[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Hello everyone, welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by a true innovator in the partner marketing space, Josh Graham, co-founder and CMO of Airtime Rewards. Josh and I will speak about his entrepreneurial journey, the making of Airtime Rewards, what it makes unique, their business model, future plans and innovation. And then of course we will touch as well about the role of partner marketing and Josh's view on the industry. Josh, great to have you on the show today. Welcome.

[Josh Graham]
Yes, thank you very much for having me today.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Thank you so much for joining now. It's a pleasure speaking with you. Maybe for our guests and for our listeners, maybe in the beginning, you could just start introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about your background, what you're up to.

[Josh Graham]
Yes, I'm Josh Graham. I am the co-founder and CMO of Airtime Rewards. I obviously am responsible for marketing member growth at Airtime Rewards, but also growing our partnerships and our retailer portfolio at Airtime. My background is in mobile, so I was lucky enough to gain some really valuable experience at the early stages of my career in mobile technology businesses in Manchester. And it was really the early days of mobile and mobile development when smartphones were entering the market in About 2008, 2010; we really saw that brands were evolving and moving towards mobile. We've just been through an e-com journey and we saw that mobile was going to be the next platform that all brands, all retailers had to engage and sell their products to the consumers on. So it was great to get some valuable, interesting experience early and get myself in a really exciting space. And we were building apps for some of the biggest retailers and brands globally, which led us into the inspiration of developing a proposition called Airtime Rewards, Airtime in the UK.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Is that how you came into the idea then, founding Airtime Rewards?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, so we were behind the company we worked for, myself and my business partner, were behind the technology for a rewards program called Orange Wednesdays. You might not. Remember it but it was a huge loyalty rewards proposition in the UK, the biggest network operator led rewards and loyalty offering um for any brand in the UK. Almost got too popular in the end they had to pull it. We saw the convergence of mobile network operators working with brands to do something really special in the market. Then we also coupled the sort of the idea around okay everyone's got to own a smartphone. They were going to be central to our everyday lives. We all use it for everything. Now it becomes obvious, but in 2008, 2015, before we started the business, it was really early. And we were building apps for some of the biggest brands globally. And we wanted to do something different in the space and create something that was totally unique.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Was that already the time when you got connections to the mobile providers themselves, so to the telco companies?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, so we knew the major telco companies in the UK, O2, Orange, which is now EE, Vodafone. We had some connections there and we wanted to build out a truly mobile reward program end-to-end so consumers could join our app, earn rewards when they shop with brands in the UK and they could offset the rewards that they earn for money off the cost of their mobile phone account. So we went around all the big network operators in the UK to integrate into their systems. And we built what we call is our unique currency, which is money off your mobile phone account.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
When was that then when you founded Airtime Rewards? Was that around this time, 2008, 9, 10?

[Josh Graham]
So we actually started Airtime in 2015. So we're about 10 years in. We have a big 10-year party this summer. But we were working in the mobile space from 2008 up to 2015, which really gave us the inspiration to start Airtime. We were building a lot of apps. We knew how to sort of develop products. So we were sort of ahead of the market and we wanted to sort of bring something new to the space.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Can you share a little bit about these very first steps so you got an idea? You're co-founder of Airtime Rewards. So you were a group of people, right? I assume two, three, four people. Can you share a bit about this very beginning, getting together? I always find these stories fascinating, getting an idea, but then really like doing the first steps, thinking about, okay, how do we get started? How do we get something on the ground now?

