Adverity is a data intelligence platform allowing marketers to aggregate, manage and analyse data.
We caught up with CEO Alex Igelsböck to find out more, and ask him how he does what he does.
Please describe your job: What do you do?
Alexander Igelsböck: My job is orchestrating the Adverity venture. As CEO of Adverity I am working day-to-day on the strategy and operational execution of this exciting journey we started a few years ago in 2015. Every day is varied; I could be taking part in a number of things including team management, recruiting new staff, meeting clients and prospects, maintaining investor relations, concentrating on product strategy and so much more. No two days are the same, which keeps it interesting for me.
Where do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?
Alexander Igelsböck: At Adverity, our offices are open-plan, in fact we just moved into a new bigger open plan office in London’s Whitechapel, which is filling up quickly! The management team sits with the rest of the business, reflecting the flat hierarchy we apply in our daily operations. On one hand, as CEO, I report with my board and stakeholders – on the other hand – as a co-founder, I often have the freedom of choice on where I invest my time and how I prioritise our business operations.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
Alexander Igelsböck: One of the most important skills a CEO needs is to be able to work with all different types of people. It’s important that people understand you, and your intentions, as much as you understand them; relationship building is a huge part of making sure the entire organisation is in sync.
Tell us about a typical working day…
Alexander Igelsböck: Adverity is currently growing at a very rapid pace. This means the only consistency is that no two days are the same. We re-invent the organisation constantly across all different aspects – which may seem chaotic to some – but we’re evolving all the time towards a better state.
What do you love about your job? What do you hate?
Alexander Igelsböck: I love all of it – the constant challenge, the validation of customers successfully using our product, and also the people we work with. When you work on such a dynamic product in a diverse company, where you travel, meet new people and feel rewarded by your successes it’s very hard to pick something to hate.
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
Alexander Igelsböck: There are a number of metrics a company can use to assess the operations of its business. The unit economics is something we always pay close attention to, combined with the overall growth of the business. Typically Adverity focuses on metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio, which helps to work out profitability by comparing how much revenue can be made from consumers and how much that process costs. Other metrics include net revenue retention, essentially calculating revenue retention after company changes, such as expansion or loss of clients.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
Alexander Igelsböck: We use our own platform ‘Adverity Insights’ to work with the data in our business across all of the teams. Starting from data in software engineering and customer support to marketing, sales, and more. This allows us to have a complete overview of our organisation by simplifying the data, which we can build our analysis from. This process will be simplified further with the launch of our new product – ‘PreSense’. PreSense is designed to uncover and optimise opportunities in data by using machine learning, as well as using data anomaly detection to avoid any costly errors. This is currently in Beta testing and being used by a select few clients but should be ready to launch in Q4 2019.
How and why did you start Adverity?
Alexander Igelsböck: We started Adverity because we wanted to make it easier for businesses to work with large amounts of data. The challenges for marketing teams and organisations have changed a lot over the past years and will continue to develop in the future. One thing that will not change is that CMOs and marketers require data driven insights to make an impact, however becoming truly data driven is very difficult. This is what drove us to create a product that would simplify this process for our clients and empower marketers to create campaigns based on data insights.
Which advertising/marketing/ experience has impressed you recently?
Alexander Igelsböck: Personally I liked the #IKEALastStraw because it reminds us how important it is to stop using single-use plastics. I am conscious of the environment and the sustainability of our world, so this marketing example is a simple, yet effective way of spreading environmental awareness. It also works as great promotion for IKEA’s brand image.