The Up Group

Tell us about Keybroker? What does the company do and how did the company develop from an idea to a business?

Keybroker works with some of the largest online retailers in Europe to drive more profitable online sales from online marketing. In the last 365 days we have generated close to 500 million Euros in order value for our clients. We do this on a gain-share pricing model, with a unique technology and a great team of campaign analysts.

Keybroker started by doing arbitrage on traffic bought from search engines and sold to the big affiliate networks. We quickly realised that search marketing was an absolutely critical sales channels for retailers and would not be allowed to just be “unmanaged” but also that it was very complex and required big investments in technology. Keybroker could provide this package to retailers directly in a smart way.

The business is VC-funded. Apart from the financial boost are there any other benefits or even downsides with VC-investment?

We have been fortunate to work with two of Scandinavia’s largest industrial holding companies Investor AB and Industrifonden. They’ve been great at providing stability, network and experience in our growth journey. Our investors invest from their own balance sheets so we’ve been spared most turmoil and potential myopic decisions that could come as a consequence from a financial market in distress. 

There are a number of players in the online advertising optimisation market.  What is innovative about Keybroker and who are your competitors in the UK?

For us results are really key and we put our neck on the line for our clients. We do this through our pricing model that only rewards us if we bring in more sales under a maximum cost per order. Our Campaign Analysts are also remunerated based on how much “Success Fee” they generate for their clients so we really do share the financial and strategic risk. It’s all geared to ensure that we have the same incentives as our client has.

To deliver these results we have developed a new generation of search marketing technology. We call it Business-based search marketing. It allows retailers to lift their merchandising rules up from their sites and stores to Google. So your online marketing campaign is no longer keyword driven but product and business rule driven. We firmly believe that advertising and merchandising are critical to each other in a multichannel landscape; our technology, RealTime Ads, is a bridge between the two.

The UK market is probably one of the most sophisticated online marketing markets in the world and the competition is immense. However, we feel bullish in that we are genuinely changing the game within a channel that is of paramount importance to a retailer’s success online. Add to this our new service offerings, Power of 5, around social media sales, display, mobile and web TV and we are very confident that the success we’ve had in Scandinavia will be replicated here and beyond. 

Keybroker has a number of offices outside of its original market Sweden. At which point did you decide to go international and what have been the main challenges with expanding outside of your “home market”?

Keybroker is the largest search and social company in Sweden. Last year we did 7% of all order value online in Sweden! In order to continue our growth we need to expand geographically. We also felt that being in the UK would challenge us to develop our offering.

Expanding is of course to get business outside our home market and we have been able to quickly sign up leading online retailers here. It’s taken a lot of work and patience to build a network and trust in a new market where very few know us to start with. It really is a market based on relations and trust. It’s also great fun as we get to relive our start-up phase again but now with the backing of a mature business in Scandinavia to lean on.

What are the company’s aspirations for the future?

Keybroker is today a group with two distinct arms – advertising services and advertising technology. Our aspiration is to continue to grow and develop under our own steam and be one of the leading groups in Europe generating profitable online sales for the best clients.

What is it like to work at Keybroker? What type of company culture are you keen to foster?

Our pitch is “Try us” which internally means “Trust me”. “Try us” is the bedrock of our culture. We want to work with “buddies with brains”, people that not only impress us but are genuinely fun to be around and contribute to our culture. The client is always king and we work hard to really understand how we can contribute to the client’s success. Oh, and cash is queen. We foster an environment where leadership can be demonstrated by anyone – it’s a mind set not a position. Our people and culture is by the far the most important component to Keybroker’s growth and success. The people who work at Keybroker have defined our culture and you can find the culture charter on our web site. 

You are one of the co-founders. What is your personal background prior to Keybroker? How have you found starting your own business? What have been the biggest surprises?

After completing my Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Economics I began to work for Accenture’s Supply Chain Service Line in London. I focused on Sales and Operations Planning for large retail and consumer goods companies such as Frito-Lay, Pernod Ricard and Sainsbury’s.

Starting and working with Keybroker is like getting a MBA every 6 months – sales, product development, price models, organisational change, funding etc… The highs are of course as great as you would expect. There are of course several insights. One is that “Everything is possible” is actually true and it’s critical to believe in it. You will never be bigger or better than your biggest ambition. Just by stating what you want gets you a long way. You don’t get what deserve but what you expect. A key to success is to set big bold goals from day one and believe in them. 