[Josh Graham]
So Adam and myself, a business partner, we worked together. He was more on the technical side, so he's a sort of self-taught developer engineer, which was great; he could build products and build apps, and I was more on the commercial marketing side. So we had marketing, and we had very sort of complementary skills, where you know I could do certain things that he wasn't comfortable with, and he could he could build technology, which was a good partnership. Um, and I guess there were two major inspirations for launching Airtime. There was the first was, if you look at to look to the market, then there's a lot of loyalty programs out there; they were kind of clunky, uh, they weren't really transparent to the consumer what you're earning, pointless points, uh, they were difficult to sort of integrate with, and they weren't really seamless. So we wanted to build a really seamless, simple to operate rewards program for consumers but also something really simple for a retailer or brand too integrate into their services. There was very little Capex or barriers to entry or things like staff training. So that was one of the first sort of issues we wanted to solve. And then the second, as I've touched on, we saw that mobile was going to be central to our everyday lives. We were going to bank, we were going to shop, we were going to communicate, socialize via our mobile devices. So actually, how do we develop and deliver? An innovative rewards program that is really slick and simple for the customer and retail to operate, but also gives rewards and and value back to the the customer against the cost of their smartphones, um, and that's what we wanted to develop-those solve those two problems. But in partnership, we were able to sort of complement each other to develop the platform and the apps that you see today.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
When you have these startup stories, when you get an idea and you want to do something, especially in our industry as well, like the way we work, you often have the challenge that you have this hand-to-hand principle, right? So you need the one in order to achieve the other and vice versa. So you needed these connections to the telco providers and then as well, like the offers, the partners you can work with on the e-commerce side. How did you tackle that from the beginning so that you really got something that you could work on in order to scale further?

[Josh Graham]
You're so right. So, we had no members, no consumers, and we had to go out and sign up clients. And a lot of the clients that we met said, 'You know, until you've got a great idea, but until you've got consumers, there's no point in having a conversation now.' And equally, we couldn't go out and do a large marketing campaign to acquire consumers, or we call them members, without having good brands and good retailers that you could earn at so it's very much yeah chicken and egg so we had to break one side of the argument um to get scale and what we did is we went to the telco operators in the UK, so O2, uh, one of the biggest in the UK, that were part of the Telefónica group globally, and they they backed us and they invested in in the business. What we were able to do is leverage their customer base in the UK, which was about 20 million consumers in the UK, that would market our product to their customer base. O2 said, okay, we're going to give you a chance. We'll push you out to our customers and we'll get a base, a number of consumers to use your products. And that really enabled us to go to the retailers and brands and say, okay, we're not just a small startup with no members. We can actually grow here. We can access the O2. Customer base which really gave us like leverage and could kick start our growth journey, and we could have a different conversation with retailers, which was yes, we are small but we have a route to getting quite big quite quickly. And that really helped us, you know, work with brands or agencies and they took us more seriously from that part onwards. Then we could build our retailer audience to grow our member audience, and we could, we could, grow them in sort of synergy at the same time.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So, you managed to get O2 as an investor into your business in the beginning?

[Josh Graham]
Yes. That was a kind of breakthrough, I guess, right? Yes. Yeah, they were a seed investor and they have an accelerator called Wira, and they invest in businesses every year. And we were lucky enough to get access into their accelerator and gain investment. And it wasn't just about the money; it was more about the smarts of introductions, credibility that it brought rather than just pure investment. And we're able to really work that relationship super hard in the early days to get scale and really deliver on the promises that we said we would. And then we were able to build that relationship over time. And now we're fully integrated into O2; we're integrated into the MyO2 app, priority in the UK. We've been able to really develop that relationship at the board level over a number of years.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Did that limit you a little bit later on when speaking with other telco companies that you had O2 as an investor, when you want to speak with them and expand to them as well?

[Josh Graham]
It's a good question, but it didn't in a way. It almost helps. We always wanted to be neutral and work with network agnostic, telco agnostic, rather than being aligned with one. It actually helps us accelerate some of our conversations with EE and other network providers, um, even though they were a small investor; we weren't sort of aligned with them more than that, and it actually helped us be able to build on that almost competitive spirit between the telcos, and we've been able to develop our EE relationship as well around that.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Once you had that, you went to retailers, e-commerce companies in order to sign up to the program. How did that work then? Because I can imagine that many of these are already connected to some kind of cashback, to some kind of reward program. Many have their own. How did that work then? How did you convince the first ones?

