Building trust in ecommerce analytics, with Littledata’s Edward Upton

For all the analytics tools in the modern ecommerce stack, retailers often still experience discrepancies between the analytics data, and actual revenue figures in the ecommerce platform.

Ultimately, this restricts marketing, since a lack of confidence in the data translates into greater caution when allocating budgets.

Solving this problem is Edward Upton, whose company, Littledata, helps retailers harness the first-party data at their disposal, and to ensure greater accuracy across the whole marketing arsenal. Intergrating with marketing channels such as Klaviyo, Google Analytics and Meta, as well as with commerce platforms including Shopify.

Edward joined us on the latest episode of Martalks, where we discussed how Littledata’s Klaviyo integration can help brands not only with abandoned carts, but even abandoned browsing sessions.

We also touched on how lost confidence in the data trickles down to the agencies that brands collaborate with, and dipped into Edward’s prior experience as a startup founder, including the importance of starting a new business with the right team.

You can also listen to the podcast, or read a summary article, on our website: https://bit.ly/3J2NkEG

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I'm your host, Daryl Rosenstein. Mar Talks is where we discuss contemporary issues in the e-commerce and marketing technology landscape. And today we're joined by the founder of Little Data, Edward Upton. Did I get that right, Ever?

SPEAKER_01 0:20

You did. Thank you, Daryl. Thanks for having me here.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, I really like to start off by pronouncing someone's name correctly. It really sets the tone for the rest of the interview. So what uh what exactly does Little Data do?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

So Little Data provides uh super accurate revenue tracking for um e-commerce brands, uh mainly on Shopify. And so we help brands get much more accurate data into the marketing channels they're already using. Uh so obviously Google Meta, TikTok interests, and uh Clavia.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, I look at revenue uh tracking and being able to understand where you get your your clicks and your buys from, but uh what was it that led you to actually want to create a solution to solve that problem?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah, the backstory is I was working as a as a sort of analytics consultant in in London, working with some so larger brand groups here, um, brands like Maid.com, sadly, uh didn't make it through the recession and uh and Fig Leaves, JD Williams Group, which did. And uh what I saw a lot was that they these are big data-driven brands, they're employing lots of people doing customer acquisition and performance marketing. And even then, they're just having a constant problem every month with just actually making sure the report they see of where their spend's going actually makes sense and is based in facts. And what I realized is an opportunity to kind of productize all the stuff we could do kind of on the edge of analytics as consultants and roll that into a SaaS product that the brand could just set up, configure, and and go, in the knowledge that they their revenue tracking was effectively unbreakable.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Being able to track your revenue effectively and and being able to optimize it, obviously, is a very noble goal. But what's what's the biggest problem that you're see your your your clients actually solving uh once they have little data live?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, so I think what most of the brands we work with come to us with this nagging suspicion that the the reports they're they're used to seeing in Google Analytics or in Facebook ads or whatever are not actually quite right. They often don't know what the root cause is, they don't know enough about the underlying tracking to know that it's off, but they kind of they just don't trust it. And one of the reasons they don't trust it is the revenue they see there just doesn't match the revenue that they know from the e-commerce platform from their Shopify admin that they've actually tracked that they've actually done that week. And so um if you if you can't sort of make that the high-level metrics line up, uh you all of the underlying, you know, all of the more detailed reports starts to lose uh you start to lose confidence in it. What I think the the most transformational thing we see when we fix that and we they install our app and suddenly those high those those revenue metrics start matching is that people can actually trust what what what they're doing again, which means that they can actually have confidence to spend more of those platforms. But actually it's not just about reporting, it's also the fact that often the tactic the tactics are then better. Because they're now getting, for example, you know, more accurate recurring orders or uh information about upsells or other tactics they're using, they can actually better target those customers and better target those tactics in the in the in the in the marketing platforms. So I think it's a mixture of kind of in better better trust in the data, better reporting quality, but also actually getting more more return on advents just because you can you can use more effective tactics with more granular data points.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, I I think I share that particular disposition with a lot of chief digital officers, that feeling that you know something isn't right, something is horribly wrong, and yeah, I really can't put my finger on it. Something's rotten out there, something's right. And this is really this is providing clarification, which is wonderful, and I I think I can use it every day. But you know, how would you contrast little data's functionality to the many advertising performance analytics solutions that are on the market? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

