Delve.io

Trevor Wolf and his co-founder Ramona had spent much of their careers in advertising testing, where brands routinely spend millions on campaigns before learning whether they work in different markets. Delve.io was built to fix that gap by letting brands get expert peer review on creative work before it goes live.

The company was incorporated in March 2016, and the founders funded the early work themselves. They gave up salaries for about six months and put their savings into the business to finance the first sales hire and the technology platform. Trevor says they raised about $300,000 from angel investors after that, bringing total funding to about $310,000.

The first product was a marketplace. Delve sold brands a research project, typically priced between $5,000 and $7,000, that used a panel of around 30 outside professionals. Delve paid those experts $50 to $150 per hour depending on the market, and paid about $1,500 to $2,200 of each contract to them. Trevor estimated gross margin at roughly $40 to $60 per contract after transaction fees.

Delve sold primarily to large brands and agencies. Trevor said the company worked with about 17 brands, including Unilever, Pernod Ricard, GSK, Barclays, and L'Oreal, across about 10 countries. The marketplace had done about $180,000 in sales since May 2016, and the company had paid between 700 and 1,200 professionals across 10 to 12 countries.

The marketplace model worked for large, expensive campaigns. Trevor said TV and radio remained most of the revenue, though digital work was growing because it is easier to sell when clients can promise higher conversion. The team also found that staffing projects by hand was too slow, which pushed them toward a SaaS product. Trevor admitted he was poor at following up with prospects, and his sales team reminded him to send emails.

In March 2017, Delve had about $80,000 in contracts for the month and was adding roughly four or five new logo clients. The company had eight full-time staff based in Johannesburg, South Africa. It had just launched a subscription SaaS model, under which large organizations like Ogilvy, with 12,000 employees, would pay per-seat licenses of about $5 to $10 per month. Trevor said the product had a couple hundred private beta sign-ups and that the company planned a seed round of about $1 million.