. That's all we ask and we're very appreciative if you do that. Now, humble.
Uldis (00:47.27)
humble.
Janis Zeps (00:49.288)
the humblest were the humblest. Now, today's topic in 2024, the year of our Lord 2024, which we're approaching the end of it. The global as found the start that global advertising spend will reach 1 trillion USD for the first time ever. And 74 % of that is digital advertising. So basically pretty much this elephant chunk goes into digital channels. And 1 trillion might not sound a lot if we compare it against US national debt.
But it is a lot of money and it's growing. In 19th century, there was an American businessman that coined the phrase, which is now kind of famous, half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I just don't know which half. And honestly, 150 years later, we're still somehow, many companies are still trying to figure out that question. mean, we're no longer talking about 50 % error rate, but most advertisers still have questions about the data they seek and they trust the data.
Can they make expensive budget decisions based on this data, how to measure attribution correctly? There are different touch points, there are different devices, customer moves through how to track all that, like what channel converted better. It's not an easy game. And needless to say, there's massive market also for various ad tech tools that have come up to answer these questions. And today we're very happy to discuss this topic with one of the founders of such a company. They raised 2.5 million around just in this October.
And please welcome Vlad Zhovtenko, founder and CEO of RedTrack with us.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (02:22.906)
Hey, welcome and thank you. Those was a great intro and here are two things that happened in the pre-last and last century. Another one was actually the book which is called Scientific Advertising. It was published 100 years ago by now, so I can say that. And it has the answer to which half of the wasted. So the answer was given. It's just nobody bothers to read that book. So it's available online, it's free, it's 100 years old. Just Google for it, Scientific Advertising.
It's 100 years old, but it's on spot about digital marketing.
Janis Zeps (02:58.608)
That's interesting. Wanna elaborate more on that or should we...
Uldis (02:58.812)
Okay.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (03:06.644)
I don't think we should elaborate more because then we'll talk about the books for the next hour. Yeah.
Uldis (03:10.406)
separate podcast for that.
Janis Zeps (03:12.251)
All right. Well, just to give a quick intro on RedTrak, their ad tracking solution technology is already being used to track 60,000 ad accounts worldwide, and those accounts then generate 2 billion revenue for over 800 businesses. So they have a lot of experience in dealing with this. we want to discuss a few topics today. We want to talk about what opportunities your startup might be missing out in the vast space of martech and ad tech tools. I know myself, it can be very confusing. And there are actually thousands and thousands of tools potentially.
We want to talk a bit about how to build and sell product to small, medium business segment or startup segment. We've talked a lot about enterprise sales, but not so much about this one. And this is big part of economy as well. And about AI impact on advertising tech and industry and current fundraising situation as well as successfully RedTrac managed to raise. Yeah, let's just dive in. the first I want to...
Sorry. First question I wanted to open with a good old AI question. Look, you guys have also been using AI in your B2B solutions and pretty much every B2B tool now claims to use that. What is it what makes AI actually practically useful in your business that in your product that you would not be able to do without it?
Vlad , RedTrack.io (04:29.412)
So, that's an amazing question. I'll start with the fact that the first time I got on the Internet was 1997. Not that I was there early, it was before that, but like around 1998, 1999 I was still in university, I was writing thesis about Internet and everybody was saying, hey, why you do that? I mean, nothing is important about that thing. And when I left Ernst Jahn...
Janis Zeps (04:39.674)
Hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (04:58.27)
for digital media startup in the year 2000. Well, what are you doing at all? But look, at that 20 something years ago, the phrase internet company was a thing. Like people say, we are an internet company. You don't see it now. Same would happen with AI in the next two or three years. It's just an essential tool that helps people be more efficient and productive.
Janis Zeps (05:14.53)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's true.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (05:27.896)
both internally when you do things. Like I used to do a lot of search, now I search for specific things and then I brainstorm with AI, just discovering some concepts. It saves time. And same for our users. We use AI and we use it more on the invisible side, we're yet to bring it to the visible side, just to save their time. It's not a magic button, it's a productivity tool that facilitates the actions done by humans.