E. T. I I think there's a lot of I mean, I guess I would say this right, because uh but I'm pushing something different. I'm I'm pushing basically get the actual tracking, revenue tracking fixed in the ad platform itself, rather than trying to use a third-party tool to bring it all together and give you a single source of truth. Because what you see over the long term with platforms that offer that offer that single source of truth, and some of the popular ones at the moment are ones like sort of triple L, North Beam. Actually, it ends up just being another thing that doesn't ma that doesn't line up. You know, the problem is at the end of the day, does it actually help you to have this this third tool, this third party tool that's telling you a number, or because it's still not going to match what you see in Shopify and what you see in Google or Meta. My my view is it's kind of better to have fewer tools, fewer reporting tools you're using, but just get the get the numbers right, rather than add another whole reporting tool to your stack. I don't I don't guess that the other point though is that you know, while I think some of these platforms do really these reporting tools do a really good job of having a you know pretty dashboard or lots of you know nice charts, easy to use, yeah. Actually, if you know what you're doing with Google Analytics and the Castillo and BigQuery, it's a very powerful free reporting stack. Like there's no there's no particular need to not use it just because it's complicated. I mean it, you know, as I said, if you if you if you accept the learning curve, you can get an awful lot of free value there from a tool that Google's giving away.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Well, then little data just like yourself, Edward, is not just another pretty face.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

No, and I I I think we, you know, we've we've in fact that's one and one of the challenges to growth, I think, is that you know, when people think of an analytics tool, they do tend to think of a kind of pretty dashboard, and that's exactly what the majority of people who come to us and and have heard of the brand, their automatic assumption is we're another dashboard tool. And that's in fact the first thing I say to customers is that's not what you're gonna fucking. You know, if you're hoping for a nice, pretty coloured chart, it's not us. You know, what we're about is the is the the the kind of rolling our things up and actually making the underlying uh tracking and data capture work so that your data pipeline is robust, which means that you could the end reports are actually valid and and truthful.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Outstanding. Well, I mean, obviously you've uh the rubber has met the road and you've had this deployed uh live with a number of major retailers at this point. What's what's been your your favorite uh business case to date?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, I think um we've um we're we know we're lucky enough to have some really great case studies, but I I I think perhaps one of the ones I'd highlight is um a jewelry brand called Jackson. Because I I think what they found is just really the power of actually using the data into meta particularly to actually enhance the performance of their campaigns. So we have lots of customers who say it's great you fix my reports, that's useful. But I think what I loved hearing from Jackson was actually how they've used our data to actually come up with better tactics and meta that just perform better. Because now they've got more granular audiences, they've got other sort of events they can retarget based on people who've added to cart or converted. Um and I and I I love the fact that that's actually seeing, you know, kind of seeing a meaningful kind of 80% uplift in their campaign performance.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Have they been able to figure out what kind of a campaign really does lead to men actually buying more nose rings?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's it's um I mean I I I guess targeting the right kind of man is probably the obvious answer there. You know, it's only appeals to some people. But I think it's it's it's uh you know, I I I think it it it varies exactly, the exact benefits vary per brand, but I I definitely think one of the key things we find in clients is that they've got to the more sort of sophisticated and data-driven their their ad strategy is, the more they're gonna get out of the later. Because you know, ultimately, uh as one of my colleagues put it, if you're if all of your Facebook ads budget is just dumping people on your homepage, then you know, no amount of of tracking quality improvements is actually going to optimize that campaign. But if you're doing cleverer stuff like sort of dynamic product retargeting those kind of ads, then yeah, that has a big impact.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Well, you're you're dealing with a broad cross-section of digital marketing agencies when you're talking about you know, campaign management, what what ads you should place, where should they be on Meta, should they be on Google, should be advertising on AWS, and so on and so forth. But what kind of partners have been best for a little data in terms of being aware of your solution and then introducing your solution or utilizing your solution for those merchants?

