When you set out to build a company, you never really know what you have until your third year – if you get to year three. That’s why when we started Clickable over two years ago, we didn’t even spend five minutes writing a grand mission or vision. We simply focused on solving one distinct problem: the complexity in online advertising. We’re still deeply committed to solving this problem every day, week and month. We’ve now grown from two co-founders to over 65 incredible people in less than twenty-four months, and raised over $22.5 million in growth capital in the last twelve.
There are many factors that prevent startups from discovering market potential: macro market uncertainties; deep founder and investor biases (i.e. chasing science projects or egos); late customer acquisition and market testing; lack of transparency; failure to identify and follow your customers down an optimized product roadmap leading to real revenues; and, finally, a lack of funding.
In an early-stage company, the founders’ roles are to set the strategic vision, and walk directly into market, product, customer and organizational conflict and friction. It’s also the founders’ roles to drive transparency and accountability into every role and function, and keep the lights on. As we considered the macro-market environment for the next 18 to 24 months, we decided to aggressively take this last risk off the table by finding the best funding partners to accomplish our goal: solving online advertising complexity. We found these ideal partners in Union Square Ventures, FirstMark Capital (Formerly Pequot Ventures) and, now, The Founders Fund. Our investors have proven tremendous foresight by serving as the initial investors in Facebook, LinkedIn, Slide, StubHub, Massive, Etsy, Geni, Tacoda, Twitter, Ironport, Meetup, Quantcast, Zygna, Powerset, Del.icio.us, and Livegamer among many others. We are honored to be one of the portfolio companies of this elite group of investors.
So how do we intend to deploy this capital? It’s simple: to disrupt the conversation in the market from one of complexity, to one of simplicity. We intend to deploy our capital to the exclusive benefit of our paying customers to whom we passionately listen, and follow their voice down a disciplined and rapid path of product innovation and execution. Clickable is polarizing the market on this thesis of simplicity and development speed – and we are only gaining momentum. See our news release on the funding, issued today.
To all of our customers, partners, advisors, stakeholders and friends, thank you for your past contributions and ongoing support. We’re humble and always listening to your feedback so we can constantly improve and ensure our collective success.
David S. Kidder
Clickable CEO and Co-Founder