Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Lacoste.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jonathan. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m originally from a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio and first came to Boston in 2011 to attend Boston College. While at school, I met my future co-founder who had just finished a business plan competition at BC. We took the idea that online advertising wasn’t very effective and started doing a ton of research.
Shortly afterward, we had raised about $500k, accepted into TechStars Boston, and subsequently dropped out.
Fast-forward to today, Jebbit has raised over $10M, has ~50 employees working in our Newbury Street office and works with some of the largest companies in the world, including Snapchat, Expedia, and CVS.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not a smooth road at all! With any start-up, there are always struggles, but I’d categorize ours into a couple buckets:
-First company — there’s so much to learn about starting a company and for those that are going out and trying for the first time, many routine things (i.e. how do you structure employee compensation, how do you negotiate an office lease, when should you hire certain roles) are all decisions you could potentially mess up.
-Product-market fit — most entrepreneurs try to come up with a good idea and then push it into the market for people to buy or use, depending on the business model. We fell into this trap when we first started. The best companies are usually created when there’s a very specific problem you know about and your company helps solve that problem. We now do that for the enterprise data market (sexy, huh?)
-Team – we’ve largely been very lucky here, but given how hard you have to work in a startup to get started, making sure you have the right co-founders, early employees and investors are incredibly important. When you don’t, it slows your growth and can cause sleepless nights.
Please tell us about Jebbit.
Our company is all about two fundamental shifts we’re seeing in the world today. First, everything you experience digitally is becoming more personalized and catered towards your interests. The second is that we’re all glued to our mobile devices and they have quickly become the most important piece of technology for most of us.
The challenge for some of the largest enterprise customers is that the data they have on consumers (what you viewed on their website, where you live, your age, gender, etc.) isn’t always useful when trying to send you a personalized email or showing you content on Facebook you’ll enjoy.
That’s where we come into play — we’ve built what is called a “Declared Data Platform” — it gives the power back into the hands of consumers to share their motivations, interests and buying intentions through visually appealing, mobile content experiences (think the most beautiful survey experience you’ve seen). As a company, I’m most proud of the incredible team we’ve assembled, the opportunity to work with some of the largest brands in the world every day and help them solve their challenges.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Spend a lot more time understanding the industry and the unique problems of digital marketers (our target buyer) before we created a product and pushed it out there.
Contact Info:
- Address: 126 Newbury Street
- Website: https://www.jebbit.com/
- Twitter: @jebbit
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