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, so I think you know, we we we work a lot with uh agencies of all types, um, performance marketing agencies or CRO agencies, you know, design and and build agencies. So for for anyone listening to the podcast, you know, is in that in that world, I'd say please reach out. We have a great partner program. And I think the reason that it it works so well as a channel for us is that um, first of all, you know, the for we're solving a major pain point. You know, tip most most agency managers that I talk to, you know, they're all that that's one of their top sort of customer gripes, is I don't think those reports are quite working. And they they don't want to step in them because it's ultimately not not the service they're providing, but it's kind of a blocker for their business. Like, particularly if I take you know, CRO agency partner, um, we work with a many great ones, but ones I've been talking to particularly last few weeks is a um agency called Prism Fly, based out of New York. And and they you know the the thing is if you're doing conversion rate optimization, if you don't have a baseline of like you know exactly like for like, you know, how the funnel steps are working, then it's very difficult to you know to to make any concrete improvements because you don't know what it was like before, you know, how it's getting better. So I think that what they love about us is that we can just go in, we can they know that the all of all of like the checkout steps, all of the those sort of funnels are going to be exactly track like for like. And then they can just get on with their job of trying to optimize it. You know, they they as I said, it's not like they're in the business of selling reporting, that's not what they're doing, but they love it if they can you know use a tool that basically makes their job easier and unblocks them from doing a better job as an agency.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Well, uh obviously performance marketing are are looking at clicks and uh they're looking at views, but you're you're you're measuring many things uh amongst amongst the many, what channels have driven the most traffic to the website and then the resulting transaction. But how does your AI go on to actually value that data further for the merchant?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, so actually it's the the the the what I always push is that you know Google and Meta and so on have always uh are the ones that invested heavily in all the in the AI. Um the thing is that their algorithm, their predictive algorithms, are only as good as the data points you feed. So for example, um you know Google's quite good at predicting the lifetime revenue of a customer, but only if you can tell it in detail what that customer's done. If it doesn't know that the customer added a cart or signed up for your newsletter, signed up for a subscription purchase, obviously it has no basis for prediction. So the the the thing that we're solving is not necessarily developing our own our own algorithms, but making the algorithms of frankly the leading algorithm developers in the world work a lot better. Any machine learning model is is going to be useless if you're not feeding it a complete picture of the customer journey.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

There's more than enough garbage data out there, and uh making sure you're not creating more uh on the daily is is a wonderful functionality to have if you're uh looking at those spreadsheets. Well, yeah, I'm a big fan uh of the uh the entire composable commerce movement, and one of the leading providers in data is is Clabio. And uh little data does have an integration with Clabio, and one of the ways, uh one of your use cases that I saw that fascinated me is how it would address abandoned carts and user identification matching using first party data.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, thanks for uh highlighting that. It's been uh a really exciting launch we've had uh just a couple of weeks ago. We're now sort of one of one of the few, I think one of the top, one of the first 10 partners to integrate with Clavios on their official integrations directory. So, yes, what what Little Data is doing is is basically, as you say, better identity resolution. And what that means is that yeah, you have as a brand lots of customers on your storefront who are interacting with the site, um adding products to cart, uh, but maybe not completing the order. And some of those customers are also people that are on your on your CRM, they're on your email list, right? But the the challenge has always been that you don't know that because of the point at which they're browsing and and considering a purchase, they're they're not logged in. You know, they're on an e-commerce storefront, there's no login. So the the challenge is how do you how do you kind of match those profiles together and say, ah, this visitor right here is actually Edward who's on your email list over here. So if you did want to email him, yeah, now's your chance. And that's the problem we're solving. And and and the solution, I guess, without going too deep into the tech, is basically about you know using our density graph, pulling together a whole load of different uh cookie identifiers and the and what's actually happening on the on the Shopify card, and being able to bring those together so that if they are someone you already know, if if they have through some previous journey kind of identified themselves as a as a particular person on your list, then you can retarget them. And what that means in practical terms is we're seeing kind of a 40-50% uplift in the number of people that you can actually email with an abandoned cart campaign. And probably something um we're just launching for abandoned browse campaigns, which is obviously we've always like view the product but don't have to card. Uh we're seeing an even bigger uplift. So pretty significant, Zed 40% of you, you know, if you're getting and and for most brands we talk to, that is their single biggest, single most successful tactic in clavia, the single biggest flow. Um so it's it's a meaningful improvement.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Being able to literally double the number of absolute 100% compliant customer profiles that you have through utilizing little data and Clavio is phenomenal because first party data acquisition, it's an absolute critical need for any merchant today because cookies are gone. Third-party cookies are gone. We've got the uh the major providers out there, particularly mobile providers like Apple locking down privacy data. We have, you know, we don't have GDPR yet in the US, but it's a common. We've already got it in several states, including California. I mean, being aware of how to capture first-party data and make an action is uh uh a fantastic functionality.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

