Known Unknowns | Guillaume Kendall
KNOWN UNKNOWNS IS A SERIES THAT PROFILES MOVERS AND SHAKERS MAKING A DIFFERENCE
TO DRIVE BETTER, MORE SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS PRACTICES.
Meet Guillaume Kendall - the founder and CEO of the Attention Exchange® - the world’s first regulated marketplace for your attention. Their goal is to enabling consumers to directly benefit from the value of their attention and data through a fair, transparent and sustainable value exchange between advertisers and consumers.
Guillaume spent 15 years working at the forefront of the FinTech industry advising clients such as NatWest, BNP Paribas and BBVA but after watching the Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’, he quit his job and sold his house to build a viable alternative to social media for advertisers and consumers. This fairer, safer, more sustainable model for the $400Bn digital advertising industry fuses fintech with adtech and hopes to redirect advertisers’ spending away from social media and into the consumers’ pocket instead.
You mention we are living in the ‘Attention Economy’ - which is why you created the Attention Exchange® - to build a fairer world, where your data and your time is paid for rather than stolen. Your slogan is Bridging the gap between attention and intention. Can you elaborate on this and tell me more about the inception of this and its relationship to Zedosh?
The term attention economy has been around for a few years now. It relates to the fact that the internet is powered by billions advertising dollars, all looking for your attention. Whereas today, those advertising dollars end up in the pockets of attention intermediaries such as social media or ‘big tech’, we’ve made it possible for the attention holder, the human consumer, to get paid in real cash.
Our audience give their consent for us to analyse their banking transactions so that they can be matched (and paid) by brands who want their undivided attention. We enable this transparent value exchange to take place via our app, Zedosh. Here, our audience can connect bank accounts, credit cards and loans share immutable proof of their intent to buy what they’re interested in. We then put the attention connected to those transactions for sale on our marketplace. Our matching engine, the Attention Exchange® looks for spending patterns and matches right consumer at the right time to the right content. Hence our slogan – we understand the intent of consumers, rather than seeking attention for attention’s sake. . In an age of increasing ‘privacy’ where big tech is battling to access your data to exploit it for their gain, we put the consumer in control.
Our vision is that users will sign into any website or app using the Attention Exchange® to take control of their data’s value and their user experience. The alternative being to sign in through Apple, Facebook, email, and Google - who exploit and monetise our data for their benefit. In our model, users will get paid for any advertising that they watch on any platform in a dedicated ‘cinema’, rather than the current model of ads forcing themselves all over the content we’re trying to see. We want you, the consumer, to have a great user experience and become the first recipient of the value of your attention and your data on any digital platform. Zedosh is the Attention Exchange®’s first customer. We’re now working on integrating anyone with an audience.
Zedosh is an interesting concept - what made you believe it would gain popularity or be something people would need? Where did the inspiration for this product come from?
My ‘aha’ moment came about when I spent £179.40 on Patch Plants - an online store that delivers plants to your door. For months after I had made the purchase, I was still receiving ads for Patch Plants. This is because advertising is based on cookies and tracking pixels which at scale is highly inefficient. The industry has satisfied itself with sub 1% engagement rates, which is why my experience is far from the norm - we have all suffered irrelevant ads. What other industry do you know where 99% wastage acceptable? If not for the end user experience, then for the carbon cost of the industry, there had to be a better model.
Having worked in FinTech for the last 15 years, I was inspired to look at open banking as the answer to this inefficiency. Open banking (part of PSDII; payment services directive 2) came about when the Competition and Markets Authority agreed that banks ha too much control over our banking experience. With open banking, transaction data across credit cards, mortgages, loans and current accounts, etc, is ours - not the banks. As such, it’s yours to share outside the bank with other regulated 3rd partiers. Many fintech companies were born from the opportunity this presented, to provide user-friendly, powerful insights into our financial footprint. Zedosh took this model and applied it to advertising.
The beauty of our app is that we don't care about what you browse because browsing is mostly aspirational. We care only about your spending behaviour. What more data do agencies need about someone apart from where they spend their money?
How does this solve the attention for attentions’ sake conundrum?
The advertising industry is increasingly concerned with measuring attention – where eyeballs are on the screen when an ad forces its way into view. Zedosh measures the value of attention from consumers we know have an intent to buy a certain product. If Atem spends £4.58 with Pret a Manger on Oxford Street every other day of the week, Zedosh sees this pattern of behaviour, with Atem’s permission, and can approach café Nero with the option of getting Atem’s undistracted attention for up to 2 minutes before the next transaction with Pret. Our challenge is that advertising agencies are paid by getting ‘views’ and buy views on a CPM basis (Cost Per Mille/Thousand) and we sell hyper-targeted, efficient audiences of humans. As Elon recently found out, there’s a significant complication in that many of the views are from robots or nefarious actors. We know the purchasing power and the patterns of behaviour behind each human consumer we are getting in front of. And yet, no one really seems to care…yet.
