The Ledger
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Krátký-Katz: Outsider status helped Blockthrough spot ad-block recovery opportunity
“The people who are most skeptical about the space were ad tech people. I would talk to them and they would say, well, like, oh, ad block users don't want to see ads. That's why they're blocking them. And that, that sounded intuitive to them, but You know, to u…”
Krátký-Katz: The 2015–2018 cohort of ad-block circumvention startups mostly failed
“There was actually a whole like generation of ad block Circumvention solutions like ours that, that started in that 2015 to 2018 period and like either flamed out, failed, you know, sold for pennies on the dollar or ended up, you know, pivoting away.”
Krátký-Katz: Blockthrough returned an average of 8.5X to investors, first investor 25X
“I think our average investor return was like eight and a half X. Our very first investor did like 25 X, you know, a friend from high school.”
Krátký-Katz: eyeo acquired Blockthrough in late 2023
“And so they ended up acquiring us late last year.”
Krátký-Katz: Blockthrough revenue jumped from $100 to $96K in six months
“We go a hundred dollars in revenue the first month, a thousand dollars the second month. 10,000 the third month, 20,000 the fourth month, 48,096 thousand, like.”
Krátký-Katz: Most ad block users hate obnoxious formats, not all ads
“The vast majority of us ad block users are not militant ad haters. We just, you know, are really annoyed by a handful of obnoxious experiences, like, you know, pre-roll ads on YouTube.”
Srugo: Blockthrough sold for nearly $100M after minimal funding
“And ultimately Marty went off and he was able to like a few years into it, I guess a couple of years ago, he sold his company. He sold it for nearly a hundred million dollars. He didn't raise much.”
Blockthrough grew to $1M in four months before a $100M acquisition
“Like, it went from zero to a million in, like, four months, and then grew to ten million and got acquired for a hundred.”
Blockthrough launched in March 2018 with only 28 days of cash
“We launched that in March of 2018. So when we launched it, we had like 28 days of cash left in the bank.”
Krátký-Katz: Blockthrough never missed payroll despite frequent salary deferrals
“There was a lot of moments where I deferred salary. There were a lot of moments where, you know, we had to like pull 25 grand out of our ass to like make payroll. We didn't, we never missed payroll once during that time span.”
Krátký-Katz: Blockthrough acquired an early competitor to win the ad-blocking market
“Ironically, we ended up buying one of them. So acquiring one of those companies and then the other one pivoted So many times that they don't do ad blocking anymore. So we actually ended up being the sort of the winner in the space.”
Marty Krátký-Katz: Blockthrough raised almost exactly $2 million total before exiting
“Yeah, I think it was almost exactly two million in total.”
Krátký-Katz: Adblock Plus parent company eyeo invested in Blockthrough in late 2018
“We actually ended up getting ad block plus as parent company. So IO they ended up investing in us in late 2018.”
Krátký-Katz: Ad blockers destroy ad value by disabling secondary tracking technologies
“Ad blockers don't just block the ads. They also block all the secondary technologies that make the ads valuable to buyers. So that could be, you know, cookies for targeting. It could be you know, attribution technology technologies that measure whether the ad …”
Blockthrough never had over four months runway between 2015 and 2018
“In that time span between twenty-fifteen when we started the company and twenty-eighteen when we found product market fit we never had more than, like, four months of cash in the bank.”