AI for SMB Marketing, Scaling Advertising with Tanuj Joshi

Speaker A: Built to Scale with Reem Bensha. This is Built to Scale, the podcast for B2B founders who are playing the long game. I'm your host Reem and every week we are exploring the mechanics of sustainable growth with the founders and executives who are defining the industry. No fluff, no growth hacking gimmicks, just the blueprints for building a solid and scalable tech company. Welcome to the show. Today we have a special guest joining us, Tenuj Joshi, CEO at Eulerity Tanuj. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. Rah.

Speaker A: Well, um, tell me more about your company. I know you mentioned before that uh, Yularity is a bit of a TurboTax for uh, advertising for SMBs. I'd love to understand what is the problem you are solving and what the product does at the high level.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So you refer to TurboTax for advertising. Right. So one of the things that we, we solve for is taking out the complexity for an essential thing that a business needs to do in order to be successful by that, uh, you know, we can think about filing taxes with the irs. If there is not a turbo tax, then it's really complex. Some very similarly we provide the easy button for marketing, whether it is digital marketing, managing their social media, managing their listings, all of that stuff. An SMB owner has a million things to do a day, handling customers, doing their billing. If we can take off an essential part from their day, but which is also really important, that is running basic advertising on Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Snap, TikTok, provide them with an easy button, AI handles the rest. That's what we do. So that's why we compare ourselves to the TurboTax version which is provide them with a button, ask them how much they want to spend, where do they want the leads to be captured and it's up, uh, to, and it goes.

Speaker A: I love that. And you know when we, when we think of, of doing our taxes, especially now, it's definitely tax seasons. You know TurboTax is such a intuitive, easy to use and life changing tool. Uh, especially if we compare to the times where we were doing taxes manually. It's such a refreshing uh, solution. But it's true that we've never thought of this with the same lens for advertising, especially for smaller businesses. Can you tell me more about the origin story? Right, especially yours, which I think was touching if I can be um, honest. Really loved how you kind of use your personal story and experience to get into it. Can you tell me more about your story? The big tech Ads experience that you've had, plus family, small business background, how did that shape into what you decided to build?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So not just my story, but also my co founders story. Right. So we all come from big tech. Like I've previously had interactions with Meta, uh, my co founders from Google, the other co founders from Yahoo back in the day. And you know, as you work at these firms or any of the partner firms that they have, you're essentially solving for the advertising use case for a PNG or Coca Cola because that's where the big dollars lie. Now as we were working there and our uh, family owns small businesses and so does my m. Co founders. We, when they asked what do you do for a living? It was hard for us to explain to them that what we did and moreover when they asked for advertising help, we were unable to help. Right. So. Or we could help just a little bit and then you know, it was like a flash in the pan situation and then uh, hot and cold and then not be able to help. So that's what the origin story of hilarity is that could there be a tool very similar to, as I said, turbo tax where you know, you don't need to know the codes of irs, you don't need to know, you know, what form of rebates are you applying for. You just upload your, your one document, your, and you're, you're off to the races. So that's what the inspiration story is. And very similarly during that time, companies like Betterment and Wealthfront and Robin Hood were solving the similar problems for investing. Because think about if somebody worked at a uh, hedge fund and if their family asked them to help, can't really help. Right. So, so it's the, yeah, so you can see that these democratization of services through product, which are essential for a business or someone to kind of have a level playing field akin to what the bigger players have. That's, that's, that's the goal.

Speaker A: That's great. I just want to kind of segue into a, that just kind of popped up on my mind just to fully understand the value that you know, your product essentially brings to these smaller companies. How does that, this product factor into um, you know, a relationship with an agency? For example? Do you feel like this can help SMBs be a little bit more autonomous or independent by having just more power over the way they're doing advertising? Similarly to an SMB having more empowered to do their taxes as opposed to being fully uh, uh, reliant on uh, a CPA for Example.