Outside of your own market, what do you think is the hottest emerging trend or technology right now?

I find the current development in medicine mind boggling. It may well be the next big development that totally will change how we all live just as digital technology has done over the last decades. There are projects out there in for example protein and steam cell research that has the potential to have dramatic impacts on our ability to cure diseases, restore lost body functionality and ultimately expand our life spans. What are the consequences of that? For one prepare to get a second career!

Keybroker works with some of the largest online retailers in Europe

Tell us about Adzuna? What does the company do and how did the company develop from an idea to a business?

Adzuna.co.uk is a search engine for classified ads enabling people to search for the right job locally. Essentially, it searches thousands of sites, aggregating millions of adverts in one place, so you don’t have to trawl the net to find the perfect job. And soon it will be possible to search for properties and cars in the same way too. We hatched the Adzuna plan in 2010 on the back of an envelope in a central London pub. The site went live in July 2011.

How is the business funded?

We’ve raised £300k investment from Passion Capital and prominent angels (with backgrounds at eBay, Skype, BT and Virgin) in addition to funds originally invested by the founders.

How is Adzuna different from Google and other established search engines in the space?

Our aim is to provide the user with exactly what they want. Firstly, completeness and freshness of content – we list every ad, update our index constantly in real-time and expire ads as soon as they become stale. This also enables us to gather data that will enrich the user experience.

Secondly, Adzuna provides a clean, non-spammy user experience – we have more powerful search filters and less overt advertising so the user gets to the information as quickly as possible.

Thirdly, unlike any other search engine operating in this space, we a have a social networking overlay to give job seekers an advantage in the market.

Who is the business aimed at and why should they use Adzuna?

We’re currently targeting all active jobseekers in the UK or those with an interest in comprehensive jobs data. We think folks in the UK should use Adzuna because we have all available job vacancies in the UK listed in one place (over 450,000 jobs) and we allow our users to connect to these vacancies by leveraging their friends on Facebook and LinkedIn.

How do you plan to monetise the business?

The business model will be advertising funded both in paid per click/search based but at this stage we are purely focussed on building an excellent classifieds search experience that people want to use. Money will come later and in ways that don’t damage that experience – although we know from our previous businesses that consumer traffic in this sector is valuable to advertisers.

At the moment there is a specific vertical focus. How possible is it to scale across different verticals? Is there a possibility Adzuna could go international?

Yes, we’re just a job search engine at the moment, but we plan to expand into property and cars in the not too distant future. Our search engine in property and cars will behave in much the same as it does in jobs – all listings, compelling data insights and cool social layers.

We aim to be the biggest and best classified search engine globally and you can expect to see us expanding outside of the UK in 2012.

What are the challenges you expect to face when trying to grow this business?

We aim to be a serious global player in classifieds and we need robust and scalable technology to get us there. If our systems and processes are not designed to work for 10’s of millions of users per month, we’re not going to be able to fulfill our vision. So, we’re working pretty hard on getting this right at the moment.

How big is the team now? What do you think are the main ingredients of building the best team?

We are currently a team of around 10 people comprising of founders, technical development and marketing. Some are in London, and some telecommute from around Europe. They are all incredibly passionate & rock stars at what they do.

Which companies do you most admire at the moment and why?

Andrew – Spotify (although they are losing some popularity at the moment with Facebook login shenanigans!) I admire Daniel Ek because he’s not afraid to disrupt markets and he’s only 26.

Doug – AirBnB (despite their recent trust and safety issues): created a new category in an area that used to be dull, innovating on product and monetisation, using social networks cleverly, trying to genuinely connect people and meet their needs … I also like Etsy and Peopleperhour for some of the same reasons.

Adzuna.co.uk is a search engine for classified ads enabling people to search for the right job locally.

Here at Up, we’ve been busy hosting a series of roundtable breakfast events over the last few months for leading digital/online Marketing, Product and Technology Executives, and we’ve been delighted with the results. Lots of lively debate with some very interesting people!!

