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
Since being founded in 2014, Unlockd has raised $68m from investors including Lachlan Murdoch, former Seven Group CEO Peter Gammell and Catch of the Day founders Hezi and Gabby Leibovich.
Unlockd displayed ads on Android users’ smartphone lock screens in return for loyalty rewards, but Google said the service breached the terms and conditions of AdMob and Google Play, so threatened to suspend it.
In May, Unlockd won an injunction in the UK High Court preventing Google from banning the service, however the company expressed disappointment at the limited scope of the UK ruling.
At the time of going into administration, the company said that, despite wins in the UK and Australian courts, its dispute with Google had scared off investors which prevented Unlockd from raising further capital.
Now, in his most recent post, Berriman has claimed that the dispute with Google had scared potential bidders for the business off, writing: “A fear of Google and its potential imposition on acquirers and the contracted time frame in which the voluntarily administration process failed to allow larger corporate companies to conduct a regular M+A process, the true value of the technology assets that we had proven was there has been substantially eroded.
“At some time in the near future after final bids are tabled to administrators tomorrow it will be announced that the technology assets have been acquired by a party (or parties) who have taken advantage of that commercial situation, for a tiny amount of the cost of capital that’s been invested.”
Berriman warned in the post that he and his fellow Unlockd shareholders are considering continuing their legal battle with Google.
“However, importantly by de-merging the technology assets from the company and litigation my fellow Unlockd shareholders and I have all retained our litigation rights to pursue damages for the significant financial losses that Google has caused,” Berriman wrote.
“Bleeding a small company out may have been a strategy to squash competition and win the first battle, however now with litigation funding being finalized as we decide on which of the multiple parties have offered to fund us, we will now have the resources to fight for our shareholders for as long as required, to return the value that is rightfully ours. We may have lost this battle, but certainly not the war.”
Berriman, who stepped down from Unlockd’s management in February due to mental health issues, signed off his post on a positive note: “On a personal note, the last few months have been extremely challenging and I can’t be more thankful for my family, friends, the Unlockd family and many of you who are reading this that have been a constant support to me professionally and personally.”
Mumbrella has contacted Berriman, Google and Unlockd’s administrators, McGrathNicol, for comment.
“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.
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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.
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Is this a recurring story? Seems to be republished every week…
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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!
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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!
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Know when to walk away when the dealin’s done…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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