Laurence

Proud to announce we've raised $5.8M in total funding for @trylaurence, the hedge fund for ads. We founded Laurence with the key insight that we could automate performance marketing the same way quant firms systematically trade. Our system autonomously executes Amazon ad spend for fourteen brands, and our models drive a 15-40% improvement in total net profit after margin and ad spend. Stay tuned, we have a really, REALLY fun announcement coming for you all next week ;)

laurence interviews be like

Your best-performing ads aren't incremental. Branded search performs well for every brand on Amazon. But it has a hard ceiling: spending more can't reach the customers who don't know your name yet. Non-branded search is the open sky. It's where a customer with intent in your category discovers your brand. It's also harder to know if you're on the right search terms, more expensive, & less efficient on paper. I recently sat down with three $10-100M brand leaders who were spooked by lower-ROAS on non-branded spend. We found in the data that over time, non-branded was actually the strongest lever for growth: it's where incremental revenue is built. At Laurence, we calculate optimal non-branded ROAS by combining contribution margin per SKU with an organic rank index: our acceptable efficient spend is built on profit margins and organic sales velocity. This allows us to autonomously run branded and non-branded strategies to their explicit goals: branded defending earned searches, and non-branded acquiring net new customers. Grow profitably with Laurence.

Read our co-founder and CEO's thoughts on @FTC's recent Amazon lawsuit below:

We've identified the biggest reason why brands bleed Amazon ad spend while leaving profits on the table: no exact match. Agencies and in-house teams can only manually manage a few dozen bids at most once a week. As a result, most accounts we look at rely heavily on phrase match, broad match, and auto targeting to reduce their manual overhead. This is a huge mistake: you can only set one bid per target, and non-exact targeting pools multiple different search terms under this single bid. Each of these search terms converts at different rates, and not pricing your bid exactly means you end up overpaying for your worst search terms while underbidding on your top search terms. Exact match on every relevant search term is core to the models we've built at @trylaurence: we model conversion rates as a probability distribution for thousands of search terms at every observed CPC, allowing us to know exactly what each click is worth and how to bid to maximize profits in the long-term.

Laurence is hosting a session at @ycombinator Startup School this weekend! Our co-founder @LGierhake and IMO/IOI medalist Founding Researcher Pedro will be talking about how they went from quant trading into startups and how that translates into our work at Laurence. DM for an invite!

Fire your agency. Within a month of joining Laurence, this $40M founder knew he had made the right decision For more insights, check out the full podcast LINK IN COMMENTS

Founder Aaron Apple explains the importance of maintaining stock and how it drives momentum

Be proactive, not reactive. In a game where margins are thin and competition is fierce, taking advantage of every opportunity you get is key- being vigilant and constantly monitoring competitor data helps you get ahead of the curve

Constantly working on your product matters:even if it’s just 1% everyday, the learnings compound over time. – at New York, NY

Doing everything but not getting results? For founder Aaron Apple, curiosity is what helped him get to that exit: trying things, constantly iterating, and figuring things out on his own. NOT waiting around and expecting returns to magically appear Stay Curious! Check out the full podcast for all the insights.