Speaker B: Exactly. So you know, I mean again m. We also work with agencies as well who help SMBs. But the agency model or the CPA model in that case, or a wealth manager model or whatever you want to say is usually based on billable hours, right? The more time they spend with you, the bigger bill you get. And they equate time to the amount of value that they are bringing to the business. Right? Because they'll say I spent two hours in our business preparing your tax returns. It means it's more complex and I'll charge you XYZ amount of money. Now the TurboTax and areas like that, they essentially broke that model, right? Which is that you pay a uh, flat 999 for filing your return or a uh, nine whatever 1999 and you can spend hours on it and that it doesn't scale linearly with time. So that's essentially what I think the agency model is based on. Now again it's good in certain aspects of the whole thing, right? It's good to see if you want some uh, you know, you want some created copy edition. And even with LLMs that is also now in question. But that's what the. But that's what I would say is the value of an agency to a business. But if you're talking about pure plumbing which is very complex in the ad world as it is in the tax world and in all other worlds, then something which does not charge you by the hour is really important as a tool. And that's where we come in.

Speaker A: That makes perfect sense. So let's talk about marketing platforms. As we know if anybody who is listening, you know you have dabbled in the advertising space. Uh, you would know that marketing platforms are getting more and more complex. So uh, so marketing platforms are just getting more and more complex. Why do you think SMB marketing is getting harder and why uh, or what does simplicity that still drives result look like in your opinion?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question. Right. So I think I, you know, as someone who has logged into a marketing platform recently, the, and you know us, uh, and my co founders coming from there, the product roadmap of marketing companies or sorry or of these big tech companies and their marketing engineers or departments is driven by demands from large advertisers, right? So they, the large advertisers, you know, the likes of Coca Cola, P and G, all these guys are spending northwards of hundreds of millions a year with both uh, Google Meta, TikTok everybody now. So there. So the demands are driven by those Marketers. So that means newer formats, newer targeting types, newer image sizes, newer video types, more complex levers to understand how much to bid on a subset of an audience. Right. So I wouldn't even go into the laundry list of levers available because it has this uh, you know, industry mumbo jumbo associated with it. So, you know, so but if I do all the permutations and combinations, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of possible permutations and combinations. Right. And we don't, we can't expect an SMB to know. Right. And the answer is that an SMB at the end of the day is competing for the same eyeballs that uh, you know, a large corporation is competing for. So it's not that they are trying to get in front of a different set of people. So think about, you know, um, if um, a Coca Cola is trying to get rims, eyeballs and so is, you know, the local dry bar. It's hard for the dry bar. Right. Because so that's, that's the part. So I'm talking about like hundreds and thousands of possible permutations.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That makes sense. Especially when you're, you're looking at it from this perspective. I can, I can definitely understand the uh, the value that eulerity essentially brings when the platforms for marketing and advertising are just getting more complex and they're catering to the larger advertisers as well. So thank you for kind of making this pretty easy to understand. Again, kind of seeing the value of what you're working on and building.

Speaker B: Yeah, just add one more thing to that quickly. It's also real money. Right. So the problem is that there is a very small finite ways to get it right, uh, outside of the hundreds and thousands of ways I was talking about earlier to get it wrong. Right. So one wrong button would say your monthly advertising budget, which is a hard earned money for the SMB, would get spent in minutes. Right. So that it's, it's also the issue of not just providing the best ROI for that value for that money, it's also the whole idea of like not making it get spent in a wrong way. Right. And there's so, and unfortunately how complex this is. There are hundreds and thousands of ways to get it wrong and about a dozen to get it right. That's the issue. And as the more levers are increasing, the ways to get it wrong are uh, increasing more and more and the ways to get it right are like slowly increasing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for the insights. I appreciate it. It's Kind of painting a new picture on you know, the needs these, these SMBs have when it comes to managing uh, you know, campaigns, ad spend and all that. So appreciate that. So you serve SMBs through networks. So think franchises, multilocation, OEM, POS, um, ecosystems and such. Why is the network model the key growth lever in your opinion? For ularity?

Speaker B: Yeah, absol. I think, you know what networks provide is some level of familiarity or a common spine in the SMBs that they have. Right? So think about franchising, right? Like all McDonald's, although they are spread across the country or the world, they share some common menu items, logos, all of that stuff, right? So that's where I think we uh, like to go through networks because a, we can serve many SMBs in one instance. Also not to start, start with a complete blank state slate, sorry is important to get to a running, working uh, you know, campaign very quickly. So that's what we uh, that's why it's going through networks help, right? Because there's some common spine, common resources, common playground that we can make sure that we have access to. Right. And uh, it avoids the cold start problem, right? If you take a uh, Joe's Pizza for example on the corner and you start working with them without the support of a network, if they're not a part of, let's say you know, a POS system or something, you would have to first work with them on saying okay, where are all your assets? How do you judge success? Right? Because if so we have to say okay, we have to now work with your POS system to capture incremental sales because of the initiatives and all of that stuff. But if you go through the pos we would be having those insights to begin with so that there's, it does not help, it does not go through a uh, cold start issue.

