Why I created a start-up to compete directly against Google

There’s a real cost to us that may not be dollars and cents but rather trade-offs in terms of privacy, attention and data.

“The vast resources of the data centers, costing Google an estimated thirty billion dollars to build, are provided essentially for free. Free is not by accident. If your business plan is to have access to the data of the entire world, then free is an imperative.”

- George Gilder from Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy.

Those of us who can relive the old days, when you had to first type “www.google.com” to perform a search, will recall that’s exactly what people did, even if another search engine was the default. This was how Google came to control over half of all searches. Although Google’s products are free and no one has to actually use them, people searching the internet are not Google’s true customers. We’re its product. Advertisers are its real customers.

I had to ask myself the question of who, if anyone, is hurt by Google’s dominance in selling ads off the world’s search queries and through its array of affiliated businesses, from its Android phone software to its YouTube video platform and digital maps? I say that it’s us, the consumers, who don’t have much of a choice but to use the search giant’s products. We provide data that feeds the advertising machine, turning Google into a tech behemoth. There’s a real cost to us that may not be dollars and cents but rather trade-offs in terms of privacy, attention and data.

The Path Less Traveled

This startling reality inspired me to work towards an ethical solution to traditional search advertising; the first true alternative to Google. I wanted to create a magic bullet that would empower forward-thinking brands wary of Big Tech’s attempt to monopolize the world’s data.

When I first started scaling ReverseAds in 2019, reading George Gilder’s Life After Google really struck home for me. The book brought truth to light about my wariness and scrutiny of Google’s size, power and influence in search advertising. The question to ask wasn’t just “Does Google have a monopoly over search?” but “Is search the market we should care about?” And then: “Is there a better alternative to traditional search advertising?”

Being an avid reader of history and social science novels, I was also inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, which had me puzzling over Google’s influence over our economy and daily lives, and its monopolistic behaviors in elbowing out the competition: “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”

I have always argued that “search” is just a tiny part of a consumer’s purchase path, particularly for considered purchases. 70% of global ad spend is wasted in Google and Facebook while 66% of users’ time spent online is on the open web. And, to boot, advertisers don’t care whether they’re advertising on search or social media, as much as they care whether their advertising is generating more in sales than it costs them. As long as other firms can also deliver large numbers of eyeballs online, Google will be forced to compete, hard, for business.

Undoing Google’s Monopoly

I think what we really want is more functional products and solutions - a marketplace that’s working properly with real competition. ReverseAds was founded on this belief to undo Google’s monopoly without making everyone worse off.

In 2016, I sold a big data start-up that I founded in San Diego, California and set off on a personal mission to see the world. My adventures led me to Thailand (my 37th country) where I decided to focus on ‘Method’, a revenue growth system, that became the springboard for ReverseAds. After the approval from Thailand’s Board of Investment in 2017, I started with a team of 10 employees to build the world’s first privacy-first, cookie-less keyword algorithm.

Outperforming Google 3-to-1

We launched our keyword assignment algorithm in 2018 after raising a $3 million seed fund. As soon as it worked for our clients, even to the point of outperforming traditional search ads 3-to-1, that was when I knew we had created something truly special. Not only were we surpassing Google, as proven by its own Google Analytics, but the linchpin was also in our customer retention rate.

We had a consistent retention rate of 93% whereas Google’s was only 43%. It was an unmistakable sign to us that our product truly worked and that we have also found our product-market fit; a match made in heaven.

Scaling the Company for Continued Success

ReverseAds Partner Program was introduced in 2020 and resulted in 40 partners within six months. 2020 was also the year where the real work began. As is inevitable for most successful start-ups, the company was outgrowing its former self and I had to scale to avoid the mounting pressure of success from crushing us before we had the chance to pat ourselves on the back.

Besides hiring more talents, securing investments to raise capital for the company and expanding into new market horizons, I wanted the company to be more than just a big data company that has joined the advertising business. We had to convince and empower businesses to rethink traditional search advertising, and that their ad spend should really be everywhere a consumer is after the initial search.

When Covid-19 hit, we were still small and nimble enough to pivot our business model according to the changing landscape; and we thrived. After shifting our sales and marketing focus to pandemic-proof industries such as real estate, IT and digital services, finance and insurance, we adopted a flexible and reactive strategy for different industries and geographies as countries opened up and Covid-affected industries slowly recovered.

I’ve learnt that the sooner you can accept and lean into the benefits of change, the more aggressive your recovery can become. The shift in strategy also meant that ReverseAds could become more of a trailblazer in the digital advertising industry.

We overcame setbacks from identifying new sales channels in an increasingly competitive online advertising market to finding an effective communication strategy for mobilizing the entire team in getting behind the company’s goals, especially during a period of emotional turmoil due to the pandemic. Many stepped up to the challenge and I am reminded of a saying I once heard about relationships: bad relationships fall apart in crisis, good ones get by, and great ones are better because of it. The same can be said about a business.

Becoming a Billion-Dollar Company

ReverseAds reported a 600% revenue growth in 15 months and now generates over $4 million in annual revenue. We have a dynamic core team, both in-house and remote, of 100 talented people from 27 countries. We work with over 120 clients to deliver successful privacy-first keyword ad campaigns with an algorithm that wins.

After securing additional investment and a partnership with a multinational investment banking firm, we are finally in a position where we have the potential to become a billion-dollar company. In an effort to scale internationally, we chose Singapore as our new headquarters and are already in the process of opening our first office there as well as in Bangkok and Austin, Texas. By 2022, we aim to establish 50 offices in top cities across the world that purchase Google Search Advertising.

Although 2020 laid the foundation for scaling the company by streamlining operations, improving customer retention and raising capital, 2021 set the stage for us to continue scaling in a way that ensured we hire the best talent while keeping up with the growing demand for our product — which means a minimal margin for error.

Instead of just obsessing over productivity, I find that the best way to meet the challenge of talent acquisition is to be as perceptive as possible with hiring and people management. Hire the best people so that you don’t have to fire them later, don’t hire talents with an intention to fire later; finally, reward and retain your best talents. In addition to focusing on culture, morale and publicly celebrating wins (big and small), we established an employee stock ownership plan to encourage curiosity in the company’s future.

Progress is Disruption and Change

The future of ReverseAds also lies in the unrelenting innovation and improvement of our assignment and roadmap algorithm. In the next 90 days, we will have achieved complete front and back-end automation. The next challenge is to transform our algorithm from working specifically for certain industries like automotive and real estate to include more industries such as direct-to-consumer brands that are radically changing consumer preferences and expectations.

The best vision is insight, without the extra frills. We’re constantly working at identifying better solutions for competitive and social media redirect as well as the highest probability keywords that can be applied to many other industries. As the team continues expanding our keyword algorithm to be applicable for every industry in the world, I look forward to a more sustainable path to profitability; one that preserves and enhances our brand value of undoing Big Tech’s monopoly.

And in the years to come, I hope to find other business models where we can continue to be a positive disruptive force.

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