Todd Sampson leaves board of influencer platform Vamp
TV adman Todd Sampson has left the board of influencer marketing platform Vamp.
Vamp’s co-founders Ben McGrath and Aaron Brooks revealed the departure during an interview for this week’s Mumbrellacast, saying Sampson – a former CEO of Leo Burnett and Gruen panellist – had more to contribute in the company’s early days.
Sampson joined the company’s board as a non-executive chairman back in 2016, along with providing financial backing.
Sampson: Off the Vamp board
Sampson is also a director of Qantas and Fairfax Media, although that role is also likely to come to an end when Nine completes its acquisition of the company.
Speaking on this week’s podcast, Brooks revealed: “Todd isn’t on the board anymore, but he was for a time. He is probably an influencer in his own right, so he had a great profile that helped guide us initially when Vamp was first starting, especially to go and talk to agencies and pitching to that media land, which was a great help for us.
“I think he’s pretty busy doing other things these days, but initially he was a really good person when we first launched the business, obviously a credible name to have on the board. He helped formulate some of the things that we still use now to go to market.”
Brooks also disagreed with the claims made by Jules Lund, founder of rival platform Tribe that becoming profitable is irrelevant to tech startups.
“You want to have a line of sight to profit,” Brooks said, revealing that Vamp is no longer loss making. “This year we’ve turned our first maiden profit, so I think that’s an important thing to be able to go to market and actually have line of sight to that, especially if you’re taking other people’s money.”
Brooks and McGrath: ‘We did turn a profit’
McGrath agreed: “We’re fortunate being at the advent of an industry, and also getting the business model right. Being able to expand as quickly as we have has worked in our favour. We did turn a profit. We have got a lot of interest in us to if we did want to take more money that will just help us scale much quicker.”
Brooks also revealed how Vamp is set to expand to five new markets over the next financial year.
“We’ve got another [five] markets that we’re looking to open in the next 12 months. Paris, Berlin, Japan, Korea and Mexico City are on the hit list for the next 12 years. We run Australian financial year, so next 12 months we’ll have all those open.
“All those markets we’ve actually done campaigns in, but we see a bigger opportunity to put people on the ground there… those markets are very big markets, so you want to have people who actually know the industry, can speak the language, and adapt the offering for that particular market.”
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i didn’t know he was on the board of qantas – just winging it i suppose
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Aaron Brooks is a fantastic guy and he deserves to do well with his startup and I wish you all the best to conquer global markets
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