And we have this concept before there was AI revolution. We're just realizing that, hey, we're small startup. We don't have means to build it. But then, hey, everybody said building that, and now we don't have to build ourselves. We can just connect to other providers while we explore what we have to do. There are multiple tools available, and you can leverage that. But what helps us is that we have data to feed into it.
So we are just not building API integration to ask a question. We actually build this API integrations to feed some data, let third party tools process it and bring back the answers to make the life of our users easier.
And that's the question. So it's a productivity tool and that's it.
Janis Zeps (06:43.642)
Yeah, I think, yeah.
Yeah, and I was just thinking like now a few years back this AI revolution sort of became pretty apparent and
you were also building a company and I'm sure you were raising money. A lot of investors were also asking like, what's your AI take in strategy? Like for a startup founder out there, how would you suggest to approach this? Like a lot of people are now thinking about this. How do you use it? How do you implement it? is the question, is the answer basically look at what's available, research or how would you approach it in 2024?
Vlad , RedTrack.io (07:26.603)
It really depends on what is the fundraising or just communication approach of the founder. Because look, there are multiple ways to... Fundraising is sort of selling. Just it's your most important, largest enterprise sale ever when you do the fundraising. And you are as a founder, I mean as a founder, I need to understand what value we can provide
to the investor, whether we'd invest in RedTrac, for example, what place AI takes in that set of things. So for us, we were not trying to sell AI. We were not selling AI. We have not raised money because we had AI or AI with no plans. AI was just, hey, we understand where the market is going, when it's at how it develops. We have the foundation. And of course, we'll be using AI for this or for that.
But it's not that our strategy depends on AI or our strategy depends on Google buying third-party cookies, which never happened, or some other things. Our strategy and our approach depends on understanding the needs of our customers, why they need those products. And maybe I'm saying this on slightly deeper level than most of the companies, because look, I'm doing this for, well, like I mentioned, since year 2000. I was doing paydays before there was Google.
hard to believe but I do that. I cannot say I will do payday after that, will be Google but who knows with things on the market. and all those things change, world expands, like there's so many channels compared to 15 years ago but what remains is the fundamental needs of those media buyers. They need to make decisions to improve their campaigns.
Uldis (08:52.73)
you
Uldis (08:59.571)
Hahaha
Vlad , RedTrack.io (09:20.804)
To make decisions, they need data, accurate as you mentioned. So the decisions are reliable and they get this data not because they, well, some people do, but not because they enjoy seeing all those charts and tables and percentages, but because they need to pinpoint what they should do with their campaigns. So basically, make decisions, implement decisions. Ideally, as fast as possible, as efficient as possible.
And this has not changed. If to answer a question, going all the way back to AI, we do this because we understand our market, we understand our customers, and we have a plan. AI is just part of the plan. So for some other business, AI may be a pinnacle of that plan, and they would treat it very differently than us, and they would present it very differently than us. So there is not like right or wrong answer.
Janis Zeps (09:55.579)
Hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (10:20.664)
You need to know your business and you need to know where AI fits in and you need to know how to present it to the VCs so it makes sense for them and they see value and they will trust your vision, your plans and they will give you funds.
Janis Zeps (10:38.566)
I have to ask actually this, as you mentioned, running ads before Google. In US, for example, there are a lot of founders who also have experience from like 90s and late 90s. In our region, you meet a few, but not that many actually, and you seem to be one of them. What do you think, you have seen a lot, what do you think is, I don't know,
the good learnings you have taken out of working with internet for what 25, 30 years that someone who maybe is coming in into the business now as a founder and maybe grew up with a phone might not have. Is there anything that sort of you really value in this time that you saw, you experienced?
Uldis (11:24.173)
Ancient wisdom.
Janis Zeps (11:26.428)
Pre 99
Vlad , RedTrack.io (11:26.702)
Books. Books. I mean, we are living the age of short content forms. And it's a very dangerous, by the way, for founders, because founders address complex problems. Thinking is a job. They need to be able to consistently apply thinking process towards the common goal.
And when you live in the things where attention is drawn to like 15 minute or several second videos and you cannot focus on, it's not that we are bad people. It's if you consume some sort of content, it conditions the way you percept and process information. I'm lucky to create my learning patterns in the times when you need to go through like 400 pages of text in two days for the next lesson.
Janis Zeps (12:20.441)
huh.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (12:25.27)
It seems like an impossible task for nowadays. And then people would do like, hey, whatever, give me a summary of that book. So this is efficient, but what it means that people, especially founders who need to be able to apply that consistent thinking process towards a problem like days. I'm thinking through some stuff for days, for months until I get the solution. It's not that I'm doing nothing. I'm doing something. I just don't know if I'm doing it right, so I keep thinking.
Janis Zeps (12:29.167)
Nah.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (12:54.168)
And that ability to consistently think about something comes from practice. So that practice should come from like reading books, for example, or at least watching long videos, like one-hour videos or something like that. And this is the ancient wisdom that were simple, but not that evident given the interaction of us humans with the content around them, like in all the media.
Janis Zeps (13:22.428)
It's actually good, I never thought about it and I just recall I saw yesterday just a clip of Elon Musk in late 90s after he was interviewed and somebody pulled it and put in a short form video obviously out of all things that you say. But it was Elon Musk in 1999 after selling his first company and I didn't even know that he had something before PayPal, I didn't follow that much him but...
It was also like, it reminded me like how long he's in the game. He basically started in the nineties, building internet companies then. And what I was thinking now when you said that people back then, they spent a lot of time on the internet, but it's definitely very different behavior than we have now. We have phones all the time, emails, Slack, know, the, yeah, this attention for like whether you're 20 or 40 year old, you're pretty much are.
tied to your phone. While in the 90s, when Elon Musk was building his first company, when you started, like, yeah, you guys spent time on internet, but it wasn't that close, I would imagine, right? You you're set at the computer, but you...
Vlad , RedTrack.io (14:23.722)
there wasn't that many distractions. Yes. So that was easier to learn to focus on something for prolonged period of time. It was the way of life. Now there's tons of distractions. Look, my best thinking parts when I walk the dog. When I go out, I walk the dog, I don't take the phone. So I have to control the dog, but it doesn't prevent me from thinking.
When I ride public transport, I actually can think. I just don't need to miss my bus stop. I don't check videos. And then I create hours in my schedule to actually sit down and think. And I still use pen and paper because pen and paper creates a different mental connection with things you do.
Janis Zeps (14:53.029)
good.
Janis Zeps (14:59.141)
Yeah.
Janis Zeps (15:17.38)
Yeah.
Uldis (15:17.394)
you
Vlad , RedTrack.io (15:17.634)
And those are subtle, they might not seem important, but those small subtle changes, add up and sometimes they give you additional fish.
Uldis (15:29.102)
I will add a small comment about that Elon Musk video which you shared with me and I also watched the one thing I noticed was that was excruciately slow and long so I was skipping forward to get to the end of it even though it was kind of short form but it was so slow compared to videos these days that I couldn't watch it
Vlad , RedTrack.io (15:43.105)
you
Janis Zeps (15:43.514)
huh.
Janis Zeps (15:47.918)
Yeah.
That's the thing. Everybody's producing for this, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Like you can't have any boring moments as like people can't watch a movie anymore. Like needs to be action all the time. It's wild, yeah.
Uldis (16:04.134)
That's why there is this... It was quite... And it's still quite successful going around the world, this Latvian animation film called The Flow. It's very slow. It is, you know, not a thousand frames per minute. It's without text. It's only like... It's about animals and acting as animals. They don't speak.
and it's like very slow and I mean I went there with kids and kids just couldn't handle it they were just they were just jumping around and like well not so bad but I mean it was kind of boring for them and me and my wife were just like my god this is so amazing movie so yeah it's a good test of patience and actual immersive experience you know going into that actual content not just skipping over
Janis Zeps (16:33.199)
The torture,
Vlad , RedTrack.io (16:56.302)
But look, this takes a next step for the founders, because things take time to appear in life. And founders, keep days, hours, sometimes years, or work towards a goal, and the results may not be evident. They have to keep that resilience, that trust into what they do, that the results will come.
