See show notes and transcript: https://riskreversal.com/okay-computer/okay-computer-podcast-less-cloudy-the-ad-future-is-a-conversation-with-zeta-globals-david-steinberg/
Dan sits down with David Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Zeta Global. They discuss David’s prolific entrepreneurship in the telecom industry early in his career (5:20), his long friendship with, and mentoring from, former Apple CEO John Sculley (16:38), what drove David and John Sculley to co-found Zeta Global together (25:09), the slump in the digital ad industry and how Zeta Global is successfully navigating it (33:25), the impact of inflation & soaring energy prices on businesses (40:42), and why David is so bullish on connected TV advertising (44:00).
Dan sits down with David Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Zeta Global. They discuss David’s prolific entrepreneurship in the telecom industry early in his career (5:20), his long friendship with, and mentoring from, former Apple CEO John Sculley (16:38), what drove David and John Sculley to co-found Zeta Global together (25:09), the slump in the digital ad industry and how Zeta Global is successfully navigating it (33:25), the impact of inflation & soaring energy prices on businesses (40:42), and why David is so bullish on connected TV advertising (44:00).
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00:00 Hey listeners, it's Dan here. I want to tell you about a company that I'm really excited
00:03 about. It's called Current. It's a fintech company that's completely disrupting traditional
00:07 banking. I'm a new Current customer and it's already helping me and my entire family manage
00:12 our finances, all from one easy to use app. So try Current for yourself and get the app
00:18 by going to Current.com/ok. That's Current.com/ok. Current is a financial technology company,
00:25 not a bank. Banking services provided by and Visa debit card issued by Choice Financial
00:30 Group, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc. and can be used everywhere
00:35 Visa debit cards are accepted. It's rolling, man. This is David Steinberg, Chairman, CEO,
00:43 co-founder Zeta Global. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker Zeta.
00:50 We're going to get into Zeta. We're going to get into your business. We're going to
00:52 get into the journey to going public. You've taken companies public before, but not in
00:56 this sort of environment, I'm assuming, a little bit. So we're going to talk a little
00:59 bit about that. And I would also say, David, before I welcome you officially to OK Computer.
01:05 That wasn't the welcome? That was kind of the welcome. That was a pretty nice welcome.
01:08 You and I met professionally, but I would say our relationship is primarily social.
01:14 Wouldn't you say so? I don't remotely think of our relationship as professional. So we
01:19 did. We met through like bankers and this and that. We were in Vegas. You were putting
01:25 on a show. Yeah, no, it was good. But then you and I just quickly morphed our relationship
01:29 into dining and cocktailing. Well, we tend to have very similar things we enjoy, food
01:35 and wine and fun. We're cut from a similar ilk, I would say. You're cut from a bigger
01:39 ilk than I am. So that's a fat joke, people. So David is on a keto diet. So we know I'm
01:45 just kidding. No, I am. Are you really? Yeah. Yeah. You've kind of talked to me a little
01:49 bit about that. You do a little bit of the intermittent fasting, correct? And then you
01:53 also just avoid carbs like the plague. And then is that also sugar? Yeah. Well, there's
01:57 no more carb than sugar. But the six days a week, I intermittent fast between 16 and
02:04 18 hours and eat as few carbohydrates as I can. You can't say none, but I try to keep
02:09 it to zero. And then Sundays, I sort of cycle the ketosis. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss
02:17 and his book, The Four Hour Body, which has nothing to do with four hours. It's just sort
02:21 of his brand. It's sort of like the primer for how I built the diet I'm on. Yeah. I'm
02:27 working on a three hour body. So hopefully that one will take off once I get that out.
02:31 The good news is, is you are so handsome. You can pull this new shape off. I mean, I
02:35 really appreciate that. So let me, is this a warmup for the Tim Ferriss show or no? Tim
02:39 has never invited me on. So I, you know. So it's funny, I'll be really honest with you.
02:43 You know, we started this podcasting company, Guy Dami and myself in the start of 2021.
02:48 And you know, I had listened to lots of different podcasts. The first podcast I ever listened
02:51 to was Recode Kara Swisher's podcast. And I really got into that, her access to people,
02:56 the way in which she can get them to talk in ways that they just don't want to talk
03:00 about. So that was kind of fascinating. And you know, I got a little into Bill Simmons.
03:03 I really enjoyed the sports ones and this and that. But what's interesting to me, like
03:07 some of these feel like they've just kind of gone off the rails. Like I listened to
03:10 Balaji Saravasan on Tim Ferriss last year. It was four hours, four hour podcast.
03:15 That's long.
03:16 We're not, we're not going four hours.
03:18 I was going to say, come on Dan.
03:19 This is not like the equivalent of a sting podcast or anything like that. I was trying
03:23 to figure out like what the attraction to that is. What we've tried to do is really
03:28 digestible, kind of accessible, you know, sort of content. And so like taking a very
03:33 complex man like you and breaking him down.
03:35 You want to be like the TikTok of a podcast.
03:39 Yeah. All right. Well, here's the deal. Let's start with this. I want to get to Zeta Global.
03:43 I have actually been very fortunate to get to know much of your management team. You
03:47 understand your product. I've actually had the pleasure of speaking at Zeta Live last
03:51 year. I hope I get the invite back for this year.
03:52 Yes. Well, no, we just sent it out. The 29th of September will be Zeta Live too.
03:57 I will be there. So I've gotten to know this company, but it's funny. I was listening
04:00 to you on that ICE podcast, okay? And you said we used to get this question, Zeta, who
04:07 all the time? And I think it was really interesting the way you framed it. Not so much anymore
04:12 now that you're a publicly traded company of over half a billion dollars in annual revenue.
04:16 And I think you have a five year plan to get above a billion. You have a market cap.
04:21 Three year plan.
04:22 Okay. Three year plan. Oh, you put it out in 2020. There you go.
04:24 Correct. We put it out in 2020 for 2025. I don't know if you checked. We're about halfway
04:29 through 2022.
04:30 Yeah, I did check. I guess the main point there is you are competing with Behemoth,
04:34 Salesforce and Oracle and Adobe. And so we're going to talk about all of that. But what
04:39 I find really interesting about you, and I think oftentimes when you and I are together
04:43 with other groups, we're talking about like kind of shared history in markets, shared
04:47 history investing. You're not just an entrepreneur. You have been investing your own capital,
04:52 a family office in public and private equity. So I want to hit a little bit about that.
04:57 But I see you as a serial entrepreneur. And so talk to me a little bit about how that
05:02 journey started, because again, you started a cellular company in 1991. Sterling, was
05:09 that it? I mean, most people only knew of the big bag phones back then or the ones that
05:14 were built into cars. What itch were you scratching soon out of college and doing that?
05:19 Well, first of all, it's great to be on the show. I'm a big fan of you personally and
05:24 this show, so I appreciate it. But I became an entrepreneur for the same reason many of
05:29 us become entrepreneurs. I came out of school in 1990. It was the great recession of that
05:34 day and I couldn't get a job. And the truth of the matter is that when you come out of
05:40 school and you don't have a job, your opportunity cost on starting a business is very, very
05:45 low. I originally started on the Hill and I was there for a short period of time working
05:51 for Senator Kennedy and under Senator Biden on the Judiciary Committee. That was sort
05:56 of a senior intern and legislative correspondent. And that was really cool. But I figured out
06:01 quickly I would not be a good government employee. That was just not my...
06:05 Well, drug tests?
06:06 No, just for a whole host of reasons.
06:07 I'm kidding. Come on, man.
06:08 But yeah.
06:09 We can cut that.
06:10 Yeah, well, you don't have to cut it. The good news is I would have passed.
06:13 Yeah. All right. Fair enough.
06:14 As far as I'll admit to on this podcast.
06:16 But really interesting. In 1990, we have not had this much in our nation's history. That
06:21 was the 10th year of a Republican administration and you were working for Democrats. What was
06:27 that like?
06:28 Well, you know, that's been my ecosystem for a long time. You would have called me back
06:31 then a liberal Democrat. Now you would call me an extremely conservative Democrat.
06:37 So you're like more to the center.
06:38 Yeah, I'm like many people.
06:40 So you were a bit progressive back then?
06:42 No. My point is my politics have not changed, but the definition of what you believe has
06:47 changed, right? Because the extreme to the left and the extreme to the right have moved
06:52 very, very far. My only point is now you could call me either a liberal Republican or a conservative
06:58 Democrat. I find them to be very similar in the center. But I started working on telecom
07:04 issues and I got interested in it and I ended up in the insurance business for a very short
07:08 period of time, which was really interesting.
07:11 And selling?
07:12 Yep. Selling insurance, accidental disability insurance to self-employed people.
07:17 Wow.
07:18 That was a bit of a grind. You know, did a little bit of door to door. It was very interesting.
07:24 I remember calling my dad, who was an Ivy League educated MBA accountant, and telling
07:30 him I was going to leave the Hill to go sell insurance. And he told me I was nuts. I called
07:35 my stepfather, who was a very successful entrepreneur who had not even finished college. And he
07:41 said, it'll be the single greatest thing you could ever do.
07:44 And worked out well, taught me how to take no.
07:47 And move through it and get to yes.
07:49 Well, that's important. I mean, people think of tech companies just filled with engineers
07:52 and solving big problems, but they don't get deployed unless people are there selling them.
07:57 And some of the most important people in tech organizations are those salespeople. You think
08:01 of like a Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. Wasn't he the biggest salesman Oracle ever
08:06 had? And he's like, you know what? I can get engineers and I can build a stack, but I need
08:11 great people to sell it.
08:12 Yeah. I mean, listen, I forget the exact stat, but I think they asked a few years ago, they
08:18 asked the Fortune 500 CEOs, what was the attribute that was most responsible for getting to where
08:25 they were? I think 490 of the 500 said sales. I'm sure there's other answers, but that's
08:32 where I came out of. And I ended up getting a gift certificate for a free cellular phone.
08:37 And I went in to get my free cell phone and I asked the woman who was working, what are
08:42 you doing? And she explained the whole business. And I literally walked out the door and said,
08:46 I am in the wrong business. And a few months later, there was an interesting blow up with
08:52 my then boss, who's a great guy. We just, we didn't see something eye to eye. And I
08:56 don't think he thought there was any scenario that someone of my age making the amount of
09:00 money I was making at that time would ever leave because he obviously didn't know me
09:04 that well. But I left and I started Sterling Cellular in my basement.
09:08 Wow. All right. So that was a cellular leasing company to businesses?
09:11 No, it wasn't leasing. We activated cellular phones for cellular one on a B2B strategy.
09:19 So we came at it with the premise back then that a cell phone would be an incredibly good
09:24 investment for productivity. And we primarily focused on a sales force that could go business
09:32 to business. And we were very successful very early.
09:34 Yeah. And so obviously that was before there was a huge retail demand for these sorts of
09:39 products, but it helped prove the concept. And I think it's interesting as a market participant,
09:43 a public market participant, really, I entered the markets in 1997 or so. People forget,
09:49 they think it's a dot com bubble. It was really the telco bubble.
09:53 Well, that was the first bubble. Yeah.
09:55 I mean, without that huge drive for like fiber, you wouldn't have been able to do that. So
10:00 how did this new company, Sterling, so you were leveraging off of this B2B and this was
10:05 going to be the early adopters in cellular. How did you guys progress over the course
10:08 of the 90s and what was the outcome? Well, we ended up selling that business and
10:13 doing well on it. And then I started Sterling Communications because obviously I had very
10:17 limited naming capabilities. And that business was heavily focused on retail. We ended up
10:23 building a large retail footprint. And the way we built our retail strategy was it was
10:28 sort of a barbell effect. It was very large stores that had install bays to install phones
10:34 and cars out the back. In the front of the store, you had a retail distribution. And
10:39 in the middle, we had kiosks or desks where we ran salespeople. So that was one side of
10:45 the distribution. The other side of the distribution is we were putting kiosks in malls and it
10:51 worked and then we ended up selling that. And then I started Sterling Wireless once
10:55 again. And that was a telemarketing business where we ended up with, quite frankly, a large
11:01 number of telemarketers selling wireless products virtually to people at home, which was the
11:08 bridge to what became my then company Infonic, which became the largest seller of wireless
11:13 phones on the internet in the world. Wow. So you just kept on moving throughout
11:16 different stages of the cellular progression and then obviously, again, started a business,
11:21 then went to retail, but then ease of use of actually onboarding retail customers. It's
11:27 funny. My first cell phone was in Dallas, Texas. Whatever the company was, what was
11:31 Southwest Bell? I was going to say it was Southwestern Bell
11:33 Mobile Systems probably. Yeah. And it was an Oki and I still have it
11:37 to this day. Maybe we'll put a picture of it in the show notes. It's like this big and
11:40 it's got a massive battery in the back. And you know what they used to do? They used to
11:43 send good looking women to offices. We employed lots of them.
11:47 And I'm telling you, when this woman came in in a conference, it was like the scene
11:50 from The Office where someone's in there selling something. And like all the guys bought cell
11:55 phones. None of the women in the office bought cell phones.
11:57 Listen, we also had good looking men. So we would send a team in of a good looking female
12:02 and male. Not you?
12:04 Well, I didn't make the cut. You were the closer.
12:07 Wait, so you had three iterations of Sterling. You sold them. The first one you sold to AT&T?
12:12 Actually I sold all three to what is today called AT&T, but all three different companies.
12:17 Oh, wow. Like sold one to Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems.
12:20 I sold one to Singular and then I sold one actually in a management buyout to my then
12:27 team and then they sold it to Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems, DBA Cellular One. So
12:32 it's sort of like, but everything, you know, Southwestern Bell rolled everybody back up
12:38 other than Verizon. So it all became the two of them that became the old AT&T.
12:43 Yeah. I remember trading in the late 90s, all those C-Lacks. I mean, it was kind of
12:47 interesting. There was this unbundling, the great unbundling, which at the time, if you
12:50 were like a trader, these were very volatile sort of stocks. You know, people forget. You
12:54 hear about this crap. You know, now you have a publicly traded company. People will talk
12:58 about a meme stock or this. And you're like, there were meme stocks in the 90s. Remember
13:02 I Omega? You remember some of these C-Lacks? Like it all existed. They just didn't have
13:06 the ability, the virality didn't exist among retail in a way. And by the time it got to
13:10 retail it was over.
13:11 You didn't have the trading platforms back then, which have really become ubiquitous
13:15 today. And of course, the internet has ultimately leveled the playing field as it relates to
13:21 the dissemination of information. So back then, information was the key to all success
13:27 in trading. Today, information can often be the key to failure in trading because of the
13:33 fake information that can be out there.
13:35 Things could go viral on closed platforms. Like for instance, on Yahoo Finance message
13:40 boards, it could really build up there and a handful of people could trade off of that
13:44 information or make decisions based on it. But it didn't have the ability to really go
13:48 viral in a verifiable way because we really didn't have social networks in a way. And
13:52 I just, again, I remember being on a trading desk and hearing like in 1999, "Hey, do you
13:57 see this thing on Yahoo Finance?" or something like that, but without an ability to verify
14:01 it and it just didn't have that sort of thing. So I think it's interesting.
14:04 But Telco was at the center of that. All right. So you sold these businesses. So wait, was
14:09 the only boss in your life other than Ted Kennedy, this guy who you had this dust up
14:14 at the insurance company? Is that it?
14:16 Technically, Ted Kennedy was not my boss. I reported to a guy named Thurgood Marshall
14:20 Jr., Goody Marshall. He worked for, I believe, Jeff Blatner or Carolyn Ossolenek at the time,
14:26 who then worked for somebody. I mean, to say I was junior and an intern was like, that's
14:32 what I was. But yeah, I haven't had a boss in a long time.
14:35 I haven't thought about that since your wife.
14:37 My wife is my boss. That's exactly what I was going to say. Kristen is definitely my
14:42 boss. She tells me where to be and when to be there. And then my assistant team is my
14:47 other boss.
14:48 So were you going from one thing to the next, like one sterling to the next sterling to
14:52 the next sterling? And then in Phonic, bang.
14:55 Yeah. So when we sold the last iteration of Sterling, we were at the closing table and
15:03 I said to the guy at AT&T, "Listen, I'll take a discount on the transaction if you let me
15:11 keep the fulfillment facility, the distribution platform, and you give me a five-year exclusive
15:17 contract to sell wireless phones over the Internet."
15:20 Now, you got to understand, in 1997, he thought I was a total idiot. He's like, "Great."
15:28 And that turned out to be a good contract for us. By the way, it was a great contract
15:32 for AT&T because we were so far out front of anybody else that they were able to really
15:38 piggyback on our success. And listen, AT&T has been a great partner to me personally
15:43 for many, many years.
15:44 All right. So talk to me. So in Phonic, you take it public in the late '90s?
15:47 We did. We took it public and it was a great success. In 2004, we were the second largest
15:52 tech IPO behind this little company called Google. They fared better than us, to say
15:58 the least.
15:59 All right. So let's talk about your long history as a friend, as a partner, I'm assuming also
16:04 as a mentor with John Sculley. Okay. So John Sculley was the former CEO of Apple in the
16:10 early '80s. Steve Jobs was kind of transitioning out of an operator sort of role, the famous
16:16 line. So Sculley was the CEO/President of Pepsi at the time, which was a massive, you
16:21 know, consumer company.
16:22 Very large company.
16:23 Yeah, still is. Okay. So Jobs really wanted this guy and said what to him?
16:28 They were standing in Steve Jobs' new penthouse on Fifth Avenue that he was not even begun
16:35 the renovation yet. It was empty. And Steve looked up over Central Park and then he looked
16:42 John in the eye. And of course, John has told me this. I was not there. And said, "Do you
16:47 want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change
16:51 the world?"
16:52 Yeah. Yeah. So that was the early '80s. And so we know that that was right before they
16:56 introduced the Mac with that big 1984 commercial and everything like that. So at what point
17:02 did you and John connect?
17:04 Well, not then. I was pretty young back then.
17:07 Yeah, you were.
17:08 No, John and I met, I guess it's about 22 years ago now. We were at a YPO conference,
17:13 a Young Presidents Organization, which I was a member, now a member of old presidents'
17:18 organization.
17:19 I was going to say.
17:20 I call it OPO.
17:21 You beat me to it.
17:22 I call it OPO. They call it YPO Gold nowadays, but I call it OPO. And John was being interviewed
17:28 by Larry King on a panel and he came off and everybody was waiting to talk to John. I waited
17:35 my turn and everybody was asking about Apple and Pepsi and all these guys. So I look at
17:40 him, I was like, "John, I just seen this mini series called the Pirates of Silicon
17:45 Alley. And did you get a chance to see that? And what did you think of the guy who played
17:51 you?" And he literally stopped what he was doing. And he was like, he said it was the
17:57 best mini series at that time. Noah Wilde, who had been on ER, had played Jobs and Anthony
18:05 Michael Hall. I can't believe I remember this. I can't remember what I had for breakfast.
18:09 From Vacation.
18:10 From all the Vacation movies, had played.
18:13 Sixteen Candles.
18:14 Correct. Yeah, Sixteen Candles. Great movie.
18:16 It was Ross though. Ross is really the thing.
18:18 Yeah, I agree. Well, he makes that movie in the roles in the end with the girl.
18:22 So wait, so he played-
18:23 So hold on. So Anthony Michael Hall played Bill Gates.
18:26 Okay, okay.
18:27 I don't actually remember who played him that time, but he stopped what he was doing. He
18:32 was like, "The guy who played Steve Jobs must have channeled him." So two funny things
18:39 happened. So we start talking and then he moves on to the next person. It just so happens,
18:43 one of my buddies, it was in DC, that event, which is where I lived at the time. And I
18:48 got the name tags changed so I could sit next to John at dinner that night. So I sort of
18:54 manipulated that. I never told, well, John knows that now. I told him years later. He
18:59 actually, one time we were out, he was like, "You changed those name tags, right? I know
19:02 you well enough." I was like, "Of course I changed those."
19:05 You just chatted him up the whole dinner.
19:06 Oh no, I had just founded Infonic. And I talked to him about my theory on technological innovation,
19:15 how it moves through three different phases.
19:17 All right, let's hear him. Lay him on me.
19:19 You have the development phase, you have the monetization phase, and you have the commoditization
19:26 phase. And if I was doing this on a whiteboard, I would write development, straight line,
19:34 monetization, straight line, commoditization. And then you would draw a circle that would
19:40 be halfway between monetization and commoditization. And I explained to him how that's where product
19:48 distribution can move from fiscal to virtual. You can still make enough money on the product
19:55 that it's worth doing, but it's commoditized enough that somebody doesn't need to touch
20:00 it before you buy it. And at that point, almost all cell phones were being sold in a retail
20:05 environment. And he looked at me, he was like, "That's so right." And I said, "Well, I'm
20:09 going to capitalize on that. I've started this new company."
20:12 And he was like, "You know what, David, the next time you're in New York, you should come
20:16 into my office." He was at 90 Park at the time. He was co-officed with Kodak. And I
20:23 was living in DC. So miraculously, I was in New York that following Tuesday. When he wasn't
20:29 available Monday, I was in New York Tuesday as well. If his assistant at the time had
20:33 said Wednesday, I would have said, "Oh, I'm staying over." But I went up and we were supposed
20:39 to have a 30-minute meeting. I ended up leaving five hours later with John becoming the seed
20:45 round investor and really became my mentor. And now today, it's really my partner and
20:50 one of my best friends.
20:51 - Okay, well, have you ever asked him, again, you and I have talked about him a bunch offline
20:55 and it seems like-
20:56 - I don't want John to hear this and think I'm yapping.
20:58 - No, no, no, no. That was the first of many partnerships and business.
21:02 - We've done, yeah, three or four companies together.
21:05 - Which is amazing. The one thing you got to ask him though, was he happy with Jeff
21:08 Daniels' portrayal of him? Because that guy is a legend.
21:12 - No, the answer is categorically yes. In fact, he visited him on set.
21:17 - Oh, no way. Okay.
21:18 - Yeah, and it's a great story. We do this, we used to do, we haven't done it the last
21:22 two years because of COVID, but we used to do a big master's event every year for our
21:26 big clients and stakeholders.
21:28 - I'll see you there.
21:29 - Yeah, that's great.
21:30 - I'll see you there this year.
21:31 - If we do it this year, you're on the list.
21:32 - I'm not a client or a stakeholder.
21:33 - Well, no, but you could come be a speaker.
21:35 - Okay, fair enough.
21:36 - So, 'cause what happened, we had to convert it over to the Zeta speaking series at the
21:39 masters. So all of our big clients-
21:41 - Oh, that's cool.
21:42 - If we didn't do that, they weren't allowed to come.
21:44 - Are you a golfer?
21:45 - I am a mediocre golfer at best. I'm a good tennis player.
21:49 - Yeah, no, I hear that about you. I am not a golfer. I did go to the masters in 2019
21:54 and I will tell you this, that it's probably the best sporting event I've ever-
21:57 - It's amazing.
21:58 - Spent my life.
21:59 - It's hard to explain to somebody how great an event the masters is, but what we do is
22:05 we take a bunch of houses, big dinners, and John every year gives an incredible talk.
22:11 And one year he talked about the movie and Jeff Daniels and how great he was.
22:15 - Is he sick of talking about Apple? 'Cause he wasn't there that long. He definitely-
22:19 - No, he was there eight years. He took them from 500 million in sales to I think seven
22:24 or eight billion. He was the CEO when they did the 1984 ad. I think that people step
22:32 over that. He was there quite some time.
22:35 - Well, you know, it's funny because I read a couple of the Jobs biographies and then
22:39 again, maybe they were just a bit more generous to his legacy than they were to some of the
22:45 stuff that went on there. Again, and I'm not asking you to opine on what he thinks. It's
22:49 a really interesting piece of history. And when I think about you as an entrepreneur
22:53 and especially in technology, I'm sure being able to leverage off of his experience is
22:59 probably just amazing, right?
23:01 - John and his wife, Diane, are, Kristen and I, amongst our closest friends, they are both
23:07 amazing. She ran a huge construction business before they married and they're just a powerhouse
23:14 couple and I love being with both of them. And whenever I'm confused about something
23:19 or a call, I call John and John now likes to joke. He said, "I used to call him on all
23:25 my questions. Now he calls me on questions. I call him on questions. We go back and forth
23:29 on it."
23:30 - Hey, Dan.
23:31 - What up, guy?
23:32 - You're into this FinTech. What's all this I'm hearing about Current?
23:36 - You're going to like this guy. Current is a FinTech company that's completely disrupting
23:40 traditional banking.
23:41 - Wait a second. Does that mean I don't have to drive to the bank anymore?
23:45 - Yeah, exactly. I'm a new Current customer and I manage all of my finances from one easy
23:50 to use app.
23:51 - Well, I got to get this app, but where can I learn more?
23:53 - It's super easy. Just go to current.com/okay, O-K-A-Y, and download the app. That's current.com/okay.
24:01 Current is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by and
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25:54 Let's talk about how you guys came up with Zeta because this is the real deal right now.
25:59 You are in New York City. You have this company that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
26:04 Also a good-sized deal in a market in 2021, you guys went public. Talk to us a little
26:09 bit about taking a step back. I met you in 2017 and I think you told me probably about
26:14 four or five years we're going to be going public. So you had a plan then. You had a
26:19 five-year plan then.
26:21 So I like to always break businesses into one and five-year plans. I think a two or
26:27 three-year plan is too short. A five-year plan without a one-year plan is too high in
26:33 the sky. So, you know, as soon as we finish 2025, we'll roll out 2030.
26:40 But you'll already have your one-year plan in 2024.
26:42 Correct.
26:43 So how does that change though? Because again, you've started companies from scratch. You've
26:48 built them up. You've sold them. You see how they operate in a bigger entity and what you
26:53 might have done differently. How do you do things differently when you are a private
26:57 company on a way to being a public company because the shareholder base has changed,
27:01 how you communicate with shareholders change. You have to deal with Wall Street, you know,
27:05 and analysts and all that whole apparatus.
27:07 I think first of all, the mistake I made last time was trying to do everything myself. So
27:13 now we've got Chris Greiner, who's one of the world's best CFOs. He and Scott, his
27:19 head of IR, who's also exceptional. He was at EMC and then Dell before joining us, really
27:26 own that component of the business. Steve Gerber, our president and COO, who you know,
27:31 and I focus on running the day-to-day operation of the business. And Steve Vine, who you also
27:36 know and you're having dinner with tonight, is our general counsel. And I like to joke,
27:41 really, you know, keeps us all on top of our game.
27:43 And you could go all the way out to our chief technology officer, you know, Chris Momberg,
27:48 our chief date officer, Nij Gor, our head of our activations business, Will Margulof
27:55 and Jeff Nimeroff, our chief information officer. We just have an incredible and very deep team.
28:01 The other big difference is I actually let them do their jobs now.
28:05 Now? All right. So this is something that you've learned over time.
28:08 Yep. I literally joke when I was a super young CEO, I knew I could do everything better than
28:14 everybody. When I became a middle-aged CEO, which was in my mid-30s, I felt like I could
28:20 do it better, but I hired people to do the job and then I told them what to do.
28:24 As an old CEO at 53, I know that all of these people can do their jobs better than I can.
28:33 But what I do really well is strategy, M&A and relationship management. And I try to
28:39 focus on those things.
28:41 But think about this. And I would say that this is probably one of your biggest accomplishments
28:45 with Zeta right now is that you put together an all-star team of operators around you.
28:51 It is literally the thing I am most proud of. It's the team that we've built, how cohesively
28:57 it works. And there is not one person on my senior leadership team that couldn't be running
29:04 another company.
29:05 Yeah, that's amazing. All right. So one thing, though, just for anybody listening here who
29:08 tries to figure out how we book guests here, I mean, I think, David, you just gave up our
29:12 dirty little secret. I got to buy you a steak to get you to come on the show.
29:16 Actually, what we do do is that you are going to get a bottle of Comos tequila. And you
29:20 know from our good friend Joe Marchese.
29:23 I thought Joe was coming today.
29:24 Well, I think he's in parts unknown. But everybody who comes on the pod, they get a bottle of
29:29 Comos. So there you go.
29:31 I will happily take one. I like that. I don't drink a lot of tequila, but when I do, it's
29:35 Comos.
29:36 All right. That's a good plug there. All right. Let's talk about Zeta. What was the mission?
29:41 So when I left my last company, we had built a very large marketing business inside of
29:47 a platform called Wirefly. And we were spending a lot of money on advertising. And I realized
29:53 how inefficient the marketing ecosystem was. We needed, at the time, I believe it was 17
30:00 or 18 different vendors to help us with our marketing. Data vendors, analytics vendors,
30:08 CRM vendors, activation vendors, all of that stuff.
30:12 And when John and I first founded Zeta, the original vision was effectively threefold.
30:19 One, we wanted to put everything a marketer needed in one place. Two, we believed that
30:25 first party opted in data would be a differentiator in where the regulatory environment was going.
30:33 And three, at that time, we believed that to truly use data effectively and make it
30:40 actionable, you had to understand automation.
30:44 Now, today, we call that artificial intelligence. Back then, 14 years ago, we were using the
30:50 vernacular automation, which then led to machine learning, which led to deep learning,
30:55 which then led to AI.
30:57 So this is kind of fascinating. So '07, you were already worried about data regulation.
31:02 And this was basically a concern that you felt firsthand at your...
31:05 It wasn't just regulation. It was that if a consumer had opted to receive an offer from
31:10 you, they'd be more apt at receiving that offer. And then the ability to begin to synthesize
31:18 what people's intent was, was part of the original foundation of the business. Because
31:23 we felt like, listen, the single greatest business in the history of marketing is probably
31:30 Google, right? Why? Because people literally tell Google what they want. I want a new car,
31:38 right? And you don't get to a higher level of intent than that.
31:43 We get pretty close now, because what we've done is we've built... We've got our data
31:49 cloud, and then we're ingesting trillions of marketing signals that we can identify
31:54 to an individual. We then build an intent-based score on what does that individual intend
32:01 to do next. Do you intend to subscribe to a credit card, buy a new car? And if so, what
32:07 color, make, model? Where are you going to do it from a geography perspective? And will
32:13 you be credit approved for the product that you're interested in? Or does somebody about
32:17 to churn off a cellular platform? So has somebody begun the discovery process of buying a new
32:24 wireless phone while they're one of our client's customers?
32:28 So all of that then synthesizes down to a Zeta ID number, and that ID number masks the
32:37 personally identifiable information of the consumer. So what we're doing is we're building
32:42 what's called a consumer data platform, or a CDP. Our client's data goes into it. We
32:47 match, usually around 85, 86% of the data to our U.S.-based data cloud, which is 235
32:56 million opted-in Americans. And we import an average of 1,700 data elements per person.
33:04 We then remove their name, we remove their social security number, and we replace it
33:08 with Zeta ID number 13578. And then the algorithm begins to do its work. It begins to look at
33:15 what you're reading, what you're doing, your transactions, what your discovery is, what
33:21 you're clicking on, where you come from, where you go to. And it goes back to our client
33:26 and says, Zeta ID number 13578 has just hit a 60% probability of wanting to buy your exact
33:35 product, and there's a 92% propensity to be credit approved. And if they say yes, we then
33:42 begin a curriculum of contact to that Zeta ID number.
33:47 One of the things I think a lot of people have not figured out, Dan, is that the CDP
33:52 is a little bit of a Trojan horse, because the clients learn all of this stuff about
33:58 the consumer, but they have no ability to market to them unless they use the Zeta marketing
34:03 platform. So all of the knowledge is wasted. If you want to make it actionable, you have
34:09 to use us.
34:10 Yeah. All right. So this is interesting. So this is from your Q2 earnings call that was
34:13 just, I think, a couple of weeks ago here. You said, "As other vendors have lost their
34:18 ability to measure with precision due to changes by large technology providers, marketers,
34:23 and looking for alternatives, and because we are not dependent on Apple's IDFA tracking
34:28 mechanism or third-party cookies to identify individuals and measure business outcomes,
34:34 we're able to leverage our data and our software advantage to deliver a better return on investment
34:39 for marketers today and in the future."
34:41 Well done. That was well read.
34:43 Well, that's Nick. Thanks, Nick, for that. What is interesting about that, and I looked
34:46 over your results. I was actually on vacation that week, but I kind of looked over your
34:50 results then. I knew we were going to be doing this a little bit. And I thought that's really
34:53 interesting because there's so many data platforms right now that have literally been taken to
34:58 the woodshed by changes, by these large platforms.
35:01 Especially the mobile-focused platforms.
35:03 Right. So talk to me a little bit about that because that must be something that really
35:06 resonates with investors who are looking for these sort of platform investments who've
35:10 seen some of these.
35:11 I'm not sure investors understand the implications of this yet. So when you think about it, I
35:18 think there's this premise because a lot of the mobile-focused marketing platforms have
35:24 come out and said the reason they're missing numbers is because there's a systemic issue
35:31 or a sort of a global marketing slowdown.
35:35 Now, most companies that are focused on digital marketing did better than people expected.
35:42 Google above expectations. Apple was well above expectations. Zeta was well above expectations.
35:48 We grew revenue by 28 plus percent. We grew EBITDA by 63 percent. We grew free cash flow
35:55 by 93 percent.
35:58 And a lot of that is because in a downturn, there's always a massive migration to return
36:05 on investment marketing. That's happening in the backdrop of very large tech companies
36:12 sort of eliminating the mobile-focused company's ability to build attribution models.
36:17 Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but if you don't get the feedback loop for
36:22 the transaction, the algorithm becomes broken because it can't learn what's happening.
36:29 So because at Zeta, we've never used Apple's IDFA and we do not use that third-party cookie
36:38 to identify people or build our attribution models, I like to say as the tide rolled out,
36:45 we stayed at the same level and most of the other companies that are out there that focus
36:50 on those things have dropped fairly dramatically.
36:53 Now, I think we're a case where the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, right? Everybody
36:58 said, "Oh, they're not going to do well because marketing's turning down." And quite frankly,
37:02 not only did we beat Q2, we raised Q3 and we raised the year.
37:07 So does those results and that guidance, do they reflect what you're talking about where
37:11 marketers are actually recognizing the ROI on the-
37:14 Yeah. So what happened initially in Q2 is a number of our existing clients increased
37:22 what they spent with us quickly. What we also announced, and I want to be careful with what
37:29 I can and cannot talk about-
37:30 No forward-looking comments here.
37:32 Okay, exactly.
37:33 There you go.
37:34 In the second quarter of this year, we saw record RFP requests. So you should assume
37:41 that if you're seeing record RFPs, you would think those numbers would continue to ripple
37:45 through.
37:46 Yeah. All right. Talk to me a little bit about, thinking about in your career now, okay? So
37:51 you've been at the forefront of some big secular shifts in technology and-
37:55 Back to being old, I hear you. Yes, yes.
37:57 What is it like competing with companies like Adobe and Oracle? I mean, these are companies
38:03 that probably 25 years ago when you were just a young entrepreneur, they were still really
38:08 big back then. Salesforce didn't exist yet.
38:10 I was going to say, Salesforce wasn't around. Oracle was fully focused on databases and
38:14 Adobe was a publishing platform. But what I would say is, it's a little bit of a misnomer.
38:20 I mean, they're all incredible companies. And if I wanted a Salesforce automation tool,
38:26 I'm calling Salesforce. If I need a financial services package or a proprietary database,
38:33 we're open source, but I would call Oracle, right? If I needed a publishing partner, there's
38:40 nobody to call but Adobe, right?
38:42 But when you look inside those businesses, what most investors do not understand, we're
38:48 not really competing with them. We're competing with ExactTarget, Salesforce bought. We're
38:54 competing with Responsys, Oracle bought and largely has ignored. And we're competing with
39:00 Neolane, which Adobe bought. So we're not necessarily competing with the mother ship.
39:07 We're competing with the clouds that they acquired to build that. And the truth of the
39:13 matter is, we were named by Forrester. I've also got to be careful how I say this. If
39:19 you look at the Forrester marketing automation report that just published, we are the furthest
39:25 to the right and the highest in the leaderboard. And what they said was, Zeta is number one
39:31 because we are the best at solving and simplifying complex marketing problems. I paraphrase that
39:40 just a bit, I'm sure.
39:42 But at the end of the day, we made the decision five to seven years ago, back to one of your
39:49 earlier questions, would be very difficult to make that decision today as a public company.
39:54 But we made the decision as a private company to take our platform, which was good, but
39:59 antiquated. And instead of migrating or fixing it again, we decided to put it into maintenance
40:07 mode and we used about 400 of our full-time engineers for three years. And we built what
40:15 is today called the Zeta marketing platform.
40:18 So what does that mean when you roll out a completely new platform? It means you can
40:23 put artificial intelligence as native to the application layer. Every one of our competitors,
40:29 it's outside of the application. Why does that matter? Because our marketing clients,
40:34 as it relates to CTV, programmatic, online video, often have to make a decision in one
40:41 to three milliseconds. If you want to crunch that much data that fast, you better not need
40:49 to step out of your platform via API to another platform to see if it works.
40:55 The other thing that Forrester noted was that we put data as native to the application layer
41:01 as well. So our data cloud, which allows you to know everything you need to know on making
41:07 a decision, is also native to the application layer. So not only do we have a great user
41:13 interface, not only do we have a great reporting tool, but we're able to do this stuff substantially
41:19 faster than anybody else. And because everything we do is new, it's 100% cloud-based.
41:25 So it sounds like just kind of looking through those results and kind of hearing you talk
41:29 about it a little bit, you guys are executing, I would say, very well in a difficult environment.
41:35 So let's talk about that difficult environment. You're a CEO of a company. You have what,
41:39 over a thousand employees?
41:40 Yeah, it's about 1,500.
41:42 1,500. You're all over the world. You have offices all over the world.
41:46 Before COVID started, we had 26 offices on four continents.
41:49 Wow. And so let's just talk about how you're feeling, not as it relates to, let's say,
41:55 data, but you hobnob with a bunch of CEOs. You talk to a lot of big investors.
41:59 Hobnob.
42:00 But there's a certain sense for what's going on, where we are. I think a lot of CEOs who,
42:06 let's say, did pretty well in difficult environment, which was a pandemic, which was the definition
42:11 of a black swan event. No one saw that coming. And so there were people like you as a lead
42:16 up into the dot-com or the lead up into the financial crisis. People were really nervous.
