Troy Townsend moved from Melbourne to Noosa and joined the Hub in Feb 2022 with a brand new (yet to be named) venture he had just co-founded with Jack Byrne. Fast forward to December 2023 and this is the Zitcha team celebrating their year-end on the Noosa River on Friday.
Troy and Jack have an impeccable pedigree building digital media businesses that foreshadow big new shifts in the industry and with Zitcha they're onto another winner: retail media
Industry analyst Benedict Evans reckons 'Amazon sold close to $40bn of advertising last year - bigger than Prime, bigger than the entire global newspaper industry and probably more profitable than AWS'.
Other major retailers have also realised that they can build high margin businesses by offering brands the opportunity to run ads on their website and other media assets - think Nestle advertising on the confectionary pages of the Coles website.
Retail media as an advertising channel is coming at just the right time because the cost to reach & acquire new customers through the two major consumer gateways, Google and Meta, has become incredibly expensive and new, more affordable options are required.
This is a huge market opportunity and Zitcha are well positioned. They have developed the software platform that allows major retailers to run a sophisticated ad business, managing the complexities of yield management, campaigns, reporting, data orchestration, etc for their advertising brands.
Let it also be said that the last 18 months has been one of the toughest operating periods for early stage SaaS startups: capital has dried up, software spending is down, layoffs everywhere and a lot of startups shutting down. Zitcha are one of a new breed of startups which are being forged in the fire: revenue from day one, sprinting to cashflow positive, super-lean and customer obsessed.
Well done Team Z.
‘Tis the season to celebrate and after such a huge year at Zitcha, we’ve got plenty to raise a glass to 🥂
The Noosa team welcomed our Australian offices last week for our end-of-year event. It was a wonderful time to reflect on the year that was, meet some team members in person and socialise with our Zitcha fam.
A huge thank you to our team for making Zitcha what it has become today. The dedication and belief in our vision is what makes us such an incredible, strong team... and we're only just getting started!
#zitchafam #retailmediaplatform #2023
Troy Townsend Jack Byrne Nick Hinsley Hugh Cameron Leigh Malcolmson Ale Catania Amy Holland Storm Christy Clinton Angove Miranda Gordon George Joseph Louie Kuechle Greer Dhaya Santhamoorthy Layana Franco Matt Taylor Sanjith P Das Tristan Kennedy Vasken Khadar Anthony Rey Jessica Townsend Dan Sealey Vasken Khadar Vladimir Semenov Fraser Miller Dominik Elias Drake Keith (missing #shubham and #max)
Client Services, AdOperations - AdTech
3moThank you Zenda Laqui for the arrangement and your hospitality. In a remote world with video calls, it is so important to keep in-person connection 😍