And again, this comes with being able to wait for the things from what are simple to what are difficult. And this is quite contrary to the how we are conditioned right now as humans, that everything should happen fast. Some things don't happen fast. Yeah, we as society try to accelerate things. I won't comment if it's good or bad, but with the building the startup, well, it took us, we even know we do something.
Right now, there should be a great idea, great solution. We know that when we'll finish building it, we will see first monitor result in six months. Because first users will start to see it, then will start to recognize it, then will start to share it, then will start to it, then will start to pay it, and then more people will start to pay it. And that's like you have to be making aware consciously, like you do something, and if it's not working, doesn't mean you made your own decision.
It needs time to prove that it works. But of course, not that you build, build, build. It's easy and it's difficult. But you asked about the lesson. Lesson is about we need to be conscious about how the modern media and all the devices condition us to expectations and consumption of information and to thinking process. If we are conscious, if other people are conscious,
Well, then they can say, hey, here I watch 15 second videos, if I enjoy it for 30 minutes, just don't lose whatever hours. But then if I do thinking, I create time and actual think, and let those thoughts in my head to be processed, and then I'll come up with results, and I'll do that, and then I'll wait.
Janis Zeps (19:16.992)
Well, moving from this to a very modern phenomenon, I wanted to ask one question about Black Friday. We're recording this on the eve of Black Friday. And it will come out afterwards. And I was thinking whether it makes sense to ask. But to be honest, I'm to prepare for your next Black Friday right after the previous one. It wouldn't have saved you if we would release it one week before. It's huge for certain businesses. Like you're not directly in e-commerce,
Vlad , RedTrack.io (19:35.48)
Yep.
Janis Zeps (19:46.318)
adjacent to it and maybe gives you a better view on different businesses. I was just thinking about startups in B2B SaaS and other like maybe not that e-commerce we know it's big. Have you seen any kind of things how startups use this day to how important it can be for your business and maybe there are some kind of potential that companies are sometimes missing about Black Friday?
Vlad , RedTrack.io (20:08.206)
Yes, I think it is. Most B2B companies miss Black Friday because they think that businesses are not built by humans. But look, businesses are still humans. We are humans working in companies. Everybody conditions, again, it's very dangerous, but it happens so that, hey, it's Black Friday, you should expect big discounts. So it's...
expected to do that. So just do it. mean, your customers will see Black Friday everywhere. They expect it. Do something for them. Let them also see that you support that motion, give them very special Black Friday offer that they cannot get any other time of the year. Join this movement because it just happens. It's either join or you don't join, but it happens. And everybody else is part of that movement, waiting for the Black Friday.
to do their shopping, to do their buying, maybe waiting for cyber money. Yes. So, moreover, it's by the way, it's end of the year when companies are thinking about budgets. And for some businesses, they don't spend the budget, they don't have it for the next year. So it's another good moment. So we as a company, RedTrac, we do Black Friday every year. That's the moment when we give biggest discounts. And those are fair, not that we raise prices and drop them. No, it's just transparent.
Janis Zeps (21:09.935)
ready to spend.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (21:37.114)
largest annual discount ever and Actually, you will not get it any time of the year Well, we do midsummer because of I enjoy this I think it's right way to we can allow people who cannot go for annual subscription They can go for six months when we have Black Friday when in midsummer and it kind of creates a flow so somebody jumps on that flow of two major discounts and they can stay with us and will like remember that and will keep
their prices, their discounts ongoing and it's good and a lot of people think no, mean Black Friday is for don't know retail, it's not because people who go to retail they also shop for software why should it be different? So yes, I guess this is the opportunity still at B2B companies I mean I don't say everybody I can see it all around but it's what they
are shy to do and it might be part of their business model. I don't know how to work in enterprise sales. But for at least for us with our approach to pricing, with our focus on small medium business, maybe mid-size, it works. And I think it will work if done properly for companies that work in the same segment and sector.