And there are opportunities to in here, we're all about that helping share first-party data with with Google and Meta. In fact, uh Google made quite an interesting um product update a couple of weeks ago to enable you to share sort of server-side the first party data with them to sort of link a to link a purchase backward to a Google profile rather than just a cookie. But I think with Cladio, there's a much bigger opportunity because you know brands are already investing heavily in retention marketing. As you know, you know, what what happened last year is a lot of brands decided, look, investing in paid ads is sort of a road to nowhere. We need to you know we need to double down on our own channels. But but the dirty little secret is that most of them are not, in fact, you're making the most out of that own channel. They're not in a seamless way sharing that first party data with their own email marketing platform, which means there's just a huge opportunity to kind of maximize what they're already investing in. So they've done all the they've done all the hard work of selling all the flows, configuring all the software up, getting making sure the copy and the and the and the and the and the imagery and stuff looks sweet. It's just all about the fact that you need to actually set up the triggers so that you can send those things out at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Well, as I mentioned, you know, Clavio is part of the composable commerce movement, and uh I'm interested in in composable commerce and being able to integrate uh the functionality of a little data into uh your platform if you're utilizing, say, uh Commerce tools or ElasticPath or Spryker uh is is easier due to how you've architected it.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So we try, I mean, I I guess the good news is you know, by taking a kind of what I might call a sort of server API first approach to tracking, yeah, with some of the core functionality is there. I guess the complexity with composable commerce is that you know most of these sort of uh cloud e-commerce platforms or you know, whatever you call them, is it non-composable or sort of thing, or monoliths. We call them monoliths, Edward. That's the right word. That's the right word. Adding to carts, going to checkout. And that's because because all those things are kind of one part of the monolith platform, it's easy for them to offer that end-to-end customer journey journey platform because it because it all happens in one yeah, in in in in in fact one thing. So that's the the challenge of moving to composable or or or you know headless as Shopify likes to call it, is is that suddenly that isn't out of the box anymore. As a as a you know, someone building a storefront, you've got to do a bit more work to actually um make sure those, you know, the the tracking plan and and the um tagging is configured for all of those those same standard shopping traps. You still want to track, you still want to track, you know, product listing pages, product detail pages, ads to cart, checkouts. But this time you've got to you know you've got to instrument those themselves. I guess you know the there's there's sort of two ways we're trying to make that easier. We we don't currently have an integration for Commerce Tools, ElasticPar tools, or Spiker, but you know, definitely on the roadmap. But for for Headless, Shopify, and BigCommerce, which we do support, the good thing is you know, we've built uh actually uh an MPM package um that integrates with the sort of the Next.js source fund that most of those most of those brands would would be adopting. And that just makes it really easy. So again, the developers can have to do a little bit of work to actually instrument the you know the tagging of those of those those events. But you know, we have a sort of standard event schema and and uh library they can tap into to do that. And importantly, you know, what we're trying to do, and this is actually what segment.com made, you know, why why they become super popular so 10 years ago, is just trying to having one, you know, fire the call once and then send it off to multiple data destinations from the server. So that that's the other beauty is you don't have to have like 10 different tags on the storefront. You can have just one little data tag effectively and then relay it to other destinations.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Well, outstanding. I'm I'm I'm glad that you've got the major composable platforms on the roadmap. Uh I think that's uh that's shrewd, not to mention that's where the market's going. And uh I'm I'm hoping that uh those folks from all of those wonderful platforms engage with little data and uh make that reality uh sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

