Technology for Entrepreneurs: Mark Vella of Advertiise
Summary:
Mark Vella is an extraordinary founder with a non-traditional style of approach when it comes to utilizing tools for his startup, Advertiise. This will be a Q&A style post with information about what tools Advertiise uses within their business.
I met Mark in 2018 where I was connected through a mutual friend, in search of a summer internship. While there were no positions available, we stayed connected as we had an interest in following each other’s endeavours. Mark was very notable, he was undertaking a very interesting market; Advertisements. Globally, this is a 560 billion USD market*. But Mark isn’t making Google Ads or even Facebook Ads — he’s creating his own advertising platform.
Mark’s story starts with the gym he owned in Australia. In 2008 he had 1 gym, then in 2010, he had 5 gyms, on the path to set up a franchising business in the fitness industry. He wanted to monetize spaces in the gym, from the empty walls, the washrooms and even the space on the side of the fridge to bring in extra revenues. He found that the opportunity to buy and sell advertising was much bigger than franchising gyms. Shortly after, he moved to Calgary where he began to establish Advertiise.
“What does Advertiise do?”
Advertiise is an omnichannel marketplace for the buying and selling of advertising space. “The home of advertising space.” Through the platform, users can search, plan and complete a transaction of placing their own advertisements in every place imaginable such as magazines, the WHL, radio, festivals and much more. But that’s not it, Advertiise’s platform can also measure and track ads with analytics of the campaigns. Data science is alive and well within Advertiise.
“Who did you start it with and why?”
This was a huge problem to tackle by himself and he realized that a team would be stronger. Back in the gym business, he never delegated and worn many different hats. Since day one, he was planning to have an initial team of about 3–5 people to have complementary skill sets. The first person was a finance profession, eventually transitioning to a CFO role. This role would conduct build auditing and a go-to-market strategy for the platform. The next person was a tech-focused person, one fit for a CTO role. Not an astronomical amount of coding experience, but they had the capabilities to become a great leader. Then the next was a traditional salesperson. And the next, someone from the advertising industry to provide insight.
“Would you have hired in the same order again?”
Mark’s hit the reset button twice on the team. Mark comes from a Sales/Marketing background and he focused on hiring out the technology parts of the business as he didn’t need to delegate his strengths out quite this early in the business. His third time around, he hired the CTO and then the CFO.
“What kind of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software do you use?”
From 2014 to 2017 those were critical years to conduct Research & Development (R&D) so they didn’t blow up the business model. The team predicted that technology would rapidly evolve too quickly in terms of CRM’s. At the time, Magento was the only big platform available, now it’s Hubspot, Salesforce etc. Mark questioned the data privacy policies of these companies and asked himself about the data integrity of these companies. His first two, yes two platforms were hacked and his second got held for ransom which he never paid. At that point, Advertiise built its own proprietary CRM and ERP software. “We just don’t trust our data living and breathing in anyone else’s hands” — Mark Vella (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020) He acknowledged, it doesn’t cater to the needs of small to medium-sized startups, although future needs will demand this infrastructure. Mark’s partners in China also prefer him to use their own intellectual property. “Salesforce doesn’t even consider us as a partner, so why would we want to work with them?” — Mark Vella (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020) They can aggregate and use your data without you knowing, why take the risk?
“What social media management tools do you use?”
Canva for content mostly. Mark’s team has a media department where they build, edit, and produce videos for themselves through the Adobe Suite. They used to use Hootsuite, although they found that engagement was down from when they were organically posting. Mark also had a conspiracy that Instagram was tracking scheduled content and they were preferring authentic, in the moment content. So they started doing it themselves again and engagement was normal again. Advertiise is not begging for attention on Instagram, only posting twice a week to stay in feeds instead of continuously every day. Meaningful, creative content is where engagement and likes come from.
“How do you manage your email lists?”
Through the CRM API that Advertiise built. They can extract any data such as location to create hyper-localized email marketing campaigns to their desired demographics. It’s important for them to be talking to the right people as a marketing company. They don’t want to be too dependent on third-party software, because “it’s just another subscription fee.” — Mark Vella Mark’s team is also careful to not overuse email marketing as a communication tool since nobody wants to be bombarded by emails.
“How do you manage payment and invoicing software?”
Advertiise is a fully-fledged blockchain-powered eCommerce platform. They used to be dependent on Magento eCommerce, but now using some of Stripe’s assets to process epayment solutions.
“How do you communicate with your team?”
Mark has a zero-email policy. He says going through 20 paragraph emails then writing one back just takes up too much time. Non-sensitive documents are shared through Google Drive and main everyday communications are through Slack. In the future, Advertiise may build their own chat. Trello is used for task completion within the company as well.
“How do you manage your personal to-do list?”
Google Keep. But Mark’s edgy about trusting Google to keep his information safe, so there might be another project for the dev team in the future.
“Do you use any bots/automated workflows?”
They use a few. Chatbots for the website communications. Also, some bots that aggregate data or behaviours on the platform. Mostly proprietary, built by Team Advertiise.
“How do you track analytics? Such as website visitors or social conversion rates”
Klipfolio is what they use currently, but hopefully, in the future, they will build their own to make sure the data security is up to par.
“How do you sell your service to others?”
Advertiise is a B2B (Business to Business) model. Their value proposition is for brands to utilize the platform and monetize their offering with unconventional advertising spaces.
“Do you use any legal software for contracts?”
Not anymore, although LegalZoom is what they used for basic contracts including subscription agreements, although the customization that a lawyer can provide was ultimately the way to go.
