>> What is it that let's say Adaptly would do for their company?
How would it help them make more money?
>> Yeah, so essentially we are a media brand technology for social.
And we sit on top of Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, a bunch of their platforms
and help big brands, little brands, big agencies, businesses of all
sizes reach their audiences across the different environments.
>> Okay, but how would you do that?
I mean I understand, rhetorically, how that makes sense.
But let's say a big pizza company comes to you, and
says, Nikhil, we don't know what to do.
There are all these different social media platforms.
We can't be sending tweets and the Facebook likes out all day long.
We make pizza.
What do you do for that?
>> Yeah, so ultimately it becomes an interesting question around which
platforms do you want to be on first?
How do you think about these environments as containing only the audiences of people
that will buy a pizza from you.
And then where it gets really interesting is thinking about how do you amplify your
content, how do you make sure you can apply paid media and real dollars,
marketing dollars, to grow that message against that audience, and
layer on all kinds of really interesting data.
So for example, for pizza companies which we work with a few of,
you can leverage things like TV retargeting.
So when the ad for Domino's goes on television,
you can show them the ad on Twitter and on Facebook at the same time.
>> And you handle all that, so the company writes a check to you-
>> Yes.
>> And you say we’ll take care of all the technical back office stuff, we’ll take
all of that video and we’ll figure out a way to get it to the people that want it.
>> Yeah, we’re fundamentally a technology company.
We provide a layer of services and
tools to our brands and our partners that enable them to do that.
We also do everything ourselves just to make it as easy as possible.
>> So are you in competition with a traditional advertising company?
And at the same time you are complimentary because the ad company will come to you
and say, we're very good with the concept but we want you to do the implementation.
>> Definitely, we're an ad technology company that sits
alongside all the traditional agencies and traditional advertising businesses.
And what is really interesting when you think about it, social is something that
complements the way people use the Internet and live their daily lives.
It's not something that's really designed to replace anything.
It helps achieve the message across many, many different channels.
>> Did you think of this when you were at Northwestern?
Because I know you went from Northwestern and then you started another company.
You've got a background as an entrepreneur.
When did you come up with this thing?
>> Yeah, so it was a really interesting story actually.
I actually had an internship my junior year.
I was in electrical engineering at Northwestern,
at was at HBO here in New York.
And I saw how they were marketing and how they were buying media and
they really knew how to do billboards and TV, and all kinds of different things.
But when it came to the social thing, everybody was like how do we do this?
What's the best way to do it?
Very, it was a lot of confusion, it was very new.
So I went back to school and
met my co-founder in the back of a really boring probability class,
and essentially said hey, let's figure out a way to solve this problem.
Somehow convinced him to drop out of school.
>> You convinced him to drop out of school. >> I did, I did.
>> What's his name?
>> His name is Garrett Ullom.
>> Okay.
>> Yes, his mom wasn't too happy at the time, but, she sends us care packages and
cookies and stuff nowadays.
>> All right, so now that you both are working on this startup,
you gave up I believe a job offer to go work for Microsoft, right?
>> Yeah, that's right, and ultimately my father was a dot com entrepreneur, and
he built a lot of businesses in Silicon Valley.
And just kind of got the bug at an early age and said hey, opportunity costs,
if there's any time I'm going to do anything and
start a business, it's going to be now.
So, I figured I might as well try it right after school.
>> What about raising the money to do this?
You basically put yourself out there, and what happened?
>> So, really right out of school I went into an incubator program in Philadelphia
called DreamIt Ventures.
>> Dream Adventures?
>> DreamIt Ventures.
>> DreamIt Ventures in Philadelphia.
>> That's right, that's right. They give you a little bit of cash, 20,
$25,000, say you have three months, go figure something out.
If you can make it, you made it,
if you can't, go back to doing whatever you were doing.
And we went through the program, met a lot of really great people, and
it's an amazing program that supported us.
And literally after demo day, which is kind of the day that you present your
ideas to the community and investors, First Round Capital, which is a major
institutional venture, capitalist firm in the country, decided to fund us.