Janis Zeps (22:58.918)
Another actually Black Friday if you're buying some B2B software is year end when sales people are really eager to hit their quota and then you can actually get some good discounts as well. no, I think actually it makes sense to use like people have been conditioned to wait for this, to look for this. Isn't another thing I to ask here, isn't ads?
getting super expensive during that time or if you're in your own niche it doesn't affect you that much.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (23:32.11)
Well, I guess ads are getting more expensive that time just because more people start to do ads. We think it will start to do ads on Black Friday and they don't do it the whole year. It will work. For us, for example, again, we like we have consistent investment into ads. But yes, we also do a slightly extra push for Black Friday. But we usually try to do through other channels, not the constant one for the
Persistent channels or consistent channels, we just change the creatives
Janis Zeps (24:05.861)
Hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (24:07.044)
But yes, there is a demand and offer. If more people start doing ads, and now all ads are sort of like in an auction, if there is more demand than there is supply, the price will go up and that's what happens. That's why the ads are getting more expensive.
Janis Zeps (24:23.172)
I was actually just recently saw how other things impact as well. Like for example, Google, the traffic and ads and interest overall, if you're selling there, it's like the Jake Paul Tyson fight was so huge in US. I never expected it. Like search volume for it was way higher than for Trump for everything just ate up so much attention. could see businesses were selling to US to consumers, maybe also saw some drop or like even if there's a hurricane or stuff like that, it also kind of eats that attention.
So yeah, not only Black Friday is a time where it's hard to compete. It's, you know, these challenges are all year round, I guess, for attention. About the field you're in, very complex thing, honestly, for most people. I'm a bit exposed to this part of the business, so maybe I know a bit more, and I even will say honestly, I don't even fully understand the full intricacies of the business.
average startup founder maybe with different backgrounds, want to start advertising, sees potential. What do you think maybe companies are missing out? What is the biggest potential? Because if you really can track and attribute the revenue to the right channel, you can put a lot of more money there with lot more confidence, get a lot more clients, maybe better LTV clients. So if you get the cycle going, you can be really good. But from your experience, yeah, some smaller startup.
that is not large enterprise, what are the opportunities they might be missing without having maybe so detailed knowledge about ad tech.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (26:01.954)
The net missing opportunities in the tech. I would say any analytical tool, like Google Analytics, humble Google Analytics, even the version number four, nobody likes, and that's the motive on all the events, but it still works, it still delivers results. What they're missing is, and paid ads are more expensive than they were. They're actually more difficult to get into as they were. Because all the major players,
They try to take away the controls from media buyers because if they take away the controls, they can actually increase the spend with the same efficiency but more money. That's why most founders with limited budgets, they don't go for the paid ads. And I think they are doing the right thing to an extent because if you think about it,
there are different types of paid ads and some of them are actually intent-based search and that's what everybody was talking about. However, what they miss in the fact that intent-based search is that they try to, when they go into Google, they hit like the most popular keywords, it's prohibitively expensive, they cannot do it consistently, so they're on and off, it doesn't work. So if the budget is limited,
if the knowledge is limited, which is easy to speak for me because it's what I do, so I know how it works. But what I would do in the very beginning, first, before even going to paydates, create a consistent system of knowing the results. That's the first thing, because if a founder wants to get into any sort of marketing, he needs to see the performance, and know the performance consistently, day by day, every day, because then if he...
does it not once a month, but every day he will start seeing the patterns. Because if he looks at a discrete, like, burst of data, it doesn't work. When he observes it daily, it will create a pattern of perception and he'll notice things are changing. Because a lot of things in ads you do today, you see the results two, three, four weeks down the line. And no analytical system, even as good as Builder for attribution like RedTrak,
Vlad , RedTrack.io (28:25.998)
will show you that, you changed the display at creative three weeks ago, four weeks down the line, you have different type of leads in your pipeline. This is something only person who observes the data consistently can spot. And knowing, of course, all the changes done. So that's step one, create a system of measurement, anything. Yeah, we replace all the Xs and Xs, but look, analytics and Excel spreadsheet would do.
and some sort of automation now with perplexity or with strategy or something, you can build it yourself. I've seen people build amazing things in Google Sheets. Amazing things. That's number one. Number two, understand where the customers are spending their time.
