Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
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.
00:17:55 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:17:55] S1: Yeah. No. I get it. But if these companies locked arms, right, do have some segment of these companies in, you know, each of these, disparate areas locked arms and actually, you know, work together on it. You probably could get somewhat of the of the way there. So, hey, either way, good good good job for for high touch. Other thing that was kinda weird in the news this week, and this didn't seem coordinated at all. Hightouch announced an AgenTex CDP. And then either two days before or two days after, Databricks announced an agentic CDP. Like, literally the same announcement. It could not have been, like, like, weirder in terms of timing. And I guess this is just signaling to the market that like everything else, CDP's are moving into the agentic era, and you need to have these capabilities to compete. [00:18:42] S2: Well, I think this is another kinda tough spot that Hightouch is in because they claim their marketing is all about them being the composable CDP, so where you can have your data on Databricks or on Snowflake or on AWS. Well, when those underlying layers start competing with you, that doesn't feel great. [00:19:00] S1: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's true. Alright. Well, either way, CDP's are now agentic. You wanna talk about TTD? [00:19:09] S2: We always have to. Like, we always have to have an AI segment, and we have to have a TTD segment. So let's do it.