This North Park startup just got backed by GoFundMe founder and Ex-Googler. Here’s why

Two of San Diego’s best-known tech entrepreneurs have quietly invested in a little-known software startup in North Park called WowYow.

Andy Ballester, the co-founder of tech giant GoFundMe, invested his own personal funds into the startup, along with institutional money from Launch Factory, the startup studio founded by ex-Googler Brad Chisum.

WowYow’s technology is still in its infancy, and the investors say much work needs to be done before they’re willing to predict a slam dunk. But Chisum is bullish.

“This one has the potential to be one of the most exciting things out of San Diego,” Chisum said. “If it’s what Andy and I think it is, this could disrupt computer vision AI and cause all the big boys to realize how far behind they are.”

What WowYow is building

WowYow was founded in 2016, but the software is pretty new — it didn’t scale until 2019. The company’s most valuable piece of software can analyze the content of a video, determine what the video is about, and then attach categorical tags, or metadata, to the piece of content. In other words, they are using computer vision to “see” videos without manually watching them.

This can be valuable for many reasons. Right now, the startup is using the technology to help publishers like The Hill, Gannett and CNN Newsource to automate the placement of relevant advertisements on their video content. It also helps advertisers serve targeted ads without violating privacy protections such as user tracking, blocked by the European Union and California.

“In 2021, you can’t really advertise with user tracking at all anymore,” said Jarett Boskovich, co-founder and chief marketing officer at WowYow. “So we don’t. We don’t have to target advertising on users at all. It can be completely contextual.”

The software has many options to deliver an ad, including common advertising methods like pre-rolls. One novel method is for WowYow’s tech to “read” the video, identify items or people in the frame, and then make the video “shoppable.”

This means, as a viewer, you could see a video of Taylor Swift wearing a blue dress, click on the blue dress, and be taken to a retailer website that sells that dress (or one like it). That’s what Boskovich means about contextual advertising.

WowYow has over 5,000 advertisers in its network, and can automatically generate ads and fill them into an unmonetized slot. The startup exploded in 2020 when publishers were desperate to help monetize their content during the pandemic while print advertising slumped.

“We went from serving 10 million ads a month to over 100 million ads a month in one year,” said Jarett Boskovich, co-founder and chief marketing officer at WowYow.

The company is currently serving in the range of 250 million ads a month.

But are the ads effective?

“WowYow doesn’t track user conversions for advertisers,” Boskovich wrote in an email. “Our metric for advertisers/marketers is focused on getting their offer in front of video audiences on premium publisher sites and driving highly qualified and targeted traffic.”

Investors see far more applications than adtech

Founded by two brothers, Jarett and Adam Boskovich, along with friend Michael Ramirez, WowYow started off in adtech because that lined up with their history.

Jarett had experience doing ad sales at a local San Diego newspaper company, San Diego Community News Network, which published Uptown News and Gay San Diego, among others. He saw a need for this type of technology.

But the founders of WowYow — and their investors — see huge potential in the company’s base technology.

“WowYow’s first iteration is adtech,” Ballester said. “But what excites me is that you can use that core AI technology on a lot of different things.”

Ballester, who’s also working at Chisum’s studio, said Launch Factory plans to help the founders create several spin-off companies built off the core AI technology. All parties were mum on specifics but said they can imagine applications in worker safety in large facilities (identifying prone positions that might flag a safety issue).

“It would be difficult to cover all those cameras in real-time with human eyes, but with computer vision that could be done all the time and potentially lead to better worker safety in big warehouses and factories,” Ballester said.

WowYow was a graduate of San Francisco’s Nex Cubed accelerator but participated virtually from San Diego. WowYow is making money through a revenue share with its clients but is not yet profitable.