[Josh Graham]
It was difficult. Obviously as you know in the partner marketing space, there's a number of brands with various different relationships and partnerships already in place. We really tried to double down on being quite unique in our offering so we were different to the other cashback businesses in the market. We had a different profile of consumer-we typically sort of target that younger, millennial, mobile generation, the smartphone-savvy, digital-savvy generation. So we typically have a younger audience than some of the other platforms out there, especially in the early days. We've grown from there since. So we're able to sort of lean on that more and go into retails and say, 'Okay, you are doing this cash back.' You are doing this voucher code service, but actually we're talking to a very different audience than what you might be attracting or engaging with through those relationships. Let's work together and manage that. You know, there's very little crossover. Let’s prove that it is different. Audience, um, and then we can grow our relationship from there. So it's very much, yeah, we're different, we're trying to approach the space differently and actually attract a different profile of consumer for those brands. Now, we went into quite some detail about the business already, talking about this journey. 

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]

Can you describe, please, to us how Airtime Rewards works?

[Josh Graham]

Yeah, it's really simple. We are a mobile application that our members download, and then they link their Visa and MasterCard payment cards to our app. And then, through our partnerships with Visa and MasterCard, we unlock our members' transactions with major retailers. So if you go and shop at a Boots or Tesco or Morrison's, we can unlock your transaction when you shop with that Visa or MasterCard, in-store or online. And then we issue rewards back – a percentage of your spend – which can then be redeemed and deducted off the cost of your smartphone bill. So if you earn £5 through your shop at Morrison's, that would enter your Airtime account, and then you can redeem that off your phone bill.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So, in the industry, it's known as card-linked?

[Josh Graham]

Yeah, in a way. When we first started out, "card-linked" wasn’t really a term, but it’s essentially leveraging the payment networks – Visa and MasterCard – to track consumer spend and issue rewards based on that.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So, the consumer is mobile end-to-end? You download the app, link the cards, get your notifications, and then redeem directly to your phone account?

[Josh Graham]

Exactly. Fully end-to-end a mobile rewards proposition.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And I can link any card? It’s not dependent on what kind of card I have?

[Josh Graham]

Correct – any Visa or MasterCard. We don’t support Amex at the moment.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Why not?

[Josh Graham]

With Amex, their fees are quite high, and we charge a fee to the merchant already. So it becomes quite expensive, and we didn’t think we could get much brand participation with Amex. So we’ve purposely not integrated it.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Makes sense. So when I earn cashback, it gets deducted from my bill directly?

[Josh Graham]

Yes, or if you’re on a top-up or prepay, then it goes as a top-up or a bill reduction. And we’re expanding the offering – soon you'll be able to use your rewards to buy accessories or even new smartphones through your mobile network provider.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
But it’s always within the mobile ecosystem?

[Josh Graham]

Exactly. You can’t cash out directly – it’s bill credit. But if you don’t pay a bill, you could gift it to friends or family. We are exploring more redemption options, but today it’s all mobile-focused.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And that’s part of your success, right? That tie-in with telcos?

[Josh Graham]
Yes, that’s how we got to nearly 4.5 million members in the UK. The mobile networks promoted us to their customer base, which helped us scale quickly.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Only in the UK?

[Josh Graham]
So far, yes. But we’ve launched in Ireland recently, we’re running a pilot in Germany with one of the biggest network operators there, and we have a roadmap for Spain – likely end of this year or early next year.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And the whole model depends on your telco partnerships?

[Josh Graham]
Yes. Our strategy for international growth is rolling out our tech in partnership with the regional telcos. Our success in the UK makes us attractive to others internationally.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
There are many cashback and loyalty providers already. What makes you different?

[Josh Graham]

We’re a technology company. What consumers see is just the front end – the app. But behind the scenes, we’ve built a sophisticated marketing platform. Retailers can use our data – behavioral, demographic, open banking – to run hyper-targeted campaigns on our platform.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So it's not just about offering cashback?

