Calling On All Newsletter Subscribers To Join The FPC Syndicate; Boris & IPONWEB Do The Right Thing
This is the FirstPartyCapital weekly newsletter. It covers news and updates about the FirstPartyCapital fund and its portfolio companies.
Another Call To Join Our Industry Syndicate
You are getting the newsletter one day early this week, as FirstPartyCapital is off to Cheltenham for two days of world class National Hunt racing.
Our main story in this week’s newsletter is our new open syndicate policy. We now have over 500+ industry execs signed up to our syndicate. We want to get to a 1000 by the end of the Q3.
There are over 1000 subscribers to this newsletter so we are expecting you all to join the syndicate at some stage.
Here are the reasons why you need to join today:
There are no commitments: you invest at your pleasure
We have the best deal flow in the industry;
Many of our portfolio companies are already receiving M&A interest and will be raising at higher valuations this year, this is your chance to get in early
Most deals on the syndicate are series A, high-growth companies with recurring SaaS revenue
Join 500 of your peers, investing in the future of our industry
Join The Industry’s Only Global Syndicate Focused On Ad Tech, MarTech & Digital Media
Boris Shutters IPONWEB’s Moscow Operations
In a brutally honest open letter this week Boris Musykantskii, CEO of IPONWEB, outlined why the company is closing the Moscow office.
https://blog.iponweb.com/an-open-letter-from-iponweb-ceo
The Russian engineering hub has been a critical part of its tech DNA for many years. But the company - probably conscious of an M&A event - has been moving key parts of the business to London and Berlin.
Boris talks about his close connections with Ukraine and, in his usual understated way, he articulates why he is opposed to this pointless war.
The company is now trying to extract 400 engineers and their families to new locations in Cyprus and UAE.
A lot of companies in Europe have operations in Russia and Ukraine - and are in a similar situation.
Thoughts and prayers don’t really help much in a situation like this. And neither does glib commentary. This madness is literally on our doorstep, affecting many of our industry colleagues..
Some of FirstPartyCapital’s LPs, for instance, have literally driven to the Ukrainian border to get their staff out of the country.
This is a brave move by Boris and IPONWEB. Not many Russians are speaking out publicly against this war - for obvious reasons.
At a time when independent Russian voices have been silenced, these mini acts of defiance by its citizens speak volumes.
FirstPartyCapital believes this is the right thing to do. And like everyone in this industry, we stand with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
The Death Of The IP Address In Ad Tech Cometh
Google announced this week that it is shuttering UA to make way for a new version of the analytics products - so that it can comply with privacy laws in Europe.
The most revealing part of the announcement: Google Analytics will no longer log or store IP address information in the new product, moving instead to probabilistic modeling.
This should sound alarm bells to everyone in the industry. A lot of targeting and measurement in ad tech (particularly CTV and fingerprinting) relies on the IP address.
This is a clear sign that the privacy mullahs are going to start focusing on the use of the IP address in our industry. Ad tech needs to get ahead of this, as privacy will be core to any longevity. But is the industry listening?
Deals Live On The FirstPartyCapital Platform
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Passendo: The leading category tech vendor in the email ad server space that just raised a pre-series A €2.3 million round …
The FirstPartyCapital fund: A $15 million fund investing in the next wave of innovative ad tech, martech and digital media startups, predominantly at the seed stage…