Speaker A: Compliance and governance through networks. And how do you balance brand control with local perform performance?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So some of the networks that we previously talked about, especially in franchising or in uh, financial services, when I talk about wealth managers, wealth managers essentially independently owned businesses who are affiliated to the parent financial Firm, insurance agents, tier 3 auto dealers or SMB M, they all are independent businesses in the country, but they are affiliated or they've got rights to whatever is the legalese term here of the parent company. Now with that legal arrangement comes a host of compliance and governance issues or uh, governance covenants. I would say they have to spend an X amount of money on marketing. They can only use XYZ assets in the case of finance. They can not target to different age groups differently or project different apys differently. So there's this whole set of, by industry, by network type governance and rules. Now with a uh, software like ours and not a manual approach, these things are pre built in or baked in so that both the parent organization which controls the network and the SMB does not have to worry about that. Are they breaking the covenant in any way? Right. So we, you uh, know when Ularity starts working with a network, we spend the first three to four months or uh, you know, ten uh, ish weeks to make sure that their entire blueprint of governance and compliance is loaded into our system. And then it is then the gates open for their SMBs to start onboarding and working with us. So we have a pretty well built out system to acknowledge that part.

Speaker A: That makes sense. Great. I mean one of the last questions we have today, uh, that I'd love to hear your thoughts about is what do you want founders and operators to understand about the risk and impact of SMB marketing? Smaller budgets but higher stakes.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think one of the uh, you know, one of the things uh, to understand, I'm sure anybody who works with SMBs, it can get emotional very, very quickly if things are not going well. Right. Like if you, if you end up wasting, you know, for, from a wrong click or a Wrong product, push $50,000 from a marketing campaign of a big box company. It's not market, it's not the marketer's own money, it's not the uh, vice president's own money, it's not the CMO's own money. Right. It can be written off. That is just not possible for the SMB. Right. You're talking to at the end you're working with somebody who would have planned to, I don't know, buy a television, new television for the family and you wasted that money. So the stakes are really high. Right. So that's, that's, that's the first thing I would say. And then the margin of error is really low. Right. And the other thing I would say is that you, you know, we fundamentally do not believe that the onus of understanding what we do should lie on the SMB. It is the other way around is that we should build our products in a way that we understand their business. Like our job is to give them X amount of new business by charging them Y amount of advertising dollars where X is greater than Y. Right. And they should not be understanding. You know, your ad was in front of seven people. They don't care. Right. They care about, I gave you a hundred bucks for advertising. Could you bring, could you bring in more business for me, which is more than a hundred bucks? That's it. Right. And so there's this whole idea about the stakes are high and you can't force them because they're so busy to understand your business that you have to understand and come to a very low common denominator and build your product. Makes sense.

Speaker A: Well, Tanuj, thank you so much for joining us today and being part of the podcast. I really appreciated our conversation and love what you're, you're building. And at, uh, Eularity, if anybody wants to connect with you to learn more about your, your product, uh, the company, or just want to chat with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. You know, as we, um, are an AI powered platform and uh, anybody who wants to, uh, talk to us, there's our LinkedIn page. Of course there's eulerity.com e u l e R-I-T y.com on the top right there's a. Let's chat. Please click that and fill a form. And on a personal level, I'm heavily, heavily interested in AI MCPs, all that, all that fun new stuff can, uh, find me on LinkedIn. Email is t a n u j@u l e r I-t y.com and yeah, please reach out to me and happy to have a chat about Hilarity or a chat about AI or a chat about Golden Retrievers, whatever.

Speaker A: Amazing. Well, thank you for, for again for coming to the podcast. For everybody else who listened to it, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're giving us follow, give us a review or share this episode with someone else who may benefit from hearing it. Thanks again to NJ and thanks everybody for listening in and see you next time.