[Josh Graham]

Exactly. A good example is Morrisons. They’re a client through Tradedoubler, and they want to target new customers in specific regions and high spenders online. So we can tailor campaigns exactly to that segment. No wastage, very efficient, and aligned with the brand’s strategy.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So it’s a performance marketing approach?

[Josh Graham]
Yes, our model is transactional-based. We charge a fee per transaction to the retailer. So it’s all performance-driven – we win only when the retailer gets results.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And you scale your business via telco partners and partner marketing?

[Josh Graham]
Exactly. And as mentioned, we see ourselves primarily as a technology business, enabling that growth. We're about 85 people in total across two offices. The vast majority of those of our team members and colleagues are engineers or data. And we have a relatively small commercial team, client success, and a new business. And we always see those teams being relatively small and light, and we work with partner marketing platforms to be able to scale our merchant base and be able to manage those partners effectively without necessarily having a huge team ourselves in the commercial space. We want to rely on and lean on partnerships to help us manage those accounts because, you know, you're the experts at that and we can be the experts at building tech and building apps and doing the marketing.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]

When you grow the business now, what is the main KPIs or success metrics that you focused on most?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, we're looking at return on investment for retailers. That's really important. Are we delivering a high ROI and delivering against those client objectives? And then we're looking at, obviously, member growth, and we're looking at engagement rate and influence rate of the transactions that we generate. So making sure that we're truly influencing behaviors for our merchant base. Um, the customer's seen an offer they've seen a marketing message and they've then gone on to do something different, incrementality um, showing incremental behavior back to our merchants so we want to make sure we're building the right tools and features to deliver like super solid returns for our for our partners.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Relevant, yes, exactly is there any kind of like growth figures or any kind of milestones in numbers or similar that you are particularly proud of and that you can share with us?

[Josh Graham]
We've incentivized well over two billion pounds in spend for our UK retailers which was something we're quite proud of it's a huge amount of spend that we've influenced to our retailers, so that's definitely one. We have about, we incentivize about 55 transactions every minute, which is quite cool to think of, our members, you know, are transacted 55 times every minute with our retailer. So it gives you a feel for scale. And I think getting up into the, you know, the 4 million, you know, moving towards 5 million members is something we're really proud of. We're a business that's grown organically, really. We haven't raised a huge amount of investment ever. So we've very much been able to grow sustainably without huge injection of investment from external investors. And for most B2C businesses, that's quite rare because most companies, the biggest expenditure is marketing and growth. And to get to 4 million members, to get to profitability with very low investment is something we're really proud of. And that's through great partnerships working with businesses like Trade Doubler, working with the network operators. We've been able to really build scalable, relevant partnerships that have been able to fuel our growth, but we know we add value both ways as well.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good. Now you're 85 people, you said, in two offices, one in Manchester, one in London. Is that right?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, so 85 in total. The vast majority of our team is Manchester. That's our headquarters. That's where we started. And then we have a small sales and marketing team in London, in Covent Garden. So we think it's important to be in the heart of retail. So in central London, it's really important to host clients, to do events, to get our partners into the office. So we're fairly small in terms of size in London, but it's important to be in the heart of retail.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Would you say, do you work fully remotely or do you have people coming to the offices all the time or some kind of mixture?

[Josh Graham]
We are hybrid. We're pro-office, but we know the world has changed and we ask our team to come in and use the office two or three days a week and then the rest of the time at home. We think it's important to have that balance. We have a really strong culture. We try and nurture that as much as possible. There's nothing better than being in the office and working together, but we also know flexibility is important and work-life balance is important.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So you managed still to have some kind of startup culture in the company, although it has become quite sizable?

