The start of a new year is symbolically an excellent time to reflect on past successes, plot new ones, and take on new professional challenges. 5 years ago Adobe began its quest for enterprise marketing software dominance by closing the acquisition of Demdex. It was the culmination of an interesting ride for both of us: confirmation that taking a chance on an early stage but ambitious start-up can truly impact the entire industry and proof that building products for the long term while approaching growth and scaling very differently than your competitors and peers can make all the difference between failure and success.
A lot has changed in our industry in 5 years. Data has grown from an adtech tactic into a major revenue driver and strategic asset powering cross-channel customer experience. Ad tech has doubled down on programmatic and focused aggressively towards transaction efficiency. Consumers are shifting their attention from PCs, TVs and malls on to always on, always connected mobile devices. All of these changes have left many in our industry on unsure footing: where to find leaders with the necessary breadth of skills to tackle marketing transformation, how to change organizations that were built for a channel-specific, siloed world and how to piece all the parts of an effective marketing technology stack together. The next 5 years will be even more pivotal as we as an industry need to reinvent what marketing to global, connected audiences will look like. This is the opportunity that my co-founder and I see and why we’re getting the band back together.
We want to introduce you to our new venture: Sparrow Advisers. We’re building a specialized consulting company to tackle the transformation challenges that the next 5+ years will bring forth. We’re building this company on a foundation of deep industry knowledge, blue-chip operational experience and tenacity for solving complex problems; we hope to be a partner to your businesses as you tackle scaling revenue, product strategy and development, go-to-market positioning, new market entry, programmatic advertising and any other challenge we in digital media will encounter in the coming decade.
We’re grateful to all of you who’ve guided us these past few months as we tested out our initial hypotheses and honed in on what the first things we should take to market should be. Thank you for being Sparrow’s first clients (and some of you our first employees) - we look forward to partnering with you for many years to come. Working with people who routinely bring out your best, solving complex problems and building a global, scalable and sustainable business are three things that have always motivated both of us as entrepreneurs. And those of you who know us well also know that we’re never not thinking about world domination - but that’s for a later announcement. We’re looking forward to catching up in person at IAB Leadership or across digital channels on our website www.hellosparrow.com
Best,
Ana & Maja