Where do you see Zedosh in 5 years?
The dream in 5 years’ time would be that if you were to download an app or go onto a website that doesn't support the Attention Exchange®, you’d be angry about it. We see a world where the consumer is the first recipient of their value and they redistribute it to publishers, content creators or service providers.
What is your role at Zedosh? What does a typical day at work look like for you?
There is no typical day, which is part of the attraction of running a start-up. My primary role is to ensure we can pay everyone who needs to be paid, which at the moment, means I am constantly fundraising. On a typical day, I would speak to potential angel investors and reach out to a number of institutional investors. I also get to take part in fun things like attending MAD//Fest to talk to as many industry participants as I can.
What was your aha moment - the moment when you knew that Zedosh had potential?
Hardly a day goes by where the challenges we solve aren’t in the business / advertising headlines. This helps me rationalise the fact I sold my house and quit my job to do this. I am reminded that we are onto something potentially massive. It took us a while to realise we were more AdTech than FinTech and our latest angel investors are advertising heavyweights - global leaders in programmatic advertising. To have them believe in our vision is further proof that the writing is on the wall, that there is going to be a post-Facebook, post-cookie internet and that when this happens, we are going to be right there ready for people to fundamentally change their relationship with advertisers.
Did COVID change the way you do business at Zedosh?
My commute time was removed so thankfully I was able to work a lot more hours on Zedosh that I would previously have been able to do. It also meant that we could build a team and get things done without ever assuming we had to meet physically. Coincidentally, the timelines coincided where information around user’s privacy on Facebook and Google became increasingly visible in mainstream news. This is around the same time when I deleted all my personal social media accounts.
What advice would you give those just starting out in their careers?
A half joke that they should marry a corporate lawyer (as I have!) - but there's a seriousness behind that. I have found that with early-stage start-ups, it is far too easy to feel like you need to give away 20% of your business to someone in exchange for their ‘help’, in order to grow. I believe you need to hold onto as much as possible for as long as possible and to keep the control. Zedosh has raised £580,000 so far and I've still got 80% of the business. That is only because my wife told me this is how serious players manage the issuance of their equity for the long run. I think that if I wasn't living with her, I would have given away a lot more of my business at an early stage which can hamper the journey ahead. Be careful and seek advice wherever possible from people who aren't just looking for a slice of your pie.
What lesson do you know now that you wish you knew at the start of your career?
I wish I knew that it was going to take a lot longer to grow a start-up and make any income. That being said, I definitely wouldn't change anything we've done so far.
As we leave behind 2022, what will you be taking with you into the new year?
I think I had this blissful ignorance that people raise money off the back of good ideas. But most people who can get money for good ideas have a long and proven background of achieving in their field. I didn't have that; I am totally new to fintech and entrepreneurship. You're going to get 1000s of nos before you get your break with a Yes. It's all about tenacity. You have to keep going and ultimately, this is the only way to stay sane!
Rapid Fire
What do you do for fun? It sounds corny, but running a start-up is fun. Outside of work, my wife and I go on walks every day and avid members of F45, a class-based gym.
What keeps you awake at night? Our bank balance! I have responsibilities now, not only to my investors, but our employees and our partners. It’s critical that I keep finding income from clients and inventors so that our journey keeps progressing. It is also worth noting that our development partners are based in Ukraine and that despite their adversity, we haven’t noticed any real disruption to our collaboration. It’s really inspiring and made me reassess what the important things are to lose any sleep over.
What podcast are you currently listening to and/or book you are reading? I listen to a Diary of a CEO. The book I found most influential is Yes Man by Danny Wallace, which is about saying yes, more.
What is one thing people don’t know about you that may surprise them? I'm a descendant of William the Conqueror. He is my 32ndGreat Grandfather!
What makes you feel powerful? I don't get off on power per say but I do get great pleasure from seeing people I don’t know downloading our app. I get pleasure seeing the fact that an idea I had in my head has transpired into something valuable for strangers. I am not technical and have never written a line of code in my life so the fact that this idea now employs people and creating value in their careers is really exciting.
Fill in the missing word/s…. I dream of a world where ….. All consumers are fairly paid for the value of their attention; where we are longer exploited by big tech and consumers take back control of our data and exposure to advertisers.
For more information about Zedosh and the Attention Exchange®, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumekendall/ , https://attentionexchange.co.uk