There is no single golden rule and especially now what may work where everybody is still spending time is search. But in search it's about not short like two words or one word. Everybody is doing that. It's very expensive. They need to go for long tails. It's yes, it's niche. Yes, it's not much, but it's a good way to get the attention.
of those early customers, geeks, adopters, because they tend to go deeper. And they are ready to invest time into a new tool to understand it. And those long tails seems like they're not rocking their arm. But again, it takes consistency. So they switch them on and they keep them on. get those one, two, three, four, five impression. Because if somebody made like three, four, five keyword search in Google,
that relates to your business, they're probably a good spot. And that doesn't cost much. That's number one. Number two, what nobody is yet talking about, but we see it already working, is founders have to create content. But not, podcast is amazing, all those videos on Instagram, et cetera, it works, but they need to create the content that AI can consume.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (30:42.246)
some sort of deep expertise Because you say hey we do content for humans or we do content for bots search bots now We also do content for AI We were doing that since we knew our customers initial adopters were like geeks Where were people ready to take on challenge of a startup tool? Not anything's perfect But here's some things nailed down and efficient and we were building our content for those geeks like really really long reads
hour-long videos, huge blog post articles we actually went to prepare. Two years down the line, as an unexploded outcome, somebody asked chat GPT question about attribution. It says, hey, RedTruck is the tool to go.
It was a huge surprise for us. So we think that because he found that in-depth long content that he can process and train its AI. So he decided, hey, if RedTrac writes so much content about that and that content is his word is quality content, then RedTrac is the best tool.
Janis Zeps (31:50.716)
This is a very good topic. was also on the chat.jpt, has replaced Google in many cases for already and for professional questions. And now they have web browsing. they do pop up some sources, right? Always I ask a question and they do. How do they pick those, right? Does anybody know even or? Right? Yeah.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (31:50.755)
and soup.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (32:11.642)
I just told you my guess, nobody knows. I guess the people behind those AI doesn't know as well, because it's already kind of system that sort of trains itself. But what will not change is that they need data sets to train it. So if you can, and I can talk always about how you can condition systems by manipulating the data, being a sociologist. But if you produce...
Janis Zeps (32:23.025)
Right?
Vlad , RedTrack.io (32:41.376)
that fragment of datasets, so the content the AI can intake and use for its own training, then for AI, your blog or your site, whatever, will start to be considered an expert because it's using your content. And then it, of course, will start mentioning you in the answers. And unlike Google as a search engine built by humans, AI, well, I don't say it has different patterns.
Janis Zeps (32:56.592)
Mm-hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (33:12.204)
It's more like what Google used to be in the early days when nobody was manipulating, spamming and doing stuff, where you can actually find things on the first page.
Janis Zeps (33:17.723)
Mm-hmm.
Uldis (33:21.234)
So this is basically the new SEO, the LLM engine optimization. Yeah, you guys already answered pretty much a question that I had as I was prospecting yesterday for strategic partners in one industry. And obviously I did use Google at first, to be honest, but then I was like top 15 in this industry or top 10. And then I was like,
Vlad , RedTrack.io (33:46.356)
you don't get it from Google.
