Startup Spotlight #168: Promoted.ai
Promoted (YC W21) unifies organic search, promotions, and ads in one optimized system for marketplaces.
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I got the chance to speak with Andrew Yates, co-founder and CEO of Promoted.ai, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Promoted (YC W21) unifies organic search, promotions, and ads in one optimized system for marketplaces. They sort your marketplace search and promote the best listings at the top to increase revenue.
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Startup Spotlight: Promoted.ai
Problem: It’s hard to match buyers with sellers profitably and at scale.
Market: $5B for marketplace optimization. Bigger for cross-app promotions.
Solution: We sort marketplace search and promote the best listings at the top.
Team: Andrew (CEO) and Dan (CTO) met at Pinterest. Previously, we helped build ad systems at Facebook and Google.
Recent Success:
Yates: We’ve been really successful at hiring fantastic engineers and empowering them to solve huge system areas that are typically owned by dozens if not hundreds of engineers at other companies. Our team is all staff ex-Google and ex-Facebook ads engineers whom we’ve worked with before. Part of this is years of network building working at these tech companies and also years of experience hiring engineers. Another part is we hire people with past experience in our domain: they know what good looks like, and they know what corners can be cut and where quality is critical. Finally, we solve for win-win, which is a value of Promoted. Engineers who worked in big ad tech at Facebook and Google know how insanely valuable it is for these systems to work correctly. We give them an opportunity to own this value for themselves. The expected value equation is critical when any engineer on the team can walk off and make $0.5-1M+ TAC in cash at any time.
Recent Struggle:
Yates: Another value of Promoted is “make money not metrics.” This may seem too on-the-nose, but it’s a critical value for us to preserve our earnestness and accountability to produce results. One thing we’ve struggled with is winning the trust of internal engineering teams. They are responsible for integrating and maintaining our products, and they don’t want to be suckered into something complex that they know doesn’t really do anything that they couldn’t have built 80% of themselves. When we surmount this distrust, it’s a magical unlock for the tech leads we work with because speak the same language and we can focus together on moving the business metrics with technology.
Founder Advice:
Yates: Don’t identify with being an entrepreneur.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Yates: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Devin Finzer, Founder of OpenSea: OpenSea is the first and largest peer-to-peer marketplace for cryptogoods (like an eBay for crypto assets), which include collectibles, gaming items, and other virtual goods backed by a blockchain.
Kennan Davison, Founder of Skio: Skio (skio.com) helps brands on Shopify sell subscriptions without ripping their hair out.
David Pekar, Founder of Rare Bits: Rare Bits is a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto goods.
Who should I profile next? Leave your suggestion in the comments:
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