Welcome to Tectastic, where we navigate the intersection of technology and business, uncovering innovations that redefine our world. Nicky, senior. Welcome to it's techtastic. It is so lovely to have you here. Thank you so much for having me? You are a rare breed. You're a repeat entrepreneur, somebody who had success, exited a company, and it got right back into it again. I think that's a red breed because I think that's certifiable, but whatever. Let's keep going.
That was generally my statement. Like, you're you're doing thing that is incredibly difficult. You've been successful at it once, and then you're going back in to try and model lightning a second time. It's a very difficult And to your point, you have to be somewhat nuts to do it. Yes. What is it that draws you to this entrepreneurial pursuit? I don't know that it is a drawer. I think it's a compulsion. And it wasn't something that I ultimately saw myself doing either.
It was more something like there's a problem to solve and I can see how to solve it and nobody else is doing it, so I need to do it. So it's not so much the need to create a business or do something different or even the success of it. It was more along the lines of I wanna work for myself. Somebody asked me the other day, how did I start initially? And it was like, I wanted to work for myself, and I wanted to work at home, when I had a child, and this was 20 years ago.
So this is not sort of like, this is just like, why would you of course, you can work remotely. You know, like, in the world that we live in now. But 20 years ago, it wasn't, or actually longer than 25 years ago, it wasn't something that was so common. And so the whole idea about working for myself and creating something gave me that flexibility as a woman and wanting to run a business and and all that sort of stuff.
And as it turned out, there is this really small concept called leverage, which is you do it once and you can replicate it a thousand times. I like the way that printing presses were created, and that's the almost one of the most classic forms of leverage. So my background was in consulting and, of course, consulting new cell hours, but get into technology, then you have leverage.
So that's what I ended up creating with my business partner and my husband was a business that, was a technological business. We created an structure. And then once we've got clients hooked, we were able to keep on going. So it was our first business was an overnight success and took 14 years. Yeah. Very definition of overnight success. That's right. And we bootstrapped it. So it was, again, probably one of those lightning in a bottle sort of situations where we moved countries.
We sold our house to finance it. And moved countries and all of that sort of stuff. So I think it was just sheer guts and determination and, and timing, I suppose. So you you set a bunch of things that are very, very common with serial entrepreneurs. There's the need to work for yourself. I I've said that for me, it was always, I'm gonna take a bet on myself I don't need somebody else to take that bet. And why am I gonna bet on them? I'm gonna bet on myself first.
The compulsion to go solve a very hard problem and looking at it and saying, I know how I can do this and having that courage and that conviction to go and do it. The other thing that I loved is that leverage point Most people when they found that light in the bottle, they created that first opportunity for themselves. There was some magic that they discovered. There was something that they were like, ah, I can do that again. Sometimes it's in the same industry.
I I now profoundly understand ad tech, and so I'm gonna go do ad tech all over again. Often, though, it's a way of looking at the world or a particular way of developing technology to your point about technology that, can be applied to many different places What was the leverage that you found? What was the the unique thing that you're able to take and reproduce? So where it came from in the analog world before the world that we live in now, I was a PR consultant. So I ran a PR consultancy.
And the leverage in that world was during a press release or a story through a journalist, and then you amplified the message out to their audience. So it was something very classic before Facebook, before Instagram, before influences, before all of that sort of stuff. And so technologically, I've done that for a number of years. And so Google was created 9897 It was 98 to 99. There was something like that, though. Yeah. Right. So at that time, is when I discovered online.
And there was this really unique concept in digital acquisition digital marketing at the time called affiliate programs. Mhmm. So as a PR consultant, I was about the earned media space the internet at the time was about clicks and eyeballs. So that sort of inherently rubbed me up the wrong way because it was more the advertising model than the earned media model. So As it turned out, we got involved with a business, and they needed a bespoke affiliate technology.
So we designed it, created it, And then went out there and did it. And for me, publishers were like the journalists, the product, that we were selling or pushing or promoting or whatever else was just like the professional, consulting firms that I've been working with. So if seemed completely feasible, not knowing what you don't know, of course. And then it's just moving countries, because that's what you do when you start a new business.
You need to move country to an infrastructure you don't know with no friends, no family, all that sort of stuff. So that's what you do. Time zone. Get away your entire support network. Just start over from scratch. Yeah. That's exactly. And that's and, honestly, that's what we did. So we developed technology, affiliate technology designs, I I'm a niche player. I like niches. I was doing PR, it was professional services. Like, you know, like, I liked, I liked niches. So I went into another niche.
