Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about Mountain. That is, of course
Speaker 1: the voice of I'm sorry, was that mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Ignore me. I've been friends with this guy for years.
Speaker 1: I know, but I just mean sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: ignore that. Mark Douglas is with us founder, chairman, president
Speaker 1: and CEO of the ad platform company Mountain here in
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. We should point out the
Speaker 1: stock is a downfalling result. Although we were talking about
Speaker 1: a bunch of analysts have come out and raised the
Speaker 1: price target on the company. The stock is up more
Speaker 1: than seventy percent from its IPO in late May. Since
Speaker 1: you actually talked to him once before today on TV.
Speaker 2: Stock Take It Away eighty two percent.
Speaker 3: When I looked this morning since the IPO and that
Speaker 3: was just May twenty second, right, Yeah, I looked at
Speaker 3: the it's.
Speaker 1: Down sixteen percent, though I love it.
Speaker 2: I looked at your.
Speaker 4: Curious about buying for the Mark?
Speaker 2: So what is going on there? Mark?
Speaker 3: Because I counted eight analysts had raised their price targets
Speaker 3: on your stock.
Speaker 2: Since the release.
Speaker 3: So you do the earnings call yesterday, you have these
Speaker 3: one on one meetings and these analysts go back to
Speaker 3: their office crunch numbers and as they say, actually Mountain's
Speaker 3: worth more than we thought, and now the stock is down.
Speaker 4: How does that the I mean, this is the stock
Speaker 4: market for you. So the only thing we can do.
Speaker 4: We have a big TAM meaning big opportunity. That's the
Speaker 4: total addressable total addressing the mart let's not use acronyms.
Speaker 4: And then we are growing consistently and really really happy
Speaker 4: with the growth, and we are doing it with a
Speaker 4: justin the ebadad basis. We're doing it profitably, and so
Speaker 4: that's what we can do. And honestly, I think it's
Speaker 4: a great opportunity for investors. And you know, whoever wants
Speaker 4: to take profits today, great, you're you know you're up
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, well yesterday.
Speaker 1: Anybody listen is going to say, well, of course he's
Speaker 1: going to say it's a great investment. Yeah, talk to
Speaker 1: us about the business a little bit more. Mind, everybody
Speaker 1: who might not be familiar. We often talk to you about,
Speaker 1: certainly when it comes to the digital ad market. But
Speaker 1: tell us exactly what you guys are doing right.
Speaker 4: So what Mountain does is we enable small and mid
Speaker 4: sized businesses to advertise on television for the first time
Speaker 4: and to do it specifically on streaming television across every
Speaker 4: streaming network, and then do it with precision to find
Speaker 4: So these are not brands like a T mobile where
Speaker 4: everyone in America can be a customer. These are challenger
Speaker 4: e commerce brands, direct to consumer at travel brands who
Speaker 4: they are growing businesses and now instead of just being
Speaker 4: on paid search with Google and paid social with Meta,
Speaker 4: they now can be on the big screen on television,
Speaker 4: on across every streaming network and do it with precision
Speaker 4: to make money. And so mount enables that with our
Speaker 4: software platform, and we are partnered with virtually every streaming
Speaker 4: network in America. We're partnered with all of the TV
Speaker 4: manufacturers in order to make this possible. And customers have responded.
Speaker 1: What is a typical digital ad cost?
Speaker 4: Well, it's more in terms of what are the average budgets, right,
Speaker 4: So think of it that way. So your business and
Speaker 4: our minimum spend on our platform is five hundred a month.
Speaker 4: We have companies spending millions a month and so, and
Speaker 4: the way they think of this is what's the return
Speaker 4: on AD spend? What kind of revenue am I getting
Speaker 4: in comparison to what I'm spending on the media and so,
Speaker 4: and the return on ads spending most businesses looking for
Speaker 4: is in the two to one, the three to one arrangement.
Speaker 4: And you spend the dollar, you make two three. Now
Speaker 4: you play that game all day. And they're used to
Speaker 4: doing this with on Instagram basically using meta app platform
Speaker 4: and do it with Google's app platforms. So it's Google AdWords.
Speaker 4: Everyone's probably heard AdWords even if you haven't used it.
Speaker 4: Meta app platform now Mountain Performance TV, and that's the opportunity.