But uh I think it's well for us it's been quite a fundamental shift for being you know, kind of more of what I would call a developer-first approach. That you know, traditionally little data was a no-code platform, you know, you just uh our app just installed the tracking script, you didn't have to worry about it. What you realized um when we go into the composable world is obviously that's actually not what people want. They want it, they want low code, they want to be able to make it super simple to set up, but they do actually want to be able to customize and configure it as they want.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah, developer experience is a huge boon for the uh composable solutions. Uh the developers enjoy using them. Uh and uh it it it allows those developers, whenever a business user has a request for uh a new feature or function, for them to say yes more often than not, uh, or at least be able to be up for the uh the discovery process with a low-code tool.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Exactly. And that's what we we kind of want to harness is uh yeah, the the developers are as our friends, not our adversaries.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Well, you have uh actually a bunch of developers that uh work with you there at Little Data, and uh this isn't your first rodeo, your first time as a founder. And uh I guess uh you know since you you you've uh grown and expanded your team since opening the doors not long ago, what's been your your biggest challenge this time around as a founder?

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Yeah, so I had a a previous startup, you're right, in the ed tech world about just over ten years ago, we s we sort of wound that up. I think that what I I learned from that first experience was the importance of building a team. I think you know we built a product, but we never really built a team, like we're everything was sort of uh outsourced and actually was really interesting you know that was the obviously a tough learning as a founder but when you know when we went out to actually try and sell that business I realized actually people wanted to you know they would have if we were a team they wanted to buy us for for the talent but they didn't really want to buy us for the customer base or the content which is what we thought they'd value. So I c I think when I started all data I was very keen that you know we kind of we built the team first and the product second and I'm very proud of that but I think we've we've had extremely loyal diverse team uh we have it we're a remote first team so we we have um you know uh basically 30 of us spread from kind of uh well canada down three right three to kind of Ukraine so it's it's a big sort of sweep of North America and and and and Europe. And I and I think what that means is that that's given us the you know the the the the loyal team has has allowed us to pivot and keep going and and keep changing as we evolve because you don't get it right with a startup the first time round there's inevitably um pivots you have to make along the way to change you know to to go in the different direction with the product or sell to a different customer base. And I think it's having you know having a a solid team behind me means that I know we can you know we don't need to worry about that. We have people that will keep up with as we change direction. Well with a with a remote team which is the the way most again startups are are building out these days what how how do you effectively drive collaboration and what sort of collaboration tools and events have you had to yeah so I think yeah we we use obviously all the standard stuff for Slack, Zoom etc but I I think in our culture we found that having kind of twice yearly off sites where we meet up in person has been invaluable to that. So I I I'm a big believer that when you actually when you do actually want to um do something new, collaborate really really do an innovation it's very much easier to do that face to face. You know we tried during kind of COVID times to run design sprints and stuff remotely and it's very very painful. You just don't get the same kind of free thought and um people sharing without it's it's it's psychological safety. It's very very hard I think uh with big sort of video calls to really have that safety where people will go hey have we thought of this or why are we not doing this?

