Being a founder evolving in Startup City a.k.a San Francisco and having recently graduated from 500 Startups, I almost have to pitch my company 3 or 4 times a day – on a “normal day”. Since DOZ is not the easiest company to describe, I was tempted to use the “we are X for Y” analogy. But I hated that, because many times I got pitched this way, and many times I didn’t know either X or Y. Still, I decided to give it a try and since I wasn’t able to make a pitch in less than 30 seconds, I thought finding our “X for Y” sentence would at least open the field for more questions.
“Uber for Marketing.”
So I tried: “We are Uber for online marketing”. And several times I had the same enthusiastic eyes and ears opened. A company that raised over $1.2B in their last round, with one of the biggest B2B market… how can’t they be intrigued?
It worked out so well, that I decided to explore the idea, which was at first a joke. Let’s try to discover what DOZ and Uber have in common.
Start with one click
One of things that have made the success of Uber is their minimalist UI to call a driver. Tap one button, and your driver is usually here in less than 10 minutes. Our vision at DOZ is to make a marketing campaign as easy to start as ordering pizza. Why? Because it’s not the client’s job to figure out what they need. In a traditional agency, you would need to provide several briefs and go to meetings before your campaign is ready to start – and usually you get billed for those.
Free of selecting your drivers
What if you had to select your driver in Uber? Would you rather select someone who does not talk at all, who likes the same music as you do or has been to the same places on vacation… In fact you don’t really care. What you most care about, is to have the best driver to take you from point A to point B safely. Guess what? DOZ does that too. We do select marketers based on their skills and past experience (through Linkedin data). Our system matches marketers with campaigns that suit their profile.
Taking the best road
How would you feel if Uber’s drivers were asking you what is the best way to go to your chosen Point B? That’s why they have GPS. Even better: some of them know the city very well. This is why DOZ focuses of bringing websites to foreign markets. By putting marketing campaigns in the hands of local and native marketers, we are sure we take the best approach to reach Point B.
No need to carry cash
See how it’s convenient not to have to check your pockets to find bills and wait for your change? See how it’s secure to know exactly that what you pay is entirely controlled? It’s the same with DOZ. Our clients do not need to manage payments to the marketing experts working on the campaign. They are putting their marketing budget on autopilot, and DOZ makes sure all performances are getting rewarded.
Security and Quality
Once you have dropped off your Uber, you are asked to rate your driver and leave a comment. This very strict rating will help Uber match other passengers with the best drivers around. Same thing at DOZ, our marketers are getting rated after each task they perform on our platform. These evaluations are used in our algorithm to determine if they will be a good fit for the next task to be assigned to them. One thing that we don’t do though, is rating our own clients, at least not yet 🙂
Cheaper than owning
Last but not least, Uber has been a price disrupter. You can sometime pay 50% less than with a regular cab. Uber is even cheaper than owning your own car. Again DOZ has the same structure. DOZ puts to work a dozen of marketers, for the full length of a client’s campaign. Guess what the annual cost of 12 full time in-house marketers is?
Well of course, DOZ is still very far from Uber’s maturity, market penetration and remarkable execution. However, I hope this post gave you a better sense of what we have been building at DOZ since few years now.
