Featured Founder: Lewis McClam of Viewz Marketing
Welcome to our Featured Founder series, where you’ll meet startup founders from Tampa-St. Petersburg who are building and scaling their ventures to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We interviewed Lewis McClam, Founder of ViewzMarketing, a dynamic native tracking advertisement platform with live user behavioral analytics.
What were you doing previously and what inspired you to launch your company?
My first venture was a point-of-sales system with three other co-founders. After several founder exits, I was able to build the company to nine states. This was a success, but I did not like the financial segment of the business. I decided to change paths and start a venture that was more in line with my interests. I exited the company and began working on a virtual reality video game. It was challenging but interesting because I was learning the development side of gaming. After creating my first game, I realized the VR market wasn’t ready to be monetized to scale. Mass adoption is not quite attainable due to most homes not being equipped with VR technology yet. However, the market of VR has opportunity and upon tweaking our patented technology I found a way to monetize any VR or AR platform by creating dynamic advertising that can track behavior analytics down to the millisecond. Once I had this concept laid out, the ball started rolling. I pulled together a team and we created Viewz Marketing.
What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?
When advertising, most businesses don’t have a guarantee that their advertisement will be seen. With Viewz Marketing technology, advertisers will be able to 1) place their ads in popular video games and XR experiences and 2) get behavioral data on the interactions or impression of their ad. We are working on delivering advertisers targeted data on how long a user looked at their ad, if they preferred a certain image over the other, and similar insights. I am excited every day to see how the future of immersion in technology is changing. It inspires me to continue pushing with Viewz Marketing’s technology. I see our product being used in innovative ways by developers, advertisers and executives that will really change the way people advertise.
Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?
Learning the programming and infrastructure necessary to better understand and plan the technical aspects of our product. At first, I had a big vision for what I wanted the product to look like. I later learned to simplify the delivery. I narrowed down what was needed for a minimum viable product and my team is working from there.
Where do you see your company headed next?
Our next goal is to build a team that will manage our Analytics & Advertising network. We plan to work with developers and companies to pilot our technology and work on solidifying the product marketing. We’re also working towards our first round of fundraising.
Give us a tactical piece of advice that you’d share with another founder just starting out.
Make every loss strategic, your success depends on it.
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