Speaker 4: We've a name and it's a very big market opportunity.
Speaker 4: So the companies consistently growing.
Speaker 1: The other thing they do is wait, wait, so what's
Speaker 1: the return on is it two for one or.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 4: Well, it depends on the customer. That's that Those are
Speaker 4: kind of average status more in a three to one range,
Speaker 4: but some if you have great product market fit, meaning
Speaker 4: like people see that probably like I have to own this,
Speaker 4: you're going to have a higher return than the company
Speaker 4: that just released the product and is still figuring out
Speaker 4: like you know, what their their target consumers wanted by
Speaker 4: So it varies by customer, but I say that's range
Speaker 4: two to the one to three to one is what
Speaker 4: most companies looking for, and that's the fit the economics
Speaker 4: of the business. The key thing here is ninety seven
Speaker 4: percent amounds customers have never advertised on TV before, So
Speaker 4: we are literally enlarging the market, bringing new companies into
Speaker 4: the television advertising market for the first time on streaming.
Speaker 1: And your take on that is what a percentage of
Speaker 1: the return on that or what is your piece of that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: So, so a portion of their budget goes to pay
Speaker 4: for all of the technology we power in order to
Speaker 4: make that possible. And that's very typical. If you think
Speaker 4: of a company, we don't compete with trade desks. They're
Speaker 4: in a completely different segment in market, but that's it's
Speaker 4: the same revenue model as someone like trade desk.
Speaker 1: So I think the coolest thing you thank you, by
Speaker 1: the way, No, of course, I just want to finish
Speaker 1: the thought.
Speaker 3: One of the coolest things that you guys do is
Speaker 3: you say that these people have never made ads before,
Speaker 3: A lot of them when they come to you. And
Speaker 3: so when I think of making an ad for TV,
Speaker 3: I think I got to get you know, cameraman, director, editor,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and so forth. But you have a AI
Speaker 3: tools that help them reduce that budget, I imagine drastically
Speaker 3: and you can tell me some numbers around that. And
Speaker 3: b you have Ryan Reynolds as your chief creative officer,
Speaker 3: right so, and you see the ads that he makes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just brilliant.
Speaker 4: So, by the way, they don't have direct and I
Speaker 4: mean they get produced in what seems like an impossibly
Speaker 4: short period of time. That's because your first thought is
Speaker 4: usually your best and increasingly, you know you can use
Speaker 4: the cell phone, the iPhone, the film to film an ad.
Speaker 4: So our customers, they're right, ninety seven percent who are
Speaker 4: new that television now have TV ads when we meet them,
Speaker 4: they do have a lot of video. You can't be
Speaker 4: a director consumer brand and you're not creating video for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
Speaker 4: and so those assets can now be brought to television.
Speaker 4: You do need an editor to edit them into a
Speaker 4: thirty second TV commercial. Also, we have a division amount
Speaker 4: is called Quickframe. It's a network of thousands of young
Speaker 4: independent creators videographers who can help edit those ads. You
Speaker 4: stock video and now.
Speaker 1: Say you don't have to have them on staff. You
Speaker 1: just pop into them when you need those.
Speaker 4: It's like Uber for creative. We just connected with a creator.
Speaker 4: And then, as you mentioned, AI tools are coming on
Speaker 4: pretty strong now, so we have essentially we haven't fully
Speaker 4: released it yet. It's in cut beta with some of
Speaker 4: our customers or a general AI tools and you can
Speaker 4: mix that. You can bring in your video you already
Speaker 4: have plus general video and mix it all together to
Speaker 4: have you know, kind of the perfect TV commercials.
Speaker 3: So when I met the way I met Mark first
Speaker 3: was that I knew a few investors and they were like,
Speaker 3: we got this guy who's like a genius coder and
Speaker 3: he just creates businesses. You were you were at Oracle
Speaker 3: for a while first, right way.
Speaker 4: Back in the year. Then you went to did you
Speaker 4: literally worked with Mark Beneoff was like, well, he and
Speaker 4: I were both individual contributors at the Oracle when I
Speaker 4: met Mark in in the Bay Area, and then he
Speaker 4: became like director of Desktop Products and I was directed Dido. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and Larry Allison was walking the hallways. It was a
Speaker 4: long time again, but no, I mean.
