We are pleased to announce that Gallop has been acquired by Big Viking Games. BVG is a Toronto based gaming company who worked closely with us over the years. They experienced firsthand as a customer of Gallop the expertise of our team and technology. Driving valuable mobile user growth using customer intelligence has been core to their success and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect fit for our team.
Four years ago my brother Alkarim Nasser, his business partner at the time Paul Crowe, and I discussed an idea on how to leverage first-party data for more precise targeting for marketers. We wanted to fundamentally change the way advertising was done by using data science to create transparency for advertisers and help them understand the downstream impact of every dollar spent.
As a marketer myself, I was excited about solving a pain point that so many of us face. I spent my last year at New York University writing my master’s degree thesis on a business plan for the company and later launched Gallop as a division of Alkarim’s company BNOTIONS in 2013. We went on to manage over $1MM in spend, launch a self-service platform and earn recognition from industry leaders. All while hiring a CEO, raising a multi-million dollar round and building out our team.
Despite all of this we continued to face strong headwinds. Our industry was evolving quickly, well established competitors were offering similar services and we were plagued by internal misalignment. As much as this was a success, it wasn’t without a few lessons we learned along the way.
For aspiring entrepreneurs and early stage startups, my advice for you is to:
- keep management lean
- focus on the age old… make sure your product does one thing and one thing only exceptionally well
- establish early leadership with a product and not sales focus
- lose the formal board — it’s difficult to leverage their insight at such an early stage
- slow down — timing is everything when raising venture capital — it’s better to get it done right than quickly
We are excited that our team will have the opportunity to continue building on our vision within Big Viking Games. We couldn’t have gotten this far without the help and support of people who we will always call our friends; our customers, partners and our angel investors. Thank you for believing in us and being a part of this incredible journey.
As for me, I’m looking forward to my next startup of a slightly different nature…
My husband and I are looking forward to welcoming a baby girl into the world in the next few months. And I look forward to monitoring her week over week growth. :)
Sincerely,
Farzana Nasser, Founder, Gallop