And the niece was regulated online gambling because that's where you find in 9th 2000. Yeah. So, yeah, so we developed a a product in a niche for regulated online gambling to the point that we exit the business in 2016. Created it in 2002 as a business. And at that point in time, I think, anecdotally, we were caught at 85% of the world's traffic in affiliate programs for online gambling.
Wow. So there was a lot of overlap when I was at Appianexus when we were building out the our ad tech from there. Affiliate marketing to us was it was a smaller market than what we were doing. We were, like, every eyeball on every web page all over the place. But, like, if you were doing e Hammer, it was a much better, mechanism for your churn. Right? Yep. Absolutely. And which is where the earned media comes in. Right? Owned media is a much better impact on your return.
Yeah. And if Google had swallowed the world, I I think that it was the better route for everybody. Well, it's really interest. Well, it's interesting. I now am doing affiliate programs for industry. So, unfortunately, it's the same hammer but a different context. And I I'm telling you it's just like things that I would love, repeat entrepreneurship, no, so they don't make the same mistakes. Well, not mistakes, but they they're sort of like a little bit more conscious about things.
So it's interesting affiliate program, and this is anecdotal again. So, you know, please don't. Anybody that's listening, this is a rule of thumb, not the rule of the world. Affiliate programs for retail account for about 7 to 10% of the acquisition funnel, which probably replicates what you've experienced before. And it's really because if I'm gonna do an Instagram purchase, if I see something displayed to me on gram or an ad somewhere or whatever else.
I'm likely to click on it or not or whatever else. There's not a whole lot of consideration that goes into But as soon as consideration and trust becomes sort of crucial to the equation, affiliate programs become a lot more impactful because these publishers, like or not, they're out there being that referral site that conduit to the audience, that education piece. So an online gambling at the time I was in it, affiliates accounted for about 30% of the acquisition funnel.
And the industry that I'm in at the moment, which is financial services, accounts from anywhere between 30 45% of the very interesting. Now I'm really curious because with chat EPT and the rise of AI, we're seeing a displacement of the Internet. Now it's early and not everybody's moved that way, but for myself, I use Google and other search tools about a third as much as I used to on a daily basis. And I've started using the the various chat tools a lot more frequently to do the same job.
Like, I want information on x, y, or z. I'm gonna go do it. I only go to the web when I need today information. I need really, really current. But if I want general knowledge, Right? I'm going to the AI tools. Yep. Absolutely.
And consumer behavior will end up shifting The difficulty is that when you're actually wanting to make a financial choice, the skewing of data related to sort of like The reason that publishers work so well and the reasons that numerous publishers are needed to make the ecosystem work is because people don't go to just one source.
And fair enough, you can say that a chat GBT or AI technology is synthesizing a whole lot of sources until you see the nuanced differences that you start to appreciate what a product mix is or what a product, especially in financial Right? Yeah. So it's sort of like financial services. It's a different beast at Jumpsley.
You touched on, I think, the most important topic when it comes to advertising in any form, whether it's, paid advertising or if it's performance based advertising or any of the other different models. It even comes up when you're talking about influencers. What you're really doing is you're buying the trust that somebody has in some other form. So leveraging the trust. You're leveraging the trust. What happens when my AI assistant becomes my most trusted resource?
I don't know that we as human beings are, I don't know how far away we are from that. I think it depends on your own level of personal competence. Because with a high level of personal competence, I'm gonna see something from AI and go that nuance is directed in the wrong direction, or that really small granular piece of information that then switches me in a different, completely different direction may or may not be accurate.
So I think the interesting thing about AI in its form is I think it's so leverageable when you are well versed in a subject, but when you're looking at financial literacy, when you're looking at financial competency, There are some areas that I make feel very comfortable in, but there's a whole lot that I don't.
Personally, my process is I don't wanna trust one source, I wanna sort of, like, do that bibliography of sources to understand reference points and understand lines and implications and things like So I think where your AI assistant comes in is to give you the context by which to consume the information to make a valid choice. The interesting part is always the journey. It's not the destination. And I I fully agree with that.
I I've been curious since I got involved in adtech, you know, 20 years ago when I first entered it. And it's not space apparently, and I had left it, and I don't look back with any on this, but I've I'm always curious where that technology and that industry is gonna go because it is the driver of so much of people's decision making. Like, we don't buy something because we make rational decisions.