[Josh Graham]
We tried to. Yeah, it sort of gets more difficult as you get bigger. We try and keep that sort of fast nature and approach and let's try things and let's not worry about breaking something or getting it wrong. Let's try and deliver features and products quickly and take risks as much as possible and try and nurture those values that got us where we are today, but bring them into a bit more of a growing up, um, style of, sort of company approaching 100 people. So, it's important for us, obviously, founders still still running the business that's how we want to behave, but we've also we've grown up in a lot of areas. We've got the right systems and approaches in place, you know. We've started six million payment cards, and starting a lot of data, so we have to be we have to be really grown up. You know, we've got some major retailers that use our platform, so you know there's there's a lot of trust there and there's a lot of discipline required. We have to be PCI compliant, so we've got these really Sort of structured processes in place throughout the business that really keep us focused.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And you have a big party coming up then, you said, in summer for the 10th anniversary of Airtime Rewards?

[Josh Graham]
Yes, we're planning at the moment. We're looking to do something in June. Our official 10 years is about the 10th of June. So we're looking to do something around then. It's funny how time flies. It gets 10 years really quickly. But it's been an exciting journey. But we really see there's so much more growth left out there. And we see a lot ahead of ourselves, really, on exactly where we can take the business next, not just in the UK, but in some new markets as well.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Is that the main focus for you, expanding to new markets, when we look a little bit into the future now and what you're up to?

[Josh Graham]
It's one of the focuses. It's not the main focus. We certainly see a lot of growth in the UK. I guess it's too look at our growth opportunities in the UK. We are looking at a number of things. Open banking is one of the major streams and focuses of some of our squads. How do we integrate? um bank data into our proposition so to get a bit deeper and understand our members more to provide a higher level of targeting that's that's a real focus we're also looking at developing our marketplace in the uk so we're purely clo really at the moment so card linked offers using visa mastercard but actually bringing in new partnerships um is something that we're looking at to grow our opportunities to earn so we've just launched a travel proposition, which we're working together on we've onboarded a number of retailers on there which is great so we've unlocked a vertical that we were really underperforming in and we're looking at bringing in more more partners in place into our into our marketplace proposition like insurance and phone recycling um utility switching is something we're Looking at so, actually, how do we give our members more opportunities to earn on on transactions outside of just retail spend um, and then how do we sort of accelerate our machine learning and AI capability in the UK is something that we see a lot of growth in and then in Europe yeah, how do we get into more regions um, where's a sweet spot from a telco point of view, merchant appetite and consumer appetite and matching those together to to unlock new countries? It's something that's really exciting. We're learning loads. It's been great to be part of it today, just understanding the nuances and cultural differences in different regions. There seems to be loads of opportunities going forward.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
That looks like a bright future.

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, we think so. We want to continue to innovate. We know retailers want to spend more budgets with us in different ways. We need to be able to build our feature set and our product set to be able to support those acts and needs from from our clients and we've got the capability and how to do it, so it's all about okay prioritizing what next there's a lot we want to do but we can't do everything at the same time, so actually being really strategic and building back from the vision of where we want to be to just work on the next most important thing at the right time.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
You're looking for any investors to support this growth going forward or is that all with the earnings that you have from the business now?

[Josh Graham]
We think we can do everything that we want to do in our roadmap without necessarily going and raising more investment. We've got a strong balance sheet and we've been profitable for a number of years. So, our strategy in region is the same as our strategy in the UK. Work with the telco to get scale, work with partners to onboard merchants. Our tech has been built, so we don't have to build a new platform in. Germany or Spain or Ireland; it's the same tech, same platform, so we can roll that out without you know huge development and engineering requirements and resources. It's about how do we grow our member base through telco, how do we grow our merchant base through partnerships?

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Now, you said that a big part of the growth strategy that you have was working with partner marketing, working with the networks. Can you describe a little bit more how did that work? How can you imagine for our listeners to scale through networks, to scale through partner marketing?

