Henry Innis and Matt Farrugia aim for $1bn of ads in WarChest in 12 months
Marketing software company Mutiny is looking to grow 200% and have a billion dollars of ad inventory under management in 12 months via its media spend and analytics modelling platform, WarChest, according to co-founders Henry Innis and Matt Farrugia.
The former managing director of Y&R Melbourne, Farrugia, and ex-national engagement strategy director, Innis, have been slowly building up Mutiny since launching in 2018. It recently opened an office in Sydney and added general manager of commercial, Mark Tovbis.
“90% of revenue comes from subscription licensing [for WarChest]. The uptake of the platform has been good… and we have 95% renewal rate,” Innis told Mumbrella.
Farrugia added: “We are seeing an increased need and demand for insights at speed and scale because the media landscape continually shifts, with new channels and new behaviours etc.
“By the nature of WarChest being a platform, marketers are able to access those insights when they need them, as opposed to conducting a consultative-type project to produce a report after the fact.”
WarChest currently has a number of clients in the financial services, insurance and banking sectors, as well as Carlton United Breweries.
Henry Innis
Mutiny recently added investment from industry leaders such as former Publicis and Ogilvy CEO, Andrew Baxter, and ex-Clemenger CEO, Nick Garrett, and has bolstered its team with a number of new hires: Data scientist Ramee Elshabasei, chief of Staff Isabella San Roque, project manager Madeleine Fitzgerald and engineers Mavis Chen and Aakash Indoria.
Elshabasei was previously at Finder, Experian and the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment, while Roque joins from Cushman & Wakefield.
Innis said finding new talent at the moment was a challenge due to the ongoing border closures for the top end engineers that Mutiny wants to employ.
“We are competing for talent against Atlassian and Google, not the traditional agency sector,” he said.
“Visas and the lack of being able to import specialised overseas talent, and in particular engineers from the US is a challenge. We are looking for those that have an understanding of media, but want to be building a platform rather than individual systems.”
Matt Farrugia
To help attract top talent, Innis and Farrugia have implemented an employee option scheme which has already been granted to key members of the team.
“We have every intention of having a core team go all the way with this,” he added.
The duo are also keen to further expand the business into new markets, primarily the US and UK.
“The second the borders open we will be going overseas. We would have liked to go overseas earlier, as we have two relationships in the US we are expanding. We would love to be over there, it’s not from lack of desire,” Innis said.
Mutiny has a direct-to-client model for WarChest, which thrives in a counter-cyclical business environment. “When there is more pressure on budgets, a tool like ours becomes more necessary.
“We connect a lot of disparate data sets, from a myriad of media channels, to connect that data, consolidate then provide analysis.
“We partner with media agencies to integrate with them, but the relationship is with the client, and the reason for that is that they need to analytics and to commission the analytics.”
While the pair have “boot-strapped” the business for a long period of time, they said it is now “very profitable” and would only look at doing a series A to go into a new market, such as the US.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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