- Joined
- Jan 8, 2019
- Messages
- 96
When Tom Fang (then iPyxel/ThriveTracker) approached me in late 2015 about helping him improve his cloud-based affiliate tracker, I was a bit skeptical. I'd just come off of a very lucrative contract with Ernst and Young to working on their IT Risk Assessment Framework in the wake of the Target data breach and I was in need of a fresh challenge. When Tom first pitched the position to me "Affiliate Marketing" sounded kind of boring -- that is, until he told me how much traffic was running through his tracker.
"How on earth does someone get 100m clicks per day?" I remember asking. "I'm sorry, it sounded like you said their Facebook spend was $40,000 per day..." (it was)
I'd worked in high traffic systems before; closely. Oddly enough, Kintura's current offices are merely two doors down from Playboy.com just 12 short years ago. When you're Tom (or Uber even) and you see "adult/porn" on a developer's resume it's synonymous with "active problem solver" (any of you who've worked in adult IT know exactly what I mean).
Tom's enthusiasm for his product was infectious. It wasn't just me, either. I'd ended up side by side with a few other developers hand-plucked from (what was then) an elite IT staffing service, hired.com. My peers at ThriveTracker/iPyxel were all sourced from the same place, and we'd all turned down contracts at AirBnb, Uber and Apple because Tom presented us with something new; something way less...bullsh*t. There was something inherently infectious about performance marketing in general: It couldn't hide behind this bullsh*t. You either perform, or you don't; and any of you who've ever been involved in the Fortune 500 know that bullsh*t is king. Those of you also know...it gets old.
So there we were...
I can't go deeply into details about my time at iPyxel/Thrive for legal reasons. For one, I don't think it's ethical or fair (with or without my NDA) to criticize or exploit my past experiences and I would never want to hurt Thrive; even in its current hands (which by all accounts are wonderful people). While I didn't see eye-to-eye with the powers that be on the direction of the platform my hands were tied and during the Clickbooth acquisition we parted ways.
Back in 2005 we had to squeeze a lot of traffic out of a server. I think of it like Mr. Miyagi teaching Karate Kid to wax cars by hand. Until you start throwing hardware at a problem you should learn to work with what you have. I suspect Tom respected that in me; I was always hacking, always finding a way to make things more efficient. Always optimizing.
Without being sensational or even assuming you give a sh*t (we know you're busy), we've worked really hard to get Kintura to the point where it purrs like a kitten (and I cannot stress this enough) very, very inexpensively. In fact, it got so efficient, so inexpensive that we figured there was no reason to charge users who weren't go far beyond the average. At the very worst, we'll be flooded with even more feedback on how we can make our platform better (which we will, always).
Some details about the current free state of things:
In Kintura tradition, we've not only never increased prices on an existing customer we've also had zero down time since we started.
Free tracker starts here: https://kintura.com/new
Please feel free to DM me with questions.
"How on earth does someone get 100m clicks per day?" I remember asking. "I'm sorry, it sounded like you said their Facebook spend was $40,000 per day..." (it was)
I'd worked in high traffic systems before; closely. Oddly enough, Kintura's current offices are merely two doors down from Playboy.com just 12 short years ago. When you're Tom (or Uber even) and you see "adult/porn" on a developer's resume it's synonymous with "active problem solver" (any of you who've worked in adult IT know exactly what I mean).
Tom's enthusiasm for his product was infectious. It wasn't just me, either. I'd ended up side by side with a few other developers hand-plucked from (what was then) an elite IT staffing service, hired.com. My peers at ThriveTracker/iPyxel were all sourced from the same place, and we'd all turned down contracts at AirBnb, Uber and Apple because Tom presented us with something new; something way less...bullsh*t. There was something inherently infectious about performance marketing in general: It couldn't hide behind this bullsh*t. You either perform, or you don't; and any of you who've ever been involved in the Fortune 500 know that bullsh*t is king. Those of you also know...it gets old.
So there we were...
I can't go deeply into details about my time at iPyxel/Thrive for legal reasons. For one, I don't think it's ethical or fair (with or without my NDA) to criticize or exploit my past experiences and I would never want to hurt Thrive; even in its current hands (which by all accounts are wonderful people). While I didn't see eye-to-eye with the powers that be on the direction of the platform my hands were tied and during the Clickbooth acquisition we parted ways.
Back in 2005 we had to squeeze a lot of traffic out of a server. I think of it like Mr. Miyagi teaching Karate Kid to wax cars by hand. Until you start throwing hardware at a problem you should learn to work with what you have. I suspect Tom respected that in me; I was always hacking, always finding a way to make things more efficient. Always optimizing.
Without being sensational or even assuming you give a sh*t (we know you're busy), we've worked really hard to get Kintura to the point where it purrs like a kitten (and I cannot stress this enough) very, very inexpensively. In fact, it got so efficient, so inexpensive that we figured there was no reason to charge users who weren't go far beyond the average. At the very worst, we'll be flooded with even more feedback on how we can make our platform better (which we will, always).
Some details about the current free state of things:
- Free tier is capped at 1m events per month, max overage rate is $25 per million.
- We are going to feel this out and may increase the free tier to 3m or 5m.
- Lower overage rates are probably coming across the board for all plans.
- Our machine learning distribution is included.
- Optimizer is not included for now but we will see how things go.
- Includes a custom (non CNAME) ssl domain
- Includes one user (you)
- Support is via our support forum
In Kintura tradition, we've not only never increased prices on an existing customer we've also had zero down time since we started.
Free tracker starts here: https://kintura.com/new
Please feel free to DM me with questions.
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