[Josh Graham]
It worked really well for us in our growth journey, working with the networks, the partner networks. We always wanted to focus on building our platform and building our tech and and working with networks and agencies to onboard retailers and merchants so it provided a a way that we could accelerate our merchant conversations um through through those partnerships without a huge amount of heavy lifting I guess, has been challenging that we've we've done a good job of is because we're quite different in the way that we track transactions through visa or mastercard we're not your typical affiliate or publisher we use different data source so we've been able to we've had to work really closely with um with td you know and other partners to integrate our tech properly to make sure it works really seamlessly within within the partner sort of marketplace uh so we've built apis and integrations to be able to facilitate that properly and make sure that you know our data feed and our performance lines up with the data feed that morrison's would get from a more typical affiliate so we've done quite a lot of work to to streamline that integration but it's really helped us grow you know up to 200 retailers but 200 major retailers really quickly but also retain those retailers you know with with an account management team in-house, But also working together to support our retailer/ merchant needs without a huge amount of time and resource, and do it at speed.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Do you work on, or from the beginning maybe as well, did you work with the standard commissions that retailers pay through the affiliate network? Or is that something where you said, no, you need something extra or you had to negotiate with all the different retailers individually? Or did you just go by what was there already?

[Josh Graham]
When we started, we went with what was there originally. And then over time, we've developed and negotiated different rates as merchants try to get more. Intelligent and technical, the way they use our platform. We then begin to negotiate different commissions and different commission rates and different segments. So we've sort of evolved that approach. It's become a lot more sort of technical and intelligent.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And you said it's around 200 or so you're connected with now?

[Josh Graham]
Around 200 brands in the UK. Yeah, maybe just over that. A mixture of pure play online, a mixture of obviously omnichannel, which most retailers are now. And then, and then others sort of your, your install some of the some of the grosses uh using our platform to drive sales in store so we're pretty adaptable across various different verticals and certain verticals we want to be stronger and be better in, so we're looking at how we can begin to build out those relationships um over time.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]

Good, when you now think about the affiliate marketing partner marketing space what do you see where the industry is or what are the trends you see that are becoming important now?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, I think it's uh certainly in the UK there's this a fairly tough economic climate we've been in the last few years with everything we know um lockdowns and then sort of high inflation over the last couple of years. We've seen the downward pressure from brands um you know looking to really set budgets and spend them wisely, so we've certainly seen a massive shift, um, an intensity from our partners in terms of really managing where our budgets are spent, where they're spent, real measurement on return on investment. Is this budget being spent wisely? I've got very specific requirements set on me as a retailer from the business. How can I begin to unlock those specific requirements um with your platform, whereas before it was a bit wider you know there's more budgets there whereas now we're seeing as there's more squeeze and more pressure um on on those budgets and we have to be more tactical then we have to be smarter on how we how we begin to spend those budgets and I think it does play into our hands because we are sat on a huge amount of data, we definitely have to work a lot harder and and and demonstrate the value more than we've ever done and that's how we begin to leverage data more and begin to be more sort of intelligent in the way that we we work with clients so we've certainly seen that over the last couple of years um but it but it drives us forward and it makes us think about how we can develop our proposition further.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
When you like there has always been or for a longer time been this debate about cashback loyalty, but vouchers as well, about driving incremental value or just bringing recurring customers that pay more. So always this differentiation. Are they really able to bring new clients? And I was surprised because I thought because. I'm aware there is evidence, there is a lot of data, a lot of case studies that prove the incremental value that partners like Airtime Rewards are bringing. Now, I was at PI Live in Miami and this discussion came up again. I was really surprised about that. That was more in the voucher context, but still it's a little bit similar. Are you confronted with this kind of discussion and what you do then, right?

