Sandy Lohr. She’s a mother, wife, dog lover and leader of one of the best advertising technology teams in Silicon Beach. Growing up in the industry, she transitioned from client side to tech provider over 2 years ago. Her team strives daily to help local businesses globally find the best customer with her company, MatchCraft.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Jab Jab Jab Right Hook
What CEO do you follow? – Susan Wojcicki
Favorite online tool? — Accompany
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Be humble”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:44 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
02:18 – MatchCraft performs well and keeps its customers
02:46 – MatchCraft is a tech company in the adtech space
02:52 – 2018 will be MatchCraft’s 20th year
03:02 – MatchCraft matches buyers and sellers and has mastered the craft for doing so
03:10 – MatchCraft has 2 founders who came up with the strategy in 1998
03:21 – Sandy is the CEO and she joined MatchCraft 2 years ago
03:40 – MatchCraft acquired the client side of the company in 2014
03:50 – MatchCraft has a technology platform that helps run programmatic searches
- 04:15 – MatchCraft has been doing it a long time with scalability
04:50 – MatchCraft is a managing service and SaaS model
- 04:59 – The managing service is 70% of the business
- 05:46 – MatchCraft doesn’t work with any merchants
06:06 – Resellers of MatchCraft have over 6000 sales reps globally
06:23 – Resellers pay MatchCraft their media fee
- 06:35 – For the managing service, the fee is 17% to 12% depending on the volume
07:08 – MatchCraft has strategy discussions with their resellers
07:27 – The SaaS model varies, too
07:57 – MatchCraft provides ad copy in different languages and formats
08:50 – On the SaaS side, fees can go up to 7% of media spend depending on the volume
09:50 – MatchCraft is a privately held company
10:33 – Prior to MatchCraft, Sandy was on the client side and she was working for Advance Publications Inc.
- 11:30 – Sandy shares what she was doing prior to MatchCraft
- 13:15 – Advance Local Inc. bought MatchCraft and Sandy is now the active CEO in MatchCraft
- 14:08 – Sandy’s background has always been in marketing and she enjoys learning about technology everyday
14:25 – MatchCraft’s team size is nearly 100 and they promote diversity with their global offices
15:13 – MatchCraft doesn’t have to raise capital
15:39 – “We have extremely aggressive goals”
16:19 – MatchCraft has grown 26%, year over year
16:45 – MatchCraft has processed more than $100M ad spend annually
17:03 – Sandy’s opinion on the idea of Time being sold and what she would do if they buy one of Time’s brands
19:43 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There’s nothing you cannot learn that you really WANT to learn.
If your product is performing well, people will remain loyal to you and to your product/service.
Acquiring a company requires your due diligence—make sure it’s WORTH it.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

819: AdTech: Bake Off Leads to Major Acquisition and $100m+ In Media Spend Under Management

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders