Throughout the month of August, the Rude Baguette will be running a series of interviews with some of France’s top and rising entrepreneurs, where they’ll share their reflections on their year thus far, their plans through the end of the year and how they manage their businesses through the August down period. In this installment, we talk with Christophe Camborde, CEO and cofounder of Ezakus.
Ezakus provides data management tools to the digital advertising system, seeking to help advertisers improve the effectiveness of their campaigns through offering them superior transparency on their audience data. Having been recently become the first DMP (Data Management Platform) dedicated to digital advertising whose measurement process has been certified by the OJD and with 100 clients/partners, Ezakus is becoming an invaluable partner for advertisers and editors in France and, increasingly, beyond. In this installment, Ezakus’ Christophe Camborde discusses their invaluable impact for advertisers, UK and US expansion plans and the importance of balancing the short and long-term vision.
What have been the big accomplishments for Ezakus since the beginning of the year?
Since the beginning of the year, we have been running more and more data campaigns. We have worked on our technology on data and audience profiling for more than a year so now that we are finally using the data, it’s thrilling to see their huge value for the advertising ecosystem. Every day we run campaigns for our partners (e.g. M6web, Audience Square, Prisma…), not only sales houses but also e-merchants, advertisers. A total of more than 100 partners.
What are your goals for the end of the year?
We are closing a round A fundraising (after a 2.2M€ leverage fundraising in 2011) and will open offices in the UK and in the United States. We have succeeded in France, where we are leader in DMPs (Data Management Platform), with more than 200 million hits analyzed every day and multiple campaigns run on a daily basis. We want to reproduce this success on the English and American markets.
What have you learned this year that you think every entrepreneur should know?
Balance short-term and long-term vision. When you have been running a company for more than a year, you may be locked into the next action game. It is very important to remain opened to the business, to be able to detect opportunities and keep long-term vision. And in the end, the key learning is cash flow.
How does your company handle vacation & the August down period?
We are now more than 30 so it is easier to handle vacation – at least easier than last year. One last thing though: make sure shared calendars work effectively.