42:20 They saw activity that was going on that was not going to be able to last for too much
42:25 longer, but no one could put their finger on the point in which it was going to pop.
42:29 So now you think about it, I think at one point in late 2020, when we had the vaccine
42:34 announcements, we had a different administration. We had a lot of things started turning. I
42:38 think a lot of people thought by mid 2020, this would be in the rear view mirror, and
42:43 it's not.
42:44 So I think people, first of all, discounted the value of the amount of money the Fed printed
42:55 and the Congress passed. And listen, you're pumping trillions of dollars. The reality
43:03 is as that created the inflationary environment we're in today, which was compounded by the
43:09 first ground war in Europe since World War II, you end up in a circumstance where it's
43:16 interesting. I think my opinion, there's some businesses that are having limited to no issues.
43:23 There's some businesses that are aided by what's going on. When you look at a lot of
43:27 the consumer products and retail.
43:31 Supply chain issues.
43:32 Supply chain, right. They've got a multi-front war, right? You've got, you know, whether
43:37 inflation's 9.3 or 8.5, it's still the highest in 40 years. And it's largely driven by energy.
43:45 And as you know better than anybody, nothing drives cost creep like energy. It's not just
43:53 energy. It's certainly gas, right? But getting goods to market becomes substantially more
43:58 expensive. Chemicals become substantially more expensive. Rubber becomes substantially
44:03 more expensive. Building houses become substantially more expensive. All of that goes up when energy
44:07 prices go up, which lowers expendable income and disposable income and creates challenges
44:15 there.
44:16 What we're seeing at Zeta is that's causing marketers to focus more on return on investment
44:23 than I've seen them focus on in many, many years. Now, we've been screaming about return
44:28 on investment for 10 years and a lot of people haven't cared. Now all of a sudden they're
44:33 waking up and, you know, what I like to say is, as Machiavelli first said, "Never waste
44:38 a crisis." Churchill has since taken credit for that one, but you can split credit.
44:43 Again, digital companies that did not rely on supply chains or energy inputs or some
44:48 of the stuff during the pandemic did very well. I think what has gone on over the last
44:52 year has been that the valuations got pushed up. And this is not on the companies. It's
44:57 not on their guidance. It's not on bankers. It's on what investors were willing to pay
45:02 for a scarce group of assets.
45:04 Well, you also, listen, if during COVID, I like to joke, there were two sides of the
45:08 trade, right? On one side of the trade, you had people who own Broadway theaters. On the
45:14 other side of the trade, you had Zoom or Clorox. And at Zeta, we were sort of in the upper
45:19 third of that trade. We were benefited by the downturn. But I want to be clear. I think
45:25 we are going to continue to see the migration of analog and linear media to digital at the
45:33 current or an accelerating pace.
45:37 Last week, shockingly, there was a report that in last week, there were more people
45:43 who consume TV via streaming than via linear for the first time ever. At the same time,
45:50 Netflix has publicly announced they're going to move to an ad-supported model. We very
45:55 quietly mentioned on our call last quarter, our connected TV business grew over 200% last
46:02 quarter. And we believe that connected TV, which is also over the top TV and the other
46:08 things is the future of marketing.
46:12 Zeta's marketing platform, along with its data cloud, is purpose built to be able to
46:18 identify people in any digital environment. So we can target an ad to you while you're
46:24 watching a football game for a bottle of wine while your neighbor might want a Budweiser.
46:29 I actually have been saying this for years. I think it's going to be massive. You know
46:32 exactly who is watching that thing. You don't know that on linear TV.
46:36 Correct. That's right. But I also want to say again, we never share the consumer's personally
46:42 identifiable information with any enterprise.
46:45 I just mean from a targeting standpoint.
46:47 I'm trained.
46:48 Yeah. Well, listen, I want to follow up with Joe, maybe on this space. He and I've talked
46:53 a lot about this.
46:54 Joe's very smart on this.
46:55 I think we should do another pod on that because I actually think some people are looking at
46:59 like a Netflix and a Disney plus and what they have to do to kind of capture these people
47:04 that are coming off of linear TV and these cable bundles. And I just think that this
47:08 could actually be a boon for them in a way. So, all right, well, listen, let's save that
47:12 for another conversation. I really appreciate you laying it out on Zeta. Congratulations
47:18 on again, executing. I think it sounds like very well in a difficult environment. So the
47:22 next time you come back, we'll have an update on your one year plan. You already guided
47:26 up for the balance of the year here. And then your history as an entrepreneur at a time
47:31 where I was also coming out of school in the 90s and watching that trajectory is pretty
47:35 fascinating. Not many of my friends did what you did is get right to being an entrepreneur
47:39 right out of school. So your history as a successful one over the last 30 years is really
47:45 amazing.
47:46 Well, first of all, you're way too kind as somebody who is incredibly successful in every
47:50 median you have ever approached. But, well, no, you are. Well, maybe the diet. But other
47:55 than that, the reality is that, you know, I really, really think highly of you. And,
48:01 you know, as I said, I get invited to do a lot of podcasts. This is the second one I've
48:05 ever done in my life.
48:06 Well, we appreciate it here and we hope you come back to OK Computer. Thanks a lot, David
48:10 Steinberg, CEO, founder, chairman of Zeta Global.
48:14 Thanks again to our presenting sponsor, Current, and our supporters, Masterworks and Taboola,
48:18 for bringing you this episode of OK Computer. If you like what you heard, make sure you
48:22 hit follow and leave us a review. It helps people find our show. And we want to hear
48:27 from you. Email us at contact@riskreversal.com. Follow and connect with us on Twitter @OKComputerPod.
48:34 We'll see you next time.