Sep 30, 2017
Adam Salamon is the first Entrepreneur in Residence at Next Coast Ventures, an Austin-based venture capital firm.
Salamon most recently served as co-founder and chief operating officer of Perk Inc., a rewards and engagement platform that went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year.
RhythmOne PLC acquired Perk earlier this year for more than $40 million in a stock deal.
In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Salamon talks about how Perk initially built a web-based browser that rewarded users with Perk points. But they quickly learned that there were too many hurdles to getting consumers to switch their Internet browsers. So they pivoted and created a mobile-based rewards app that rewarded people with Perk points for watching videos, playing games and doing other tasks. They built up their user base to more than one million users. They also raised $60,000 in a seed stage investment initially from an Austin angel investor. They later raised $1 million from a family office in the Bay area of California. With that money, they were able to the business and run for three years from 2011 to 2014 before seeking an additional $2 million. At that point, they brought on a CEO, based in Waterloo, Canada. Under his guidance, the company went public on the Toronto stock exchange. It then completed a series of acquisition of other rewards-based companies. At the end of last year, RythmOne PLC and Perk struck a deal for RhythmOne to acquire the company for more than $40 million in an all stock deal.