Unlockd founder Matt Berriman slams Google for ‘unlawful’ behaviour
Founder of defunct adtech company Unlockd, Matt Berriman, has slammed Google and buyers of the failed business’ assets in an online post.
In the article, Berriman accused Google of unlawful and anti-competitive behaviour, while claiming buyers of the company’s technology assets had been scared off by the Silicon Valley giant with successful bidders taking advantage of the Unlockd’s parlous state.
Berriman
“Bleeding a small company out”
Cmon … it raised almost $70m from some of the largest investors out there (and some not so large).
It had access to networks and revenue every newco in AU would kill for.
Stop the pity story.
Sorry but the entire premise of the Unlocked business hinged on challenging / ignoring Google’s terms of use for Android.
Investors, management and founder gambled $70m and failed. Boo fuckin hoo.
Try some proper due diligence next time.
Is this a recurring story? Seems to be republished every week…
Translation:
“Poor little rich boy’s venture failed because mean global tech business decided to rightfully put him in his place”
Boo Hoo! Read the fine print next time Berriman!
These guys tried to build an advertising business ontop of an advertising business and had the audacity to not invest in building out their own sales teams, relying heavily instead on admob to generate revenue for them i.e. Google to create advertising revenue for Unlockd from Google’s own tech stack. ‘Anonymous’ is correct, stop with the pity story!
Furthermore, Apple has never allowed lockscreen advertising/apps whose primary purpose is advertising. Is anyone having a crack at Apple over this.. of course not!
The business model wasn’t flawed, the execution was. Let’s not forget that Unlockd weren’t the first kids in town – Buzzvil from South Korea has been doing this since 2014 (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/buzzvil#section-overview) – nor were Unlockd the only ones booted off Google Play.
So what did Buzzvil do? Well they didn’t pack up and give up, no they got back to work and came up with a different value proposition: https://appdevelopermagazine.com/buzzvil-rebounds-after-google-play-store-suspended-their-app/
Much to be learned from here but yes lets stop with the pity story, get back to work for investors and don’t give up!
Know when to walk away when the dealin’s done…
Spot on. Why would an investor put in so much money, without understanding the terms? Madness, utter madness. Must have been a good sales pitch to get the investment? I would have just bought Google shares.
No, Matt, the reason no-one will touch you is that you and your buddies chewed through $70m in funding with nothing to show for it. Added to that you failed to do basic due diligence on Terms of Service for the Google Play Platform (or you willfully ignored). Not a great way to run a business, nor a great business, period.
The challenge with a business reliant on another platform is it will always face issues like this.
Same goes for any ad-tech.
Sustainable businesses de-risk from this by going into multiple platforms (e.g iPhone, in this case).
This was always the challenge with Unlockd – which was a brilliant idea from the start.
I’ve always thought the better angle, given their partnership with telcos, would have been to programmatically serve ads prior to making an outgoing call and hack it that way.
Worth noting as well this wasn’t an original idea, Blyk had an idea in this space years ago and ran into similar issues.