SPEAKER_00 24:22

And those are the insights that drive innovation so I think what we found is that by just having a few weeks a year um a couple of weeks a year as sort of a whole company and a probably a couple more weeks in smaller teams that's enough sort of builds enough trust and psychological safety to to be able to truly innovate the rest of the time that's how it works for us I know everyone has a different experience but I I don't think you can replace the face-to-face element when it comes to that trust building trust it's essential it's essential people i if you're going to innovate people need to think outside the box and come up with ideas that aren't going to work and they've got to be comfortable knowing that when they're the one that comes up with that idea and someone else tells them I don't think that's gonna work that it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah exactly and and I think that's that's true you know if you talk to lots of companies who do innovation well that's what it takes is the ability to people to stand up and not not be afraid of being laughed at or not being afraid of being shot down.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Yeah one of one and a hundred of those crazy ideas will be your next product you know that's the reality yeah well obviously you're not beating anyone with sticks for uh which is you know one of the nice things about being remote is you can't beat anyone with a stick however you know maybe it's the pair of the stick I I I digress. I digress. Well you know you as the founder you had to close those first few deals there at LittleData yourself by Hooker Crook. And that's obviously a a a a great learning experience of experimenting with different presentation methods experimenting with different consultative engagement techniques engaging with people that were referred to you uh you'll it it's it's a lot to learn, it's a lot to encapsulate. How many deals did you actually close before you made the decision, all right, I'm gonna hire a sales executive that's going to capture this and systematize it?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah it's a great question. I mean I think I'm not sure we we took a slight different path of the business. I mean we've always obviously been a product led firm but I I think because of the the kind of go to market by the Shopify app store and then through that through a lot of agency and other tech partners we we really didn't ha you know we we it was a long time before we actually had any person with the title of of salesperson. And so uh my co-founder Ari and I have have sort of led on some of those sales for quite a long time even though that's not our our full time role. And that's worked fine for us. You know I think that the the deals that we do have you know mainly we we've we've never really found outbound to be particularly effective. We we we were really an inbound marketing company. And often um when they come into us they actually have quite technical questions and they what they actually want is a you know kind of technical product demo and understand you know just is it going to solve their problem. And once they're convinced that that actually we solve those technical problems then they're fairly confident of signing up and signing the trial. So yeah I think I think it's taken us a lot longer than most actually to get there. That said I I think yeah that one of the things we'll we'll probably be doing later this year is is you know scaling up that sales team because I think we're at a stage now a product market fit where we you know like we do just need to get more yeah we we've sort of sold the early adopters we're now in the kind of mainstream and we need to convince more people who are maybe a little bit more reticent to to give it a go.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Well I mean it it's you you know the market that you know and that's that's kind of one of the the the things that a sales leader is supposed to do is figure out the markets that you don't know and and make a plan and and and and and shake the tree there.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

But I think also we know that if we go to other you know I think as I said that that router market is very specific to Shopify. I think if we go to other outside of that world to other composable stacks like we we know we have to build a bit more of a sales ledger to market. Like there just isn't the same there weren't the same mechanisms that you can use without actually having as you say someone that's actually solving that exact problem how do we get to that market?

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Well it's much more partner focused uh environment when you're in the composable world where you're you're you're not going to market alone you're going to market in concert with certain partners uh either a platform or a CDP or a PIM or take your pick you're you're yeah you're better off hunting is a team hunting is a pack.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah you've got to be able to activate that from your side I mean I think that's what we know is you've got to you know like we have to be able to in in that world we have to actually have the partnerships and salespeople to be able to activate that.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

At at this point have you raised capital for little data or has it been all bootstrap?

SPEAKER_01 29:19

So mainly bootstrap we've raised um about a million dollars from um angel investors in the UK so we're lucky enough to have some good contacts in the uh London sort of angel scene um there's a healthy particularly uh fintech ecosystem here and and that's that's that's you know I think that was really useful back in uh I think we took the first angel money back in sort of 2019 just to actually move away from a kind of managed services business to to be purely yeah pure SaaS. I think we've we've never done this we we've never done a VC round. I think you know we at this stage we're we're pretty close to profitability and I think we like the fact that we've kept it lean and uh very very customer focused. You know I honestly think there's the the the healthy thing about being customer funded I think is the the fashion way to call it beatstrapped customer funded is that you know you you absolutely do have to ship stuff fast that your customers want. That's how you grow the revenue is is to you know actually solve real problem real customer pain points. You don't have the luxury of waiting a few years for that to sort of come true.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Are you planning on doing a dog and pony show for the investment community or at this point you know as you said you're customer funded.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

