Rise of the Entrepreneur - Episode 32: Oliver Roup Wants to Make Every Link Intelligent and Valuable
Podcast Summary
Oliver Roup is the founder and CEO of VigLink, a company that helps content creators make money through the use of affiliate marketing, while not having to deal with all the complexities of individual tracking, manually creating links and joining multiple programs.
Before getting active in the online marketing space, Oliver had accumulated quite an exciting resume of previous work with SpaceX, Microsoft, Paul Allen and many others. However, what might be Oliver's most exciting experience to date was taking his business at VigLink from an idea to the flourishing business it is today.
For Oliver this isn't something that would happen overnight. Instead it was a long journey of meeting with investors and VCs, trying to convince them that his idea was worth their time and investment. After many failed attempts, Oliver finally found an investor that was interested and things started to move fast!
Years later and over $20 million dollars in funding to date, the company continues to grow and scale in size while also helping sites of all sizes make money with their content while also connecting them with some of the largest brands and advertisers in the world.
Talking Points Discussed in this Episode:
- Oliver's process for turning his idea into a real business
- $20 million in funding and lessons learned
- Studying link structure across the internet and how people link to sites
- Using affiliate marketing as the foundation for content monetization
- Creating an all in one system for link management and compensation
- How advertisers are paying top dollar for top placement with VigLink
- Providing partners and clients with superior tracking and analytics