“What do you use for presentation software?”
PowerPoint. Very easy to use the software while not spending too much time to make it look fancy. Using the tools they have and the simplicity appointed PowerPoint the winner in they’re book.
“How did you raise funding? How did you find investors?”
Friends, Family and some Angel Investors. He has raised 600K so far. Mark mentioned angel investing was quite unsophisticated back in 2014/2015 and now angels are like venture capitalists. It takes longer to get capital now and it comes with challenges some location-based, like living in Canada versus New York. Funding is saturated says Mark and there are thousands of firms providing capital. He says he’s in the mature stage of funding.
“Do you outsource work?”
Mark outsources content creation for private companies when they need design, large scale printing, merchandising, or SEO functions for companies through his proprietary Adfilliate network. They use a local Calgary company. They help with the production of ads when companies need that as well.
“What survey software do you use?”
Advertiise rarely uses it, but Qualtrics is one they utilize if they do. What they try to do is ask 3–5 key questions face-to-face with their clients instead of digital surveys. They try to keep the questions basic and straightforward instead of questions that result in shallow answers.
“What other tools do you use that I didn’t ask about?”
WeChat for communication with partners in China. BlackBerry Messenger, Uber for Business, Google Translator.
“Where do you work? Do you have an office or coworking space?”
Advertiise works mostly out of coworking spaces as they have teams in Toronto, Texas, Washington, India, and China. They have a growing overseas presence.
“Do you have a mentor? Or an advisory panel?”
They have an advisory panel with backgrounds at Vice Media, Google, Lawyers, Blockchain partners and VC partners. “It is made up of a whole bunch of people that are smarter than us in their designated field.” — Mark Vella (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020) Mark tries to network and builds mentorship with people that have done this, that’s in the advertising industry, or understand the technology, then they can give that value offering back to Advertiise.
Bonus Content:
“Do you think there’s a formula or pattern to becoming a successful entrepreneur?”
Mark says everyone starts the same way and there’s no blueprint for everyone, but there is a blueprint for a start and finish process. He says it might be like a game of snakes and ladders, “you might end up over here and end up at the same spot. The journey is a big part, but I do believe there is a formula to success and I don’t know what that is yet.” — Mark Vella (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020)
“Why did you become an entrepreneur? What’s it really like?”
Mark did not choose to be an entrepreneur; he chose not to be the opposite of an entrepreneur.
“It’s definitely not for everybody. I’ve sacrificed personal friendships, my marriage because it does take that 60 to 80 hours a week to be successful at what you do. It is almost like that mad-hatter mentality that you don’t need to be working 60 hours a week, but sometimes you just have to do what it takes to get it done. I don’t think Facebook or Google or Amazon, any of the companies that we aspire to be like, would be what they are if the founder works only 40 hours a week to tell you the truth. I don’t think it’s required to be successful, but I do think to put those extra hours in once your kids go asleep, then whatever we do online, you’re learning to do something in a process. So I’m actually using more of my time or making my time more efficiently To tell you the truth. But I mean, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a kid, I can’t, I never had a normal job. I’ve never really just had a job. I’ve always had a sweat equity partnership or started a business or I was an employee once upon a time, but I always was working on my business. And I mean, I’ve been like this since I was six years old since I understood what money was. So it’s certainly interesting. My relationship with money has changed but my drive to build a business and build teams and work with good people and create energy and leverage. That’s to me what being an entrepreneur is.” — Mark Vella (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020)
My Overview:
I think Mark’s story and his tools are quite unique. I’ve worked with startups in a few instances and businesses always have there “go-to” software for every single process. Usually, only, larger companies develop their in-house software, although Advertiise is creating internal assets that will play off very well for them in the long run. Mark’s approach to data privacy and security is an underrealized strength especially with the abilities of today’s hackers. Mark’s approach to business is fairly straightforward, he likes direct, efficient communication with organic social statuses. He focuses on doing things the right way and truly solving the problem he set out to accomplish. I believe in his business model and I trust the value he provides to both purchasers of ads and the sellers of ad space.
Mark’s outlook on the advertising industry is very promising as digital media is only growing. Businesses now need to be digitally present and Advertiise is solving the problem of ad space in an untraditional way. Creating money out of unused space is a value proposition to businesses. Who doesn’t want to make more money? Mark uses tools customized for his startup that help him save time and produce a great quality of the product for his consumers.
I enjoy Mark’s dedication to his startup, pouring all of his resources to build a platform with proprietary code. Mark has great willpower to keep going with Advertiise and he’s not going to let hackers or his team hold him back from building his platform.
Keep on going, Mark!
Special thanks to Mark Vella and Kris Hans for this interview.
References:
Picture 1: Vella, M. (n.d.). Mark Vella — LinkedIn [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://ca.linkedin.com/in/1markvella
Picture 2: Vereb, M. (n.d.). Michael Vereb Picture Creator [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://michaelvereb.com
Picture 3: Vella, M. (n.d.-a). Advertiise Logo [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.advertiise.com/
Picture 4: Webaroo. (n.d.). Unsplash Image [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/shr_Xn8S8QU
Picture 5: WeChat. (n.d.). WeChat Logo [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://web.wechat.com/
Pitcure 6: Bootkik. (2017, Winter 4). Mark Vella — Make It Happen [Video file]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5p2CvDzGDM
* Guttmann, A. (2020, January 8). Global advertising spending 2019. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/236943/global-advertising-spending/
This article was conducted between Michael Vereb and Mark Vella. (M. Vella, personal communication, January 27, 2020)