Uldis (33:48.112)
And then I was like, okay, let's go to chat GPT and ask what other types of players in this industry I could be looking at. And it gave me like 10 options that I hadn't thought of, obviously mentioning specific already company names and quite a few of them in there. So it's also interesting how it's going to work in the longer term because they, you know,
I think at least OpenAI has long started forgetting their not-for-profit mission and might want to also monetize the fact that it's essentially an ad for that company that is selected.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (34:31.886)
Yeah, but it will be very difficult. So I'm not an engineer. I'm not a data scientist. But for AI to be good, it needs to consume quality content. Like for people, actually. If we want to be good, we need to consume quality content. That's how we learn. Same for AI. So if they will prefer the paid content versus quality content,
Janis Zeps (34:49.745)
Mm-hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (35:00.75)
the AI quality will deteriorate and it will be a downward circle. So, and it may happen, of course, it quite often happens, but if we are heading where we're heading, the AI will be able to pick up the quality content from the non-quality content by itself, unless the people behind it will cut its access to the content. But that means they will cut its access to the internet.
Well, good for them, good for us.
Janis Zeps (35:37.088)
If I understand correctly, you're going also after SMEs and a bit smaller businesses. A lot of B2B SaaS is always dreaming about enterprise clients and we talked a lot about signing those clients and how to go for those deals and the long sales process and whatnot. I wanted to ask a question about this segment and selling to them and what do you think works?
because know SMEs in terms of economy I think in every country is a huge part we think it's a small percentage and everybody is like a big corporation but no actually largest part of economy still probably is SMEs maybe after Covid it changed but yeah how do you get those clients what works how do you talk to them what tactics you use
Vlad , RedTrack.io (36:23.586)
Amazing question. It's very difficult to answer because it starts with understanding the product, the customer and why he goes for a product. And if I'll tell that we knew it from the very beginning, it would be so wrong, nobody would believe me. It took us years to understand the language, the needs and expectations of our customers and to actually clean up our messaging, like change different words, etc.
So, and what I would say a founder wants to do selling to SMEs is to be actively talking to the customer.
were the part of the sales process, were the part of the feedback process, were just reaching out, asking questions. I'm doing this, well, across different channels, five to 10 hours a week at least. Every week. I'm always there. I'm ready to receive all the questions, all the feedback, positive and negative. I actually prefer negative feedback because positive is thank you, but it's not actionable. Negative is something we can improve potentially. And by, again, constantly listening.
asking questions, asking why they do this, why they don't, how they name it, how they call it, they can build the picture of the needs and expectations of their clients. And then they just need to adjust to that picture, what they say of the messaging, and then they need to make sure that is visible to their customers. And again, being visible is fairly easy to do.
Because there are so many channels people consume information on, can put bits and blobs there, here, there, here and they will find you. It's a long process, but the best part of it was enterprise sales. Yes, you work years to get anything. Okay, not years, but months. With SMEs, that's fast cycle.
Janis Zeps (38:26.033)
Yeah.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (38:31.78)
somebody signs a lead, he will answer you like next hour. You can talk to him, ask questions, adjust something, close the deal. And of course, the churn will be huge, especially in the beginning days. But it's a flow. You're learning, you're making better. And because of the sheer volume of those interactions, it's way easier to pick up the right signals, right information and make right changes.
Because when you work with enterprise clients, you may have three clients, you want to have all three, but they will have different agendas. And you'll have to pick one because you can have resources to something for one. When you work with hundreds of clients, of our venture fleets, then you can find a bigger common pattern and make better decisions. And moreover, as a founder, I'm not sure about other people, but we as a founding, we built
Janis Zeps (39:08.381)
Mm-hmm.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (39:30.286)
the product we dream of. Like it's something we want to create, something we want to be used. And when you work with enterprise customers, I've seen it in the past in my previous businesses or companies I worked for, it may happen so that, yes, but this customer that dictates what you should do to keep his business and that turns you from building the product you want to to serving the customer you want to have.
It might be great business, but for me, it's not what I want to do. I really want to build RetroCaza product to solve specific needs on the market, help people make better decisions and implement them faster. And I would not be able to do if my biggest customer would tell me what to do next. And if I go into price space, that is highly likely to happen because otherwise I lose like 20 % of MRA and 30.
