Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:11:41 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:11:41] S2: Yeah. There were a lot of speculation on sort of interesting combinations because Roku was such a unique asset. TTD, AppLovin was spoken of. They're all they're all sort of long shots. It makes a lot more sense to have someone that's, like, core in the streaming business do this. Also, I'll bring back to this interview... The interview that went live this past Monday with Walmart where they were saying that all... The Vizio acquisition enabled them to, like, replace Roku as the operating system in all their white labeled TVs. So that couldn't have helped. Like, that... That's a little bit of a kick in the guts here to the future of this business. Roku saying to itself, well, you know, ultimately, we have to have consumers choose us, And who else can they choose? Well, you're dealing with all the Asian OEMs who have low cost manufacturing. You're now dealing with Walmart who has distribution. You have Amazon as the probably number one seller of Roku devices. That can't feel that good. And and you ultimately have to get your device in the hands of consumers. [00:12:41] S1: Yeah. That makes sense. Well, good job, Fox. This takes a while to close, the transaction like this. I think it doesn't close until, like, 2027. Alright. So a few weeks ago, we'll move on. A few weeks ago, we had this guy, Tejas, who the the CEO of Tejas or Tejas? Tejas? [00:13:01] S2: Yeah. It's a good question. I don't know. Is he... He didn't appear to be Mexican, but I don't know if the name is pronounced that way.
00:13:01 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:13:01] S2: Yeah. It's a good question. I don't know. Is he... He didn't appear to be Mexican, but I don't know if the name is pronounced that way. [00:13:06] S1: Alright. Either way, we're talking about you, buddy. We had him on a few weeks ago and he was... I mean, a great interview. We learned a lot. It's a super hot company. And ever since then, Hightouch has been everywhere, like Everywhere. Everywhere, every single week. So so this week, they go and make an... A play for the LiveRamp identity assets. They offer Publicis 1,200,000,000 of, you know, a 2,200,000,000 up to 1,220,000,000. I can think of a, you know, kind of $2,200,000,000 total live rent deal for the identity assets. And they said, you got a week to give us a yes or no. So everybody's prepping for Cannes, they're trying to figure out their their outfits, they're putting their linens in their in their bags, and all of a sudden, you know, Tejas Tejas comes over the top. I freaking love this. [00:13:57] S2: It's it's a little bit stunt m and a. Like, they don't have 1,200,000,000, you know. [00:14:03] S1: Well, the... [00:14:04] S2: I mean, the... The funds confirmed. [00:14:06] S1: Last valuation was 2,750,000,000, and they're backed by people that have really deep deep pockets, like Goldman Sachs. So they could do this. I mean, they could have access to this capital, for sure. Talk to us about this. What you got?
00:14:06 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:14:06] S1: Last valuation was 2,750,000,000, and they're backed by people that have really deep deep pockets, like Goldman Sachs. So they could do this. I mean, they could have access to this capital, for sure. Talk to us about this. What you got? [00:14:22] S2: Yeah. So, I think we've been talking about the LiveRamp acquisition by Publicis for a couple of weeks, and it's pretty complicated because LiveRamp's a complicated business. And I think what you have to say is, well, what is Hightouch's hypothesis here? And I think the hypothesis is that public... Publicis already has an identity spine because of all the other stuff they've bought and built. Right? And they really just want the sort of the sassy part of LiveRamp, meaning the brand relationships, agency relationships, and onboarding tools. And they don't really need that... The identity spine to do that. They could kinda swap it onto their own identity spine. That... That's... I would... That's... Otherwise, why would they do that? I mean, obviously, it's it's half half the value of the company according to Hightouch, so why would why would they not want it? And so I... That's the real question. Is that true? Is that true that that publicists could get all the value out of the acquisition without the identity spine? [00:15:21] S1: I don't see how they can. Right? Like Right. You know? So... They would [00:15:27] S2: have to hot swap it. Like they'd Right? Have to
00:15:27 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:15:27] S2: have to hot swap it. Like they'd Right? Have to [00:15:31] S1: Exactly. It would be super complex. But man, what a what a fun, bit of marketing. What a fun way to get yourself in the conversation. I love this. [00:15:43] S2: Yeah. On the... Another skeptical bit is that, when Tejas was on the on the show, I asked him point blank, are you a LiveRamp replacement right now? And he he gave the typical, like, of course, but it's not really our core business answer, which was which was kinda fun. It's like a nag on LiveRamp, like, oh, that business. I'm not interested in that. If that's the case, if you've got it all already, why do you want this? $1,200,000,000, you know, one third of your total equity stack, basically, to buy this thing that you don't really need. You already have it. Well, I guess there's something missing there. I guess you don't... I guess his claim that he could just replace live ramp day one may not be entirely true. What's missing? We don't know. Neither you or I or as a customer of theirs, we haven't logged in. We don't know the details. We'd love to hear from people if they're using it.
00:15:43 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:15:43] S2: Yeah. On the... Another skeptical bit is that, when Tejas was on the on the show, I asked him point blank, are you a LiveRamp replacement right now? And he he gave the typical, like, of course, but it's not really our core business answer, which was which was kinda fun. It's like a nag on LiveRamp, like, oh, that business. I'm not interested in that. If that's the case, if you've got it all already, why do you want this? $1,200,000,000, you know, one third of your total equity stack, basically, to buy this thing that you don't really need. You already have it. Well, I guess there's something missing there. I guess you don't... I guess his claim that he could just replace live ramp day one may not be entirely true. What's missing? We don't know. Neither you or I or as a customer of theirs, we haven't logged in. We don't know the details. We'd love to hear from people if they're using it. [00:16:32] S1: It's it's the identity layer. Matt from ID5 hosted, portfolio company of of ours, hosted a nice little graph, today on LinkedIn. I think, Paul Knighton, friend of the pod, sometimes replacement for me, I think Paul built this thing, which is basically like the independent version of the LiveRamp stack. You need a connectivity layer, you need a data layer, and you need a identity layer. Obviously, the the identity pieces where ID5 plays, where I guess, high touch, you know, has the gap.
00:16:32 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:16:32] S1: It's it's the identity layer. Matt from ID5 hosted, portfolio company of of ours, hosted a nice little graph, today on LinkedIn. I think, Paul Knighton, friend of the pod, sometimes replacement for me, I think Paul built this thing, which is basically like the independent version of the LiveRamp stack. You need a connectivity layer, you need a data layer, and you need a identity layer. Obviously, the the identity pieces where ID5 plays, where I guess, high touch, you know, has the gap. [00:17:02] S2: Yeah. So the post is is called rebuilding your stack post live ramp acquisition. I'm gonna I'm gonna read you the text I just sent Paul, because Paul and I talk all the time by text. And I just had dinner with him him and his lovely family yesterday here in And I said, it's more like, quote, how might someone build this stack, unquote, no one would actually do this, which is my point being, like, it's kind of a theoretical stack of how someone would, you know, be able to theoretically achieve what LiveRamp has. But you can't underestimate the ease of implementation, ease of use requirement of a lot of this stuff. You need to be able to, like, kinda log in, grab a segment, create a segment, say, push to this platform, boom, works. And I think there's a lot of a lot of missing pieces to making that happen.