In June, we hosted Up’s Product Breakfast bringing together Product Management Executives from companies including:

• Basekit, Betfair, Covestor, Flirtomatic, FON, Gekko, Guardian, Hotels.com, Imagini , Lastminute.com, Microsoft, Playfish, Skype, Talk Talk, Vodafone

In July, we hosted Up’s Technology Breakfast bringing together CTOs/VP Engineering Directors from companies including:

• Blue Duck Education, Geo Sweep, Harper Collins, iTrigga, Marks & Spencer, Time Out, Vzaar, Wahanda, Wiggle

In September, we hosted Up’s Marketing Breakfast for leading CMOs and Marketing Directors from companies including:

• Yahoo!, Quiet Riots, Mydeco.com, UKTV, Bet Now/Open Vantage, Betfair, My-Wardrobe, SecretSales.com, EMI, M and M Direct, Lovefilm

For full Event pictures and write-ups, please see:
http://www.theupgroup.co.uk/news_events.html

Investor Allstars Awards, Thursday 22nd September
The Natural History Museum??

The Up Group was proud to sponsor the ‘VC Fund of the Year’ category at this year’s Investor Allstars Awards on Thursday 22nd September at The Natural History Museum. The event is often described as the ‘Oscars’ of the VC/PE community and it certainly upheld this description this year – an excellent event! A great keynote from the hugely impressive entrepreneur, Heiko Hubertz, Founder and MD of Bigpoint.

The shortlist for ‘VC Fund of the Year’ included:

• Atomico Ventures II
• DFJ Esprit
• Gimv
• Index Ventures
• Intel Capital
• Nauta Capital
• Northzone
And the Winner was : DFJ Esprit
?www.investorallstars.com

Clare Johnston, The Up Group, with award winners DFJ Esprit

http://www.investorallstars.com/IAS/2011-gallery.thtml

The Up Group was proud to sponsor the ‘VC Fund of the Year’ category at this year’s Investor Allstars Awards on Thursday 22nd September at The Natural History Museum.

The Up Group is proud to be sponsoring the 'VC Fund of the Year' category at this year's Investor Allstars Awards

At our Marketing Breakfast last week there was a lively debate with senior marketers from both larger and smaller businesses. It was an opportunity to discuss current trends and challenges as they affect businesses such as UKTV, Betfair, mydeco, EMI, Secretsales, Yahoo! and my-wardrobe.

During the two-hour session, the attendees shared practical solutions, such as which agencies should be used for specific tasks, as well as discussing what had worked from a strategic perspective for their respective businesses. Some of the key themes are highlighted below.

Brand
The room had a mix of marketers who had come up the traditional brand marketing route before making the transition into more numbers-driven marketing and others that had started in direct marketing. There were interesting insights shared on how brand marketing has evolved; especially if you worked for a pure play online business. From the start-up marketers, the idea that you drive traffic to your website and let excellent customer service and retention programmes do your brand work was also voiced.

Traffic
The group discussed the view that traffic can be another word for community; a community that you need to nurture with the right content and incentives. From here the discussion moved into the realm of social media and the best ways of creating loyal users who will become your brand ambassadors. A couple of attendees offered examples of where devoting time and being openly responsive to bad publicity had resulted in creating customer loyalty. Another shared that the process of changing dissatisfied users into evangelists had been introduced as a key weekly metric within their business.

Metrics
How to best measure the success of your activities was discussed at length. Everyone agreed that clarifying your objective early on is key. However, as expected given the different backgrounds of the attendees, it became clear objectives are very different if you are in online media as opposed to working for an ecommerce business. The use of appropriate measurement tools makes a huge difference. “One size” does not fit all and results can be interpreted in many ways; hence it is essential to choose the right solution for your business. The attendees all agreed on the importance of being commercially-minded and the need to create a good relationship with your CFO!

Future
The last issue of the session was that of a changing environment for marketers. From being able to influence an audience with big branded campaigns and control the media output, marketing is now increasingly about pulling together a number of streams and creating one message. The group agreed that marketers today might have less control but with more accurate measurement tools it is easier to see what you are doing right.

The Marketing series will continue throughout the year. Should you wish to get involved then drop us a line at hermione@theupgroup.co.uk.

Tell us about HouseTrip?
HouseTrip is Europe’s largest booking website for holiday apartments. The concept is to allow you to book your very own apartment (instead of a boring hotel room) for a few nights in every popular destination in Europe.

How did HouseTrip develop from an idea to a business?
It developed well. I had the idea with my wife while studying hospitality management in Lausanne, Switzerland. Straight out of university, in the beginning of 2009, we drafted a business plan, got early funding from a few business angels, recruited a team and developed the website. We had lots of challenges of course but kept it moving and we launched the website in January 2010. Since then, we have been one of the fastest growing companies on the continent with an average monthly revenue growth of more than 40% for more than 20 consecutive months now.

HouseTrip is VC-funded. What is the main thing the funding enabled the business to do? Are there any downsides?
There are more upsides than downsides. The obvious upside is that pretty much only VCs are able to invest such large sums and follow up with further rounds of funding. Also, having VC funding from top-tier investors brings you credibility and that makes a lot of things easier, in particular recruitment.

You are originally from Switzerland and started the business there. What was the reason for establishing an office in London?
We still have the HQ in Switzerland but the reason behind opening the London office was mostly a question of reaching a specific online talent pool, which is basically much larger in London than in Lausanne.

What have you found are the main differences in running a business in Lausanne to London? Culture, expertise?
I must say that I am having an easier time managing UK employees. Switzerland is currently in a very favourable economical situation: less than 3% unemployment, extreme competition to hire any staff, etc. Working on the till of a supermarket earns you more than CHF60k a year (£46k)! This means that Swiss employees are used to awesome working conditions; and it is extremely difficult to grow a start-up in that environment. In Switzerland, we’ve twice had cases of employees threatening to sue us because of their working conditions – both times for ridiculous claims (one guy telling us he couldn’t bear anymore to work until 5.10pm every day when end-of-working-day was defined as 5pm in his contract). In the UK, the working culture is completely different and it’s infinitely easier to grow a start-up in that environment.

There seems to be a lot of activity in this space. What is the size of the holiday rentals market and what differentiates HouseTrip from its competitors?
The holiday rentals market is valued at about $100B so it’s absolutely massive. The way we differ is mostly because we go after a slightly more mature market (in terms of age of the people who make up that segment) than our competitors. AirBnB and its two German clones, Wimdu and 9Flats, go after backpackers with an offering composed mostly of spare rooms and properties which are main residences (as opposed to dedicated holiday rentals). We attract more families and couples with an inventory composed mostly of professionally managed, dedicated holiday rentals. We’re also much more efficient for our hosts: a few of our hosts are also listed with competitors and they all report to us that we simply bring them many more bookings. Always nice to hear.

You founded HouseTrip straight out of university, what has been the most interesting learning experience?
I’ve had to learn a fair bit indeed! The most interesting has probably been to learn how to think strategically and tactically as well as how to align your resources’ focus with your strategy.

What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?
Focus and say “no” a lot. You need to pick a handful of things and do them perfectly, otherwise you’ll end up being all things to all people. I tell every “newbie” entrepreneur I meet this, however a core (and important) characteristic of entrepreneurs is that they rarely follow advice so they all make the mistake of being unfocused at the beginning. Those who survive are those who change course and focus.

What is it like to work at HouseTrip? What type of company culture are you keen to foster?
We’ve actually just completed a human resources survey and 100% of HouseTrip’s employees would recommend it as a place to work. So I guess we’ve already developed a fairly nice working environment. I don’t think working in a start-up is for everyone: you need to expect lots of empowerment, responsibilities, an environment of uncertainty, constant change and a lot of work. So we only recruit people we think would fit the bill well. Our culture is articulated in a few values; A FEAST: Ambitious, Focussed, Experimental, Authentic, Simple, Team spirit.

HouseTrip has grown very quickly in 2011. What are the company’s aspirations for the future?
I can only say we’re very ambitious and would be happy to keep our growth rate going forward.

Outside of your own market, what do you think is the hottest emerging trend or technology right now?
I’ll focus on the Internet even though there are some fascinating things happening also in biotech and med-tech. The internet has enabled to make people’s lives easier in a lot of ways. If you make a lot of people’s lives easier and have a solid business model around it, you’ve unlocked a hot trend. What’s painful in people’s lives? Ordering/buying food is annoying; finding a great professional (builder, doctor, dentist, cleaner) is very difficult; I have no good resource to recommend cool activities during the weekend (not that I have any but we’re speaking hypothetical) in London, you name it.