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AdGrok (YC S10) Raises $470K To Be The TurboTax For Search Engine Marketing
- jswinghammer 16y agoHow does TurboTax come into play here? I don't see the analogy really.
- TheCarlyle 16y agoThey're making an otherwise complicated practice (like doing taxes), and simplifying it, (like TurboTax).
- jimboyoungblood 16y agoIn that case, let me suggest some other headlines: Heroku, the TurboTax of Rails Application Deployment, acquired by Salesforce, the TurboTax of CRM. 10 things you can do with Dropbox, the TurboTax of Cloud Storage. :P
- leftnode 16y agoI was going to ask the same thing, and doesn't TurboTax/Quicken have a negative connotation of being horrible software? Note: I've used turbotax.com and it's always worked well, so maybe that's a positive connection.
- adammichaelc 16y agoNo, TurboTax has the reputation of being awesomeness. They have extremely high retention and a very high viral-spread rate because the software works so well to take taxes and make them simple.
- lurker19 16y agoParent is the TurboTax of comments.
- Klinky 16y agoSome may cast a negative shadow on Turbotax & other tax filing companies because their existence and lobbying has "prevented" the IRS from implementing a free e-file service of it's own. This is either a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.
- forwardslash 16y agoI agree, it sounds like they are just trying to be quotable.
- antongm 16y agoThe analogy here is that TurboTax takes a complicated thing (the 1040) and makes it into a very simple, intuitive process (basically, a managed clickflow that takes you from start to finish). The analogy is also in the market itself: most people don't need an accountant or fancy accounting software, TurboTax does what they need it to do. Well, nowadays, marketing is almost as central a function as accounting to many small business. There's no 'TurboTax' out there to help get them online. The marketing space is still full of confusing and clunky tools that the average person can't really use. AdGrok hopes to remedy that by creating a similar tool.
- jswinghammer 16y agoI assumed that it meant that you were making taxes related to adwords easy which confused me. I'm not trying to be obtuse or anything but the connection didn't jump out at me even though I really enjoy TurboTax. I actually having been hoping someone would make a product like yours' too so good luck!
- riffer 16y agoThat makes sense, but why don't you just say that you make "[your cateogry] simple" instead of saying "we are the [successful, unrelated product] for [your category]"? The benefit being that you won't have to write two paragraphs to explain it to people.
- qq66 16y agoEven worse, when I think Turbotax for search engine marketing, the analogy led me to believe that it's an accounting program for SEM or something that lets me prepare a report on my SEM spend. Argyris - it's Amal from Trinity College. Glad to see you shooting for the moon here in SF :)
- camdykeman 16y agolol i think these comments are a bit malicious. Since when is it a bad thing to provide an analogy at the end of an explanation to solidify the idea in people's minds? "Heroku, the TurboTax of Rails Application Deployment, acquired by Salesforce, the TurboTax of CRM. 10 things you can do with Dropbox, the TurboTax of Cloud Storage." Yes, these would also be acceptable applications of the analogy--thats the nature of an analogy...its analogous.
- il 16y agoCongrats on raising money, AdGrok is a great product that solves a very real problem for businesses looking to advertise online: they really don't have the time or desire to learn how to do it right. The campaign improvement suggestions are especially useful, because scaling and optimizing campaigns is so hard. Campaign improvement recommendations are something Google frequently tries and fails at. I'm beginning to think their failure to give good suggestions is intentional, because they're optimizing for getting you to spend as much money as possible without giving up completely. That's why having third party tools in the space are so critical.
- jemka 16y agoI'm beginning to think their failure to give good suggestions is intentional I call it conflict of interest consulting. It happens in many industries and people (customers being "consulted") are most times oblivious to the conflict.
- bravura 16y agoThe last time I checked, AdGrok had no API. Are they planning on changing this any time soon? It would be useful to many sites if AdGrok made it dead simple for other web applications to help you advertise online.
- mceachen 16y agoWe've had some interesting chats with third-party developers already, and we'll have an API to drive Grok-o-matic within the month. If you have other ideas, hit us up on chat through our website! I'd be more than happy to talk with you.
- forwardslash 16y agoJust curious, do you have any plans to expand into adCenter as well?
- antongm 16y agoYes! That's next on the queue. Stay tuned.
- Alex3917 16y agoSo let's say I had some dollars to spend on SEM, how is this better than Trada? I've never used either, but without learning anything more I feel like I'd lean more toward their approach as it currently stands.
- antongm 16y agoI'll let Trada's product speak for itself. One basic difference is that from the advertiser's perspective, Trada is an agency in which you've essentially outsourced your marketing. However, AdGrok is a tool you can use to manage your own campaign. It can serve either as your stand-alone SEM tool, or as a complement to your existing SEM workflow. Either way, you get an unparalleled view into what's going on inside your campaign and why. We also have a managed service offering called GrokMe, in which we set up and manage your campaign for you. That's more in the agency vein, and from the user's perspective, similar to Trada's offering. Again though, even GrokMe users get our GrokBar and can see what's going on at all times.
- Alex3917 16y agoThat makes sense. I definitely look forward to playing with it at some point.
- ceelee 16y agoAdGrok is an awesome service, we just started using it and have been happy with the results. We've found it very useful for getting AdWords campaigns off the ground quickly.
- gallerytungsten 16y agoGood work, Argyris, Matt, & co.