Speaker 2: My point is that you went on and did a
Speaker 2: bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 3: So you built essentially the matchmaking machine at e Harmony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was head of mentioning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you did other startups and when I met you,
Speaker 3: you were doing Steelhouse and then you pivoted to do Mountain.
Speaker 2: What's next for you?
Speaker 4: Mark? What's next? The way I think it would be
Speaker 4: really clear? This is why I told my team n
Speaker 4: if you look at any successful like public company, ninety
Speaker 4: percent or more of the value is created after the
Speaker 4: company goes public. So you think of Meta Google, but
Speaker 4: you could think of trade Us, app Love and any
Speaker 4: these companies. A successful company most values. So I said,
Speaker 4: IPO is done.
Speaker 2: You just you know.
Speaker 4: So we're at the ten percent mark and now we're
Speaker 4: going to go for the other ninety percent. So we're
Speaker 4: going to bring hopefully millions of investors along with us.
Speaker 4: And so the next is to continue to go after
Speaker 4: this market, build even more product, more tech technology, and
Speaker 4: really just grow this into what we the hoscale We.
Speaker 2: Want is your company.
Speaker 3: Because when I talk to like Joe Kaiser at Mercado, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: they invest he's on your board. Yeah, he it's about you.
Speaker 3: He's like Mark Douglas is the asset here, he's the brain.
Speaker 3: But I know that you have an extremely happy employee base,
Speaker 3: you have incredible ratings on glass Door. Nobody has to
Speaker 3: come into an office. So how important is the company
Speaker 3: that you built, the team that you build around you.
Speaker 4: It's incredibly important. I mean it's not just me. I
Speaker 4: think I'm not used to like talking about myself. I
Speaker 4: think the skill I have is I think I'm a
Speaker 4: very good at product market fit, like really identifying these
Speaker 4: trends are going to equal this opportunity. And that's what
Speaker 4: we did here. When we first launched our performance CV platform,
Speaker 4: I told the team the easiest way to win a
Speaker 4: market is to create that market. So we're going to
Speaker 4: we ate the market for performance advertising on television what
Speaker 4: we now call performance TV. But like, so I identified
Speaker 4: the opportunity, the trends. Yeah, I worked with our designers
Speaker 4: on what the product should look like. But it's at
Speaker 4: mound five hundred people working as a very efficient team.
Speaker 4: Almost forty percent of team as engineers, and it's I
Speaker 4: don't want to sound like a cliche, but like, there's
Speaker 4: only so much I can do. I can like point
Speaker 4: us at the right market opportunity, but execution matters, and
Speaker 4: especially matters now that we're public.
Speaker 1: And wait, I got to ask you, though, the barrier
Speaker 1: to entry.
Speaker 4: Me the harder question.
Speaker 1: No, I know when you say execution, that's my like.
Speaker 1: But barrier to entry sounds like another company could do
Speaker 1: this or another advertising company like this doesn't sound so
Speaker 1: difficult for somebody else, except you do have kind of
Speaker 1: your own ip of you being and behind it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes, but Apple wasn't the first mover when it
Speaker 1: came to smart phones, and yet look what it's done
Speaker 1: so other people can come in. So how do you
Speaker 1: on the market?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I got about forty seconds. Okay, So there's
Speaker 4: a ton of technology involved, and the first mover advantage
Speaker 4: does matter there. We have a big cost evangel partner
Speaker 4: with every streaming network and they are increasingly reliant on
Speaker 4: Mountain being a growth channel because remember ninety seven and
Speaker 4: sets out of every dollar is new revenue that we're
Speaker 4: bringing into the TV industry. And then we have our
Speaker 4: sales cycle averages nineteen days to bring a new customer live,
Speaker 4: so we're finding the customer before anyone else, bring them
Speaker 4: live faster than anyone else, bringing more technology to bear
Speaker 4: to drive that return on ad spend. All of that
Speaker 4: combined is our advantage?
Speaker 1: How much of your customers come back and stay with
Speaker 1: you just quickly?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's the vast Yeah, I don't have that. It's
Speaker 4: the vast majority of our customers or repeat spenders over
Speaker 4: and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Interesting space, Interesting individual. Mark Douglas of of course Mountain,
Speaker 1: joining us right here on Bloomberg
Speaker 3: M