We buy something because of emotional response we have to the brand or, you know, the product and in particular. I mean, Nike, I love Picky at Nike's. I worked there for a while, and I learned a lot about brand development while I was there, but you don't buy Nike shoes because they're the best shoes. You buy Nike shoes because they built a relationship with you that makes you feel a certain way an emotional response to it. We have an emotional response to paying.
And I'm always reminded of this when I see people driving a jeep because it has the lowest consumer reported like, reliability of any car ran on earth. Absolutely. And people keep buying them. Why do you keep buying jeeps people? Like, if you're an audience member and you bought a jeep, tell me why. And it'll almost always come down to, oh, I thought it looked cool. It made me feel like I was rough and tumble, or it was an outdoorsy person or whatever. Right? Just a feeling.
Not because it's a good car. Sorry, Jeep. But that's where I'm really curious how this is gonna play out because it is just a matter of convincing somebody to trust. That's definitely part of it, and I think that that's the biggest part of celebrity endorsements. You know, you see somebody like Michael Jordan playing basketball or, you know, a famous soccer player playing their sport. You see them enough times.
You see enough interviews with them that you feel like you know them and you say, oh, I I trust them. And so when they tell me, buy adidas, okay, I trust them. I'm gonna make the association with that individual, emotionally, more than I'm going to make it with any logic behind it. But which really things where you're at. Financial services, legal, there's there's a couple places I would say that logic has to drive more of it. And I think that most people drives more of it.
Yes. There's there's definitely a need to do your due diligence, and people don't have an emotional response to picking a financial service provider. And so it's very interesting that you've chosen a niche that that's true in, because I'm I'm curious too how that'll play out. Which is why the the reliance on third parties is so high for enterprise brands. But what you're talking about is brand equity. Brand equity is built through a lot of different means. Celebrity and Smith is one of them.
Brand quality is another, then there's sort of, like, reputational, you know, like, there's a whole range of different things on how to build brand equity. But one of the things that I particularly like about the sectors that I chosen to go into with this leverageable affiliate marketing model is that it has high regulation. So it's not the shoes. It's not the books. It's not the electronics.
It's not all of those sorts of things, which it's it in a consumer market, I feel is incredibly nuanced and, to my mind complicated and intricate in the whole lot, in terms of building brand equity, in terms of tracking different channels, in terms of the data. Some of that is, I should say, stripped away because of the legal framework by which in we work.
Like, not everybody can promote financial services as a bank, because you're just not, and there are regulatory bodies that come down pretty hard on that. And the the policing around it is pretty intense as well. So I think what it is is that every niche, which is why I'm a niche player and not a generalist, is that I think every niche has its windows. And we're the only affiliate network in North America all the world that focus on financial service And people say to me, why now and why again?
And I think the reason being is because I could see it because of these devices that we hold in our Hammer, because of digital account opening, because of, consumer behavior and appetite, because of technology, it was all moving in a different way to ai that we were talking about before, but it's still moving to a much more digital consumption. And I think it is so print that it deserves its own specialty and its own focus. So that's why we did it.
So what's the name of the company and how would I find out more about it? So the name of the company is called Vintel Connect. And it's just vintelconnect.com. And really what we are is we're a specialist in performance marketing or affiliate marketing to financial services. That's Anish. That's fantastic. So there's an there's a related niche as we were about it. I was thinking about software as a service or enterprise technology, and it already falls into a very familiar pattern.
It looks very similar. It's just that that affiliate program is done through channel marketing partnership agreements and, you know, these big contracts with big players. But it's basically the same thing. And it's for the same reason. Yep. Well, it is. You you you get, you know, like, you've got a new customer, headless data. You've got a new customer, and they up, and there's a transaction that comes involved. Yeah? Well, Nikita was fantastic having you on the show.
I just realized that we're out of time, and I love having you on this. It was a fantastic conversation. I'm really excited see what you're doing and how that continues to grow. You've already launched in market. You're already out in the wild. People can if they're in the market, they can reach out to you, which is good because I'm gonna connect you with a few people after the show. Great. Thanks so much for having me. And that's a wrap for this episode of Tectastic.
Wanna thank you personally for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Until then, keep exploring, and stay curious. Thank you for listening. If you are new here and enjoyed the content, please subscribe. It really helps us out. And if you are a regular listener, thanks so much for your continued support. Overwhelmed by tech debt. Discover Vala AI. The solution to tech challenges with the simplicity of a click. No engineering background? No problem.
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