You don't have to you know the the investment world's changed over the last over the last year. And I it's it's interesting because you know we did we did have some conversations um mid midway through last year about uh doing a venture round and and I think the feedback we got is that you know people really want to see profitability now they you know like the days of sort of you know just just wanting to know about AOR growth are gone. I mean it's not that isn't important obviously growth gets you to profitability eventually but actually at the stage we're at most investors would rather we were already profitable and then they just kind of don't have to worry about survivability anymore. They can just focus on you know how to how to swing at a bigger fence and I I think that's that you know that that's where we're trying to get to the moment is let's get there and then look at our options. Because honestly I think there's no there's no if you can prove that you can get there and you can actually build a viable SaaS business then there's there's no shortage of cash to to accelerate it from that point.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Absolutely and I think that the the days of just seeking the the the next unicorn are are kind of behind us. I mean every investor is looking for a unicorn but they're looking first and foremost for a shrewd set of operators that understand their customer and that can deliver with with a repeatable margin and that's profitable. Right. And if they've got those fundamentals then they're making the determination do we have the appropriate resources as an investment firm to accelerate them or are we only going to be uh a participant in the fundraising for that or or in in providing the capital for it.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

But and I think we're sort of you know there's there's two different games there we you know in an early stage where you have got no revenue and kind of your only way of getting to a sizable revenue is to is you know is to pitch the the you know the big growth and see seed investment. But as I said we've managed to get there with no capital so at this point it doesn't make sense to pitch us as a kind of uh you know uh a a kind of part of your portfolio spread betting on getting that unicorn you know we're we're we're basically a solid company we're not we're not gonna be a billion dollar company but you know we're we're definitely worth uh worth a decent amount if we continue to solve this very real problem for this very defined niche of customers. No we don't we don't know could be we don't know could be who knows there's still enough brands out there with a problem I think that's what I always think about to myself divorce I'm a realist I always think about like where's the next sale coming from you know where's the next thing but if I take a step back yeah the the you look at the uh the amount of dollars being spent on you know on performance marketing globally by e-commerce brands I mean it's it's insane you know if you can take a chunk of that by optimizing it I think that's that's a very big pie.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

It is a very big pie. Well you know uh I am a recruiter and uh it I I would be remiss if I didn't give you the opportunity at this point Edward if you were looking for someone that you a key person that you uh need for your team if you'd like to share with my network who you're looking for right now the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah I mean I I think you know I know I know you work a lot with you know in the sales world and I and I think uh you know a great salesman is probably someone that that you know we need to add to the team this year. I I think that it's likely to be someone who you know is is already knows the e-commerce world world well has you know successfully sold to kind of you know our sweet spot of customers which are kind of maybe two to fifty million GMV brands and kind of knows you know enough about enough about analytics and marketing to know that it's a challenge and why it's a challenge. Yeah I think I think someone with that background would have probably a very easy job of of translating what we're doing into sales because honestly there is demand out there and I think if I look at some of our competition and I think what you know why aren't you know what what are we what are they doing differently that we're not I I I always come back to like yeah actually needing needing to sort of grow that sales function uh and and I would argue spending an awful lot more on marketing without getting resulting sales is something else they're doing but you know that's that's probably good on you. That's probably good on you that's good enough I mean that's we we we don't have the dollars to do it so it's kind of like a a mistake that we we hope we we will avoid.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Excellent well that's good.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Well yeah any any final thoughts Edward I mean I you know I I think it's we're always open more generally to kind of uh partnership interest uh you know as I said I I think if if you're listening to this and there are and you're thinking wow that sounds interesting I wonder whether they could do it from my platform or you know my tech stack then yeah let's chat we might not do it now but that's exactly how we discover you know where to take the product to next outstanding.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

All right well Edward Upton of Little Data thank you so much for joining us today it's been an absolute pleasure and uh I'm I'm sorry that we did not have any alpacas or llamas wander into the frame there in the barn but maybe next time yeah no they want to sleep now.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

It's late in the day for them now.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

But next next time I'll wake them up signing off thanks for listening to Mar Talks please leave a review and a rating on your platform of choice. We're available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major podcast platforms to find out more about how the Rosenstein group can help you find the right leaders for your client development teams in Martech and e commerce please visit our website rosenstein group.com