Sunday, June 10, 2012

Michael Lazerow: the guy behind Buddy Media

Buddy Media is getting acquired by Salesforce for $800 million.  It is the biggest exit from NYC-based start-up in last 5 years.  The guy behind Buddy Media is Michael Lazerow.

He made an personal video post after signing the deal:







Buddy Media started out as game and virtual currency company on top of Facebook platform.  After realizing it was not catching on (it turned out that they were little too early as Zynga had the same model and succeeded), it pivoted to become service company to build custom Facebook applications for companies.  Based on that experience Buddy Media was able to build its marketing platform where they can plugin custom apps.  As James Altucher, early investor to Buddy Media, writes, "this platform-as-a-service approach allows you [Buddy Media] to make money while you sleep".

Salesforce is gunning for marketing cloud platform as the next big market, and Buddy Media will be a key piece in allowing Salesforce to get in to the market.

Michael Lazerow spoke at Web 2.0 Expo last October about how brands are using Facebook:




As Facebook turns its attention to marketers, social marketing will be on lot of people's mind.  There will be more big players entering market to go after social marketing platform.

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