[Josh Graham]
So incrementality is the biggest question that we're challenged on by all our clients. And we have to constantly demonstrate and set our retailers up effectively to put us in a really good position to prove that the budget that they're spending through our platform is really driving what they want. So we look at, you know, the grow groups is one way of doing it. These consumers don't get an offer and these customers do. Compare the difference, uh, looking at our data set, looking at consumers that maybe aren't a customer or shopping at a competitor, and delivering campaigns towards them so that the retailer knows that there's incremental gains there and increasing wallet share off the back of using our platform. Um, and then looking at yeah before and after: what our members doing before we launched a retailer; what was their behavior once they received an offer or reward; and then if we pause the offer for those members, what is their behavior afterwards? So we're constantly working with retailers to demonstrate the incrementality in the ROI. And we've built a lot of the years, we've built a lot of functionality and capability to be able to support our retailers in that fashion. We always say we understand the concerns. Let's give it a trial. Let's look at a control group and let's target an audience. And we can prove that we can prove these sort of measures and make sure you're really comfortable with the performance so that we can grow the partnership over time to get the business happy with with what we're delivering.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Well, that's all the arguments we use as well. Like you sit on so much data and then on the other hand, you're a fast-growing business with five million consumers connected to you, which then in the end is a big marketing machine in itself, right? Isn't it?

[Josh Graham]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we used to deliver an offer to all of our members when we were sort of 500,000, a million members. When it gets to 5 million, you know, budgets don't always stretch that far with retailers. So we have to go smarter and more focused in the way that we can target those members with an offer based on the strategy of the retailer. But it is, yeah, in terms of reach and engagement, it's a huge pool of consumers in the UK that brands can unlock and not just deliver an offer to, deliver really rich marketing to as well. We have push notifications. We have rich push notifications. We have in-app stories. We have soulless emails. We can do a lot of highly impactful marketing campaigns to not just communicate an offer rate, but also sell the retailer and the products and the services that they provide.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Going back to this whole entrepreneur story and reflecting on what we just discussed, what would be your kind of like key learnings or maybe some kind of like key advice that you would take from this journey that you've been on now?

[Josh Graham]
Difficult. Nothing prepares you for taking the jump. I always wanted to start a company. Uh, you only realize how difficult it is when you start, I think. The sooner you can do it, the better. It's important to have industry-level experience; nothing will ever prepare you for for actually day one or the first period of starting a company. So, the sooner you you go for it, the better. Um, and I think employee employee really good people is probably nothing new that, but we when we're early, you're really cautious about investment and and bringing in too many people into the company. But, but when you bring in the right people, that it makes a huge difference. Um, and definitely try and sort of fill those holes and skill sets as soon as you can because it can it can it can take you um so far beyond that accelerate your growth having the right team and structure in place.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Thank you so much, Josh. For sharing all these insights. At the end now, I have three questions. I basically ask all of my guests, always a bit out of my own curiosity as well, asking you, what is the best book you've ever read?

[Josh Graham]
I'd say Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point. It's about consumer buying behavior. Our influences around why we make the decisions that we do. So I felt it was really interesting when I've read it in the past.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
You read a lot of business books?

[Josh Graham]
I'm on and off. I go through phases when I read more and then leave. So I find the time, isn't it? I do like to read business books if I'm reading, yes.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
It's the same man for me. Maybe something similar on an app or a tool that you say that you can’t live without or can’t work with without it?

[Josh Graham]
I love Spotify. I listen to a lot of podcasts, a lot of music. So I struggle without Spotify on a daily basis. Something that I’ve been using recently is Whoop. I don’t know if you’ve used Whoop or heard of it. It’s like a fitness band. And it’s pretty interesting to track your sleep and fitness on.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Okay, I use Garmin or Strava.

[Josh Graham]
Yeah. Okay, good, good. 

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]

And then if you would not have been founding Airtime Rewards, if you wouldn’t work in our industry, wouldn’t do what you do at the moment, what would you do if you were completely free?

[Josh Graham]
If I were to be a sports person, like an F1 driver or a golfer, I'd probably say, 'I love those detective programs you watch on TV. Something like that. I find them really interesting. Something like that.' MI5 or police detective or something.

[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Okay, very good. Thank you so much, Josh. Thank you for sharing all these insights. That's a really exciting story.

[Josh Graham]
Thank you very much for a great talk. Thank you very much. And thanks for the support.