57. Appsumer

Founders: Shumel Lais
Founded: June 2015 (Launched in August 2016)
Wesbite: www.appsumer.io

Shumel Lais, an entrepreneur with six years’ experience working at two of the world’s largest media agencies, first struck upon the idea for Appsumer whilst building hacks and workarounds in spreadsheets that helped him to achieve “incredible advertising results with minimal leg work”.

Lais came to the realisation that there was a market for brands to access the same techniques and set about building a commercial and scalable version.

Founded in 2015, Appsumer helps mobile-first brands to grow faster by making data-driven advertising decisions and ultimately achieving better return on spend.

Charging a recurring license fee dependent on usage, the platform’s software enables clients to connect to a variety of media and analytics sources, analysing and monitoring key data and planning and forecasting their future performance. Despite launching just last August, Appsumer has already secured a number of major clients including restaurant booking app Velocity, leading postcard app Touchnote, dating app LOVOO, and Lifecake – the London photo app acquired by Canon.

In November last year, Appsumer secured $1m in funding from Galvanise Capital which it used to bolster research and development, improve its intelligence platform and drive customer acquisition.

Ultimately, Lais says his ambition is for Appsumer to be the “Hubspot of mass marketing in a mobile-first world”, citing the way it “empowers marketers to control their own destiny”.

If its progress so far is anything to go by, its goal of emulating this multi-million dollar US marketing firm looks well within reach.