The Future of Communication Technology: Dmitri Lisitski of Influ2 On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up How We Connect and Communicate With Each Other
An Interview With David Liu
Due to the ongoing impact of the global pandemic, peoples’ marketing and advertising initiatives can only exist online. And, that is the purpose of Influ2 — to help B2B marketers drive more success in their online marketing and advertising campaigns. Thus, we are here to help companies digitally transform their approach to marketing and advertising and to continue to grow their businesses as in-person opportunities continue to be unavailable.
The telephone totally revolutionized the way we could communicate with people all over the world. But then came email and took it to the next level. And then came text messaging. And then came video calls. And so on…What’s next? What’s just around the corner?
In this interview series, called ‘The Future Of Communication Technology’ we are interviewing leaders of tech or telecom companies who are helping to develop emerging communication technologies and the next generation of how we communicate and connect with each other.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dmitri Lisitski, co-founder and CEO of Influ2, the first person-based marketing platform for B2B companies. A serial entrepreneur with 20 years experience in online marketing and advertising, Dmitri has successfully launched, managed and advanced multiple IT-powered companies in the U.S. and EU markets, including BonusTec (which was sold to GlobalLogic) and ThickButtons. Prior to Influ2, Dmitri was Global Head of Delivery & Services at Gett. He holds Executive MBAs from Columbia Business School and London Business School.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
When we were testing the Influ2 idea of targeting individual decision-makers with ads, my main concern was that it’s probably easy to reach multiple people via ads, but our clients will need to target top decision-makers in large companies. It’s well known that this is a special breed of humans — those who live a busy life, have tight schedules and don’t spend much of their time scrolling through social platforms, so it’s very unlikely that they could be reached that way. Thus,I asked my tech co-founder to run a test to target VCs by pulling their information from Crunchbase and seeing what would happen. The interesting part was that after he pulled a list of the top VCs, he discovered that the audience turned out to be heavy users of Facebook and Instagram. As a result, we learned that we are all humans, and even top decision-makers need time to relax and stay in touch with their friends.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote is, ‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid,’ by Albert Einstein.
I believe there are no successful or unsuccessful people, but rather, successful people are the fishes turned to be wise or lucky to stay in the water, while unsuccessful people are the fishes that keep to climbing trees. I’ve always tried to understand what water was for me and tried to stay away from trees.
Moreover, the same thing applies to my team. I’ve been at CEO and executive level positions for 15 years, and I have discovered that if i see an unsuccessful employee despite the right set of motivation, support and guidance, it produces a tree situation — we need to find water for this person.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The person that I’m most grateful for is my wife. We celebrated our 20 year anniversary last year. She has been my inspiration throughout my professional journey. She’s a top floral designer and has always inspired me with her artistic views, which ranges from her opinions on modern art to cooking.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Many companies and people are trying to find goodness by doing something outstanding that is perceived to be good. A typical role model makes a fortune and then uses those funds to create something good, like Jeff Bezos for example. He made a fortune on amazon and has donated $10B for Bezos Earth Fund. I, however, have found a different approach that feels more compelling. Creating jobs, helping your employees earn decent pay for themselves and for their families, helping develop their career, and at the same time, not asking to sacrifice their life for your company is how I look to bring good to the world. I believe underpaying your employees and expecting them to work overtime creates so much evil that it’s hard to compensate with donation. When I began thinking about what kind of business I wanted to build, the ability to create such a robust business model that I would be able to pay above average salaries and provide reasonable work/life balance was part of my consideration. It’s obviously impossible if you create a mediocre product, so I was looking for something outstanding to match the bar.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge communication tech that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
Our platform is powered by machine learning and is designed to help marketers and advertisers better communicate with their potential leads. The platform can capture behavior, understand intent and measure engagement at the individual person level for each marketing and advertising campaign.
Additionally, we processed and analyzed years worth of user data which helped to build a model that translates buying intent signals from advertising into a behavioral score. We call this behavioral scoring in advertising, and it helps to reveal missed sales opportunities.
