When tasked to create a data-driven ad campaign, the internal data solutions of many companies do not have the resources to effectively process the key data that’s needed to drive conversion. Velocidi addressees this problem through its intelligence SaaS platform that allows you to easily analyze your data sources and determine what action to take to drive your marketing spend. Shying away from the industry’s direction of ‘AI Light’, Velocidi gives you actoinable data at your fingertips in an easy-to-use and streamlined solution that optimizes decision making.
AlleyWatch spoke with founder and CEO David Dunne about the startup and what unique problem they are solving.
Tell us about the product or service.
Brands and agencies face an ever-increasing volume and complexity of marketing data, making it more difficult than ever to identify valuable marketing insights that impact business goals. Velocidi addresses this data problem by helping brands and agencies harness this information quickly and easily to gain actionable intelligence into marketing performance.
Velocidi provides a single source of truth; a simple, scalable, centralized marketing intelligence platform that connects marketing data and systems. By marrying an immersive, elegant design with exceptional data-driven insights, Velocidi drastically speeds up decision-making for marketing teams, enabling them to be more nimble, efficient and effective.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Velocidi is focused on the marketing intelligence space, which is a segment of the Business Intelligence industry. According to Gartner, by the end of 2020, the Business Intelligence market is forecast to grow to $22.8 billion.
How is it different?
Velocidi’s marketing intelligence platform stands apart in the industry due to several critical points of differentiation.
Velocidi’s AI vs. AI “Light”: Many of our competitors have released AI “light” solutions, whereas we went in deep with data quality and improvement solutions. As a result, we enable our users immediately to identify and remediate issues with their data and at the same time spot patterns and trends, outliers and anomalies that impact performance. Velocidi’s platform also enables marketers to move from “what happened” to “why did it happen” and “what to do next.”
Pricing that makes sense: Velocidi’s pricing model encourages collaboration, because we charge by the data stream, where others in the marketplace have lots of hidden costs. We don’t want to hinder our clients’ decision-making with limited information.
Faster implementation: Velocidi can have a customer’s instances set up and ready in a few minutes.
Superior data editing and user experience: Our platform enables marketers who do not have a technical or data science background to harmonize, cleanse, collect data within the platform through a simple and elegant UI.
Why is the realm of marketing intelligence primed for AI usage?
The volume of data is growing exponentially, making it increasingly difficult for marketers to gather, sort, and derive insights in a timely manner. Moreover, the human eye cannot easily identify data quality let alone insights. AI will automate the mundane tasks and help marketers leverage the data to stay ahead.
Machine learning algorithms can do the heavy work to ensure that we have quality data that yields quality insights. Marketers can learn from machines, just as machines can learn from marketers. Velocidi facilitates this relationship with data that is complete and trustworthy.
What is the business model?
Velocidi sells to brands, agencies, publishers, media and entertainment companies. We improve our clients’ ROI of their marketing spend. The platform is available as both a SaaS and private instance.
What inspired the business?
I spent many years cobbling together many different tools that would inform the marketing that we were doing. I became convinced that the future of marketing would be informed by data whether it’s the content or the advertising we create, the creative or the media we buy, marketers would look to the data to make better decisions. Yet, no solution existed to get a single view of these data sources. We set out to change that by creating an easy-to-use tool that brings it all together. Velocidi is built for the realities of today’s data challenges and anticipates the needs of tomorrow’s questions.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
Since receiving our Series A investment from Pilot Growth Equity and Neuberger Berman in late-2016, the pace of our innovation has rapidly increased, allowing us to grow our market share. Our latest release of AI, marks the first in a series which will be unveiled over the coming months and years. These innovations are changing how our clients measure, report, analyze and understand their advertising and marketing performance.
What is the one piece of startup advice that you never got?
Hurry up! You cannot move fast enough. Be entrepreneurial in finding innovative ways to move faster.
If you could be put in touch with anyone in the New York community who would it be and why?
There are so many great entrepreneurs in New York, it would be hard to single one out. But in the world of data, I really admire Mike Bloomberg who has created a business that is as deeply relevant today as it was when he started it.
Meeting people in New York is easier than one might think. Because NYC is home to so many great industry events, you can literally run into anybody from amazing breakthrough entrepreneurs to titans of industry. I’ve found that at these industry events, powerful marketing leaders are often quite approachable. It’s something about the energy and atmosphere that makes people open to conversations and new possibilities.
Why did you launch in New York?
I moved to New York because it is the beacon for business and innovation. This city is the center of media and advertising, and over the last ten years it has emerged as a major digital technology hub. I’ve stayed here because of the incredible talent and energy, and NYC is the perfect place for our team because we’re marketers creating products for marketers. We’re so happy to be a part of what makes NYC so incredible.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Gramercy Tavern. Earlier in my career I worked in the restaurant business. I love all the details that make a great restaurant great. It takes many things working together to achieve distinction.
Gramercy Tavern offers a complete experience, which is rare. The partners are masters of detail. They take care of the food quality and every fine point from presentation to service. I’ve been bringing friends and business partners to Gramercy Tavern for 20 years. It’s always a great experience.
I have drawn from my restaurant industry experience now as a founder and CEO, so I can provide great client service. Rich Melman once said that the restaurant business is a business of mistakes and minimizing them. I believe this idea is not unique to restaurants. The idea of minimizing mistakes carries across to client engagements in any capacity. Good client experiences begin with a thoughtful process about how to mitigate future hazards. When customer success teams understand future problems and prepare for them, then they will ultimately achieve their goals.