Why this 7-year-old bootstrapped mobile analytics startup is expanding to blockchain

Charles Manning, CEO and co-founder of Kochava

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Asia VC Cast hosted by Daniel Song where we publish the revised transcripts from the podcast’s interviews with inspiring entrepreneurs and experienced VCs. This is heavily revised from the show’s original transcript. For the full interview, go here.

Charles Manning is the founder and CEO of Kochava, a mobile attribution analytics platform serving tier-one advertisers worldwide. Prior to founding Kochava, he founded Playxpert (a gaming technology platform) and licensed the technology to Razer.

Kochava has also recently introduced Xchng, a digital advertising platform built on blockchain.

Tell us about Kochava.

Kochava is a seven-year-old bootstrapped company. We started the company on the tail of serving a number of agencies and brands as a custom app development shop in the early days of iPhone and Android. We discovered that a number of our clients said, “I’d love to start spending money to promote the app.” They liked to have a feature in the app that can track analytics.

And having been through the web 1.0 days, I immediately knew that they were effectively asking for an attribution system. So, we started building that on the side.

Why did you choose to bootstrap?

The funny story about VC funding is that it’s true that you can almost always get outside financing. It’s just a function of what the terms will be and whether the VC will add a lot of value to the company.

Our first opportunity to raise money came in late 2011, when most VCs argued that while the mobile world was certainly going to be big, it was really just an extension of the web. Having raised money in the past, my observation was that investors may not necessarily be bullish on the space. So, we did not go after VC funding.

I thought that since we had a profitable consulting service, we could develop the app first, then maybe we could go out for VC funding after.

So, we built the product, our customers started using it, and within about six or seven months, the revenue from Kochava was eclipsing the revenue of our consulting business. So, we said, “OK, let’s turn off all these client projects and customer scenarios and just focus on Kochava.”

In late 2012, I had another opportunity to raise money. But the thought process was, “Well, Kochava is profitable so far. Let’s keep on investing in it and wait to raise money.” It had almost become a yearly thing. It’s just a function of whether we can get through the next year and continue to grow.

But I think there’s a chance that we may raise funds, as we’re getting into this phase where we’re serving a wider space.

What made you believe so much in mobile platforms?

Prior to Kochava, I helped build an in-game chat tool that lets users have in-game overlay experiences on top of a PC game. That was a widget framework which had web browsing tools, research guild tools, and other gaming-centric things.

The reason I’m sharing this story is that I saw the app metaphor applied to mobile. People at large wanted to use a series of apps on a miniature computer in their pockets. Honestly, not until the iPod Touch came around did people start to visualize the implication of this.

What’s your outlook on the mobile measurement landscape?

Let’s talk about Xchng. Why do you think putting media buying and selling on blockchain makes sense?