Janis Zeps (40:28.146)
Yeah, good point, actually. You need to grow together with your biggest customers. Your roadmap is inevitably influenced by those guys. It's very different approach.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (40:38.244)
Yes.
Janis Zeps (40:42.313)
to squeeze in another quick topic. Fundraising you raised in October announced a big round these days. Congrats on succeeding, obviously, like everybody's saying, like the climate is tough. What's your impression of when you raised? Like, was it tough? Was it not as tough as you thought? And what messages kind of converted? What investors signed up for? What do you think worked in your pitch?
Vlad , RedTrack.io (41:09.999)
It's always tough. Look, it's just when the money were in abundance, it seemed it was easier, but maybe it was in US ecosystem, where the expectations were slightly different. And I prefer European one more, because when we were, and we are not the first or second year in the business, in our hard times, like all the startups go through, our VCs actively
supported us. But then when we got through those very difficult times, I said, hey guys, why you kept supporting us? Like what made us different? And this is basically maybe why we were able to raise the previous and this round. And they said, hey Vlad, you as a team, you had a plan, which was based on facts, had ways to control it and
you know what you need to do to execute it. So I think this is the key. I was never coming to say, hey, we need money, like we're building a product. It was a very specific vision with a very specific set of actions, a very specific outcomes, what we plan to do and why and how it may work out.
And by the time we were raising the last round, we're on this very difficult crossroad because we actually reached sort of, we for its B2B startup in Matic, we're extremely capital efficient. So we got to more than 2 million in Eurocon revenues with less than 2 million of investment. And if we were smarter, we'll get there actually fast, but I mean, it's all in process.
So we went for series A round because we realized we need to rapidly increase our team, especially with development, if we want to keep building product with the speed we used to do and maintain the quality that we want to have. We just need more developers in our team and then other parts will follow. So we came up to VCs with...
Vlad , RedTrack.io (43:26.24)
not stellar of course, well not of course, but for us it were not stellar results, we're not growing even two times year over year, but we are constantly growing. We came with a very clear plan, with a very low burn, like our burn was like 15k per month at that point, and we could get, and we actually were cash flow positive because of like Friday in November.
So, and we had some ways to keep getting the money if we need to cover that small burn and actually get it down to zero. But that would mean we'll never grow faster. So we came to the VCs work clear plan. If we get this money, we'll increase the team. This will help us build better product. We are product driven company and this better product will help us generate more sales and accelerate the growth. And look, there is a need on the market for this product.
look at our numbers, we have these segments, we have these performance, these KPIs, and this market is actually huge, like e-commerce, media buys, millions of businesses. So we don't need to capture 10 % of the market to become a successful company. If we do capture 10%, we're extremely successful company. So we had a plan, we had a vision, we had the numbers, and for the future, we showed multiple options. If things go
not as we plan, we can go back to extremely capital efficient and zero burn. Or we have actual technology, so we can go for &A. Or we can keep growing and keep, keep growing. So not only we had a plan for the moment, we had a plan for this, let's say, next step in the game that would answer the VC questions, what if. And of course, those are plans. We still need to execute on those plans. But at least we have it.
and it's measurable and we know what we need to do for the next year or two. At least how we need to do that.
Janis Zeps (45:28.543)
Yeah, very, very, very actionable. I mean, yeah, I think before we started, you said like every question we could have an episode on this and this really felt like it. I really have enjoyed this conversation and I hope our listeners too, hopefully we can dive deeper at some point in the future. We definitely appreciate talking once more about the things for today a lot, awesome insights and yeah.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (45:50.67)
You're welcome.
Janis Zeps (45:58.216)
Let's keep pushing, listeners, next Tuesday. We'll see you again. Thanks, bye.
Vlad , RedTrack.io (46:04.196)
Thank you.
Uldis (46:05.212)
Thanks Vlad, thanks everybody.
Please note that the transcript text is AI-generated. We apologize for any potential errors or inaccuracies. Thank you for your understanding.
