Our US Podcast Debut; Lumen Deal About To Go Live; And Why We Must Keep The Internet Free
FPC Talks To Ari & Eric
Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi are two legends of the ad tech space, having built, scaled and sold ad tech companies.
They host the excellent weekly Marketecture podcast, covering the big news stories in ad tech.
Ari and Eric invited FPC onto this week’s edition. A world class podcasting experience was inevitable.
Here’s a top level summary of our chat:
The FPC thesis around MVI (MadTech value investing) versus “unicorn hunting”.
Why the MadTech startup scene outside the US is booming.
The opportunity for ad tech startups and investors (specifically our LPs) in Europe and beyond.
Monolithic US media market versus European privacy moat versus fragmented media markets in APAC/LATAM/MENA.
Why the ad net still matters and why PE want to buy scaled solutions.
Telcos trying to fill the ID vacuum in Europe.
Ad tech consolidation (specifically the SSP segment).
Jeff Green, the GOAT.
You can listen to the full pod on your platform of choice below:
Spotify:
Apple: tinyurl.com/y54dw9n5
Lumen Syndicate Deal Is (Nearly) Live - Get Investing
FirstPartyCapital is leading the £3 million round into Lumen. Of our £1.5 million investment, we are offering a £400K allocation at very favourable terms to our syndicate.
This is very much first come, first served. We already have a waiting list on this deal - so you will need to be quick. It will be on the platform early next week.
Here are the detail on the deal:
Category: The post-privacy attention-based measurement and targeting to rule them all.
Financial performance: The company has grown revenue 100% y-o-y; specific details will be available on the platform.
Valuation: Ridiculously attractive valuation.
EIS tax relief: Lumen has received advanced assurance that it will qualify for an extension to the initial EIS period by being a "knowledge intensive" company. Therefore UK taxpayers will benefit from EIS relief on their investment.
Team: Mike Folett, and the Lumen Research team, have been pioneering the use of attention measurement in advertising for 8 years. Ezra Pierce and the team at Avocet, are some of the brightest minds in ad tech. The merger of these two teams has created a category winner that has the team and tech to scale attention.
Exit potential: Now I could give you a long list of buyers, but you need to register your interest (contact@firstpartycapital.com).
By the looks of it, this allocation is going to go very quickly.
To pre-register interest, email us directly: contact@firstpartycapital.com.
Why We Serve Ads
The investigative story about “Team Gorge” by a consortium of journalists once again highlighted the importance of independent journalism.
The months-long investigation exposed a covert team operating out of Israel (the home of cyber-weaponry) that used scaled disinformation tactics and strategies across Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube to influence outcomes in multiple elections.
You can read the salacious details here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/disinformation-hacking-operative-team-jorge-tal-hanan.
The industrialisation of disinformation is an existential problem for the platforms that facilitate the practice and the democracies across the world that “Team Gorge” is paid to destabilise.
It is vital that we have a free independent press to expose these activities. Ad tech has a responsibility to support and monetise great publications.
Serving ads has never been more important.
Have a great weekend, readers.