How do you think this might change the world?
I believe advertising is a great thing that has been misused for too long. People don’t see ads when they are busy with their day-to-day responsibilities. Advertising comes in when they are relaxing, scrolling through their social network feeds or reading content. Their mind is open to fresh information, and a relevant piece of content about a new product or service presented as a solution or an idea could be the best starting point — both for a marketer to deliver their idea, and for a customer to learn something useful. It’s all about being relevant. But if you target the wrong people, or deliver the wrong messages, it hurts the whole consumer experience and ad budgets are wasted. We want to change that and make advertising great — both for advertisers and for customers.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Unfortunately, there is something in human nature to take a thing like nuclear power and make nuclear bombs instead of nuclear plants. However, we are serious about making advertising relevant and useful while creating an enjoyable experience for our target audiences. I believe it’s in the best interest of our customers too.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
I had been a marketing and advertising executive for many years, and as I made my way through my career, I kept getting the feeling that advertising was becoming broken and ineffective. A good ad is a story, and it shows how the product can fix a problem and/or make someone’s life better. But, in the digital age, ads were constantly interrupting peoples’ lives in ways that were annoying and disruptive, and the content of the ad often had nothing to do with the person that it was playing to.
Thus, I wanted to fix advertising and make it better and more effective because advertising and marketing is my passion. I connected with a former colleague, and we challenged ourselves to create a platform that made advertising a better experience overall — a solution that helps clients get useful, needed information and empowers advertisers to only show their ads to appropriate audiences.
Together, we were able to leverage AI and machine learning to create Influ2, a platform that allows marketers to get their content in front of the right audiences with meaningful and engaging information. This leads to a better ad experience and actually drives leads, so it’s a win-win.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
When we launched our product, I had a fear that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand for the product. I believed that our product was an obvious must-have for any B2B marketer, and they would see it as a no-brainer. However, overall, our target audience was much more conservative than I initially expected, and it has taken more time than originally expected for us to spread the word. Yet, over the last two years, we’ve really started to gain momentum and have experienced 4x annual growth, so we’ve definitely hit a nerve. Between listening to our clients, and continually improving our product, we’ve been able to drive increased adoption. Additionally, investing in our comms team and raising our brand awareness has helped as well.
The pandemic has changed so many things about the way we behave. One of them of course, is how we work and how we communicate in our work. How do you think your innovation might be able to address the new needs that have arisen as a result of the pandemic?
Due to the ongoing impact of the global pandemic, peoples’ marketing and advertising initiatives can only exist online. And, that is the purpose of Influ2 — to help B2B marketers drive more success in their online marketing and advertising campaigns. Thus, we are here to help companies digitally transform their approach to marketing and advertising and to continue to grow their businesses as in-person opportunities continue to be unavailable.
We are helping companies move forward and gain new clients in a time where it isn’t easy to connect with someone. Whether it’s because they can’t meet in person, or whether it’s because we live in a noisy world, full of constant, ongoing content, so you can only get someone’s attention if you really stand-out and connect with them directly in a meaningful way.
Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- A sure sign of a good product-to-market fit is that the product is easy to sell to the first customers. Usually, these are your friends and warm contacts, and if it’s hard to sell initially then the product is not good enough, and will be much harder to sell in the future.
- Look for a product that is hard to build. Products that are easy to build means that there’s going to be a lot of competition. The first business I founded was an IT services company, and we had to compete against thousands of competitors because everybody with an engineering background can create an IT services firm.
- Customers are the best investors: they give money, take zero equity and their advice will often bring you more customers. Customers should be higher priority than investors, and sales should be more important than fundraising, though, of course, fundraising is always important.
- Raise as much money as you can at the beginning. It’s hard to predict how long it will take to nail a product-to-market fit and how much runway you need to actually start growing.
- Accelerators and startup competitions can help, but the vast majority of successful companies never won anything. Even YCombinator is not a predictor of success. Out of a few dozen successful tech IPOs in 2020 only two were YC alumni.
Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.
