Jim Yu

AdAttributionKit: Unpacking Apple’s new ad attribution framework AAK unifies Apple’s various advertising attribution frameworks under a single umbrella product name and extends SKAdNetwork in meaningful ways, including with support for re-engagement and alternative app marketplaces. These are substantive improvements. But impediments to adoption remain: IP-based attribution is still widely viewed as a suitable alternative to Apple’s native iOS attribution framework, meaning that platform tools like Conversion APIs will take adoption priority.

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✨🚨 Another Make Cents post is live! 🚨✨ In this post, "AI & its Impact on Vertical SaaS: The Gates of Distribution have Flung Open", I explore how AI is impacting vertical SaaS workflows and its implication for distribution and defensibility. We defy.vc are more excited than ever to invest in vertical SaaS because we believe there's tremendous value leveraging AI to enhance human productivity across tasks like 1) structuring data, 2) analysis, 3) recommendations, and 4) taking action. I also walk through why customer acquisition costs are at an all-time low, attributed to more than just AI-driven product functionality. Read more ⬇ and share your thoughts and feedback in the comments! https://lnkd.in/gRVcJASH

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Despite tightening marketing budgets, in-person events continue to be a core marketing channel for B2B SaaS companies. According to Sagefrog Marketing Group, LLC, in person trade shows and events are the leading area of marketing spend for 2024, with 38% percent of respondents saying that exhibiting or sponsoring in-person conferences will be a tactic they employ. It’s clear marketers understand the value but with budget pressures and a move towards efficient and sustainable growth, 41% say the pressure to prove the value of their marketing efforts is high. For events in particular, justifying the spend and proving the ROI is more important than ever. In our latest blog post, we look at the different ways to sponsor events, why events remain a core B2B SaaS marketing channel, and run through three ways to measure the ROI of your event marketing efforts. Blog post first in comments section. How are you measuring ROI for Events? #Events #conferences #ROI #marketing #saas #B2B #saastock2024

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If an advertiser is spending profitably on a small portfolio of the largest advertising channels already --- which almost all are with some significant percentage of total budget -- and wants to consider a new channel, they have to determine whether that same amount of incremental spend would deteriorate the performance of their existing campaigns, and whether that degradation would be worth the added cost of managing a new channel. As uncomfortable as it might seem, most user acquisition teams would be better off operating only on the largest channels — concentrating their spend, developing channel specialization, and minimizing their analytical overhead — versus having their team’s attention and time spread across a wider array of channels with a longer-tailed distribution of ad spend and revenue.

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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The secret—if it ever was one—is out on private equity fondness for vertical software. While PE-backed acquisitions were down 50%+ from a peak in 2021, vertical buyouts have continued to grow, and the fervor seems to be gaining steam. In today’s essay, we will pose an answer to one question: is PE a viable path to exit for a venture-backed startup?

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In case you missed it last week, one of my favorite SaaS benchmark reports was released. Thanks to High Alpha and OpenView for the work and having us as a partner! This thing is stuffed full of insights on everything from growth rates, net revenue retention, ARR per FTE, and more. You can't build a great SaaS business without it! https://lnkd.in/ghKT_tBY

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Packed house for #ATSL24 and a great discussion between Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk and our own Ciarán O'Kane of FPC and ExchangeWire. The discussion touched on the lack of VC participation in AdTech (despite being a $1 Trillion addressable market). “Generalist VCs avoided AdTech because it’s complex. They often don’t understand why they’d win or lose”. This summed up exactly why FirstPartyCapital exists. A $1T+ complex sector needs specialists to fund innovation, provide deeper DD, illuminating context, access to networks and relevant portfolio support. Over time we hope this provides a stronger signal to generalist VCs and PEs. Look out for Rich Ashton Jack Tunney Alex Powell Mike Follett Mark Giblin Dan Jones Rafael Michelucci Ed French Shane Shevlin Lumen Research LightBox TV Contxt Media Bedrock Platform Exiber Pixels AI

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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Look! It's 2 leaders in AI companies hosting a Webinar *without* AI in the title! 😉 Excited an honored to share a screen and an hour in the interwebs with the legendary Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈 - a true industry pioneer in building category-defining brands, and a founding (Marketing) father of the Gong brand - creating the Revenue Intelligence category through amazing content, unique tone of voice and raving fans. Join us for a fun conversation and helpful tricks on how to create a memorable B2B brand in the noisiest time in Tech, learn about how AI (sorry, had to) can help you maintain a consistent and well-performing tone of voice, and get the scoop on how brand and content can drive real, measurable business results. Register in advance using the link below 🤘

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A marketing measurement perspective that I don't see represented often is that, for a substantial proportion of advertisers, last-click really is optimal. If a fairly new mobile app with low TAM penetration scales exclusively on Facebook, how much actionable insight is gained by introducing complex measurement machinery? While I'm certainly guilty of advocating it, the viewpoint that more sophisticated measurement infrastructure is always better strikes me as overly generalized. In certain contexts, orchestrating experiments or building, tuning, and deploying probabilistic models probably won't meaningfully impact advertising efficiency. And in those specific (again: not all!) contexts, with limited data and a homogenous (possibly, single-channel) channel mix, reducing interpretability and overhead might do more harm than good. Creating complexity where last-click may perform just as well as an ensemble of methodologies doesn't actually optimize the bias/variance tradeoff -- it may not reduce bias sufficiently to compensate for a large increase in variance.

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Looking forward to talking about this 🔥 🔥 🔥 topic - Gen AI Competitive Playbook to Boost Win Rates - faster, simpler and better...with my dear friend Sheevaun Thatcher, CPC

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🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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Valuations are starting to (only slightly) be in check. Investors looking for revenue, quality of revenue, margins, and repeatable GTM. This has the best founders focused on what matters, and reaching out to their Boards and advisors for real advice and guidance. Good stuff.

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🗞️ Breaking News: Red Ventures Selling CNET at a huge Loss❗️ Context: Red Ventures, the privately held digital media and marketing juggernaut based in Fort Mill, South Carolina, is selling CNET, one of the largest tech publishers on the web, to Ziff Davis for just $100 million. For context: Red Ventures bought CNET for approximately $500 million. Reason for the Sale: Total traffic to CNET has dropped by a staggering 50% over the last three years. The main driver behind this decline is a 68% drop in organic traffic (loss off Google rankings and traffic). Tables turned: This sale is a stunning turn of events for CNET, which once bought Ziff Davis (then a tech magazine firm) in a deal worth roughly $1.6 billion - more than two decades ago. Catch Up: - Ziff Davis trades publicly with a market value of $1.94 billion. The company lost about half of its marketcap over the course of the last 48 months. Strategic rationale: If Ziff Davis is able to ink a content licencing deal with Google, Bing/Microsoft or ChatGPT (or else e.g. X.AI) - like Reddit did - it might turn out to be a very smart deal …

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In just 4 years ApartmentIQ has helped transform the industry’s 40+ year old market survey process. Today, I’m excited to announce ApartmentIQ Explore - our first step toward doing the same for how the industry uses data to buy, sell, and develop properties. In contrast with legacy tools that provide teams with 30-day old, privately sourced call center data, Explore is powered by ApartmentIQ’s signature daily, unit-level data from 100% public sources. Investment Teams and Analysts can quickly analyze rent growth and historical trends across eight performance metrics and four years of data, and even drill into a specific property's performance in real-time. Plus, Revenue Teams can benchmark their performance against the broader market rather than strictly comparable properties. We’ve got more to do here, but we’re hopeful Explore can be helpful as the multifamily markets come back to life. As always, we’d love to know what you think!

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Back in 1997, The New York Times highlighted a “Roundtable in Multimedia” attended by senior media executives. They lamented that apart from a few exceptions like pornography websites and Amazon, no one had cracked the code for a viable 'interactive' media business model. Fast forward to 2024, and Fable has launched Showrunner, a revolutionary platform known as the “Netflix of AI" , which allows users to create their own TV shows with just a few prompts. 📺✨ The way we create and consume content has evolved dramatically. But what does "interactive media" really mean today? We break it down, exploring how it intersects with massive shifts in technology, culture, and new media. And how with a growing "Swipe before Type" generation, there is now an ingrained expectation of interactivity in all digital experiences. We dive into the future of interactive media and gaming and see where we're headed next! Link in comments. #InteractiveMedia #Gaming #AI #TechRevolution #ContentCreation #NewMedia

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PE - How to Use AI to Unlock Growth in Portfolio Companies All PE firms and portfolio companies should be thinking about unlocking GTM and growth via AI (i.e. not merely ChatGPT or other LLMs but actually implementing apps that are "AI Agents"). 1. What are "AI Agents"? - AI agents are autonomous systems powered by ML and natural language processing, designed to perform tasks with minimal human intervention - They can interpret data, determine the workflow & direction (i.e. make decisions), and execute actions across various functions, continuously improving through self-learning 2. Examples of using AI Agents in PE portfolio companies: - For Sales: AI agents handle lead qualification, respond to inquiries, book meetings, and provide personalized product recommendations, ensuring no opportunities are missed - For Marketing: Generate campaign briefs, segment audiences, create tailored content, and analyze performance to optimize outreach efforts - For Customer Success & Support: Provide 24/7 support, resolve customer issues autonomously, escalate complex cases to human agents with full context, and ensure consistent, brand-aligned responses 3. How PE portfolio companies benefit: - Efficiency: Automate repetitive tasks, enabling teams to focus on high-value activities - Scalability: Handle growing customer volumes without increasing headcount - Personalization: Deliver tailored experiences using real-time data insights - $ Cost Savings: Reduce operational costs by streamlining workflows 4. Business Impact for PE Portfolio Companies: - Accelerate GTM Execution: Faster lead conversion, better customer retention, and enhanced marketing ROI - Improve Metrics: Boost Customer NPS, CSAT, and efficiency - Enable Growth: Scale operations seamlessly while improving team productivity. 5. How PE Firms Must Think About Adoption - Define clear portfolio objectives to use AI agents (not just LLMs) - Ensure integration with existing CRM and data systems - Prioritize high-quality data and ongoing performance monitoring - Use AI agents to complement existing GTM teams, focusing them on automation ------------------ #pe #privateequity #investing #ai

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