In the previous few weeks, PayPal-owned Honey, which claims to search out you the very best coupon codes for a deal, has been on the heart of controversy. Allegedly, the device sneakily earned affiliate cash by altering attributes of product hyperlinks creators posted on their movies. On the heart of it, the issue was how affiliate hyperlinks work and the way the cash goes to whoever has the final hyperlink when the consumer makes the acquisition.
Former Vercel worker Steven Tey thinks his open-source URL shortener and link-tracking service Dub.co can remedy this downside by eradicating the necessity to use coupon codes and embedding them within the hyperlink.
The corporate is constructing an attribution and affiliate product that creators can use to create their very own hyperlinks. And customers will solely get a reduction in the event that they use that particular hyperlink.
“We want to make attribution much more transparent to creators as well as businesses to avoid situations like the Honey scandal, where anyone can steal the attribution,” Tey mentioned on a name with TechCrunch.
Tey began Dub.co whereas working at Vercel as an open-source URL shortener. He added hyperlink monitoring alongside the best way. He constructed this mission to higher perceive merchandise Vercel was delivery. Over time, Dub.co turned a full-fledged SaaS service. Tey left Vercel in late in 2023 and began the corporate across the identical time.
“There was a big problem with attribution tracking to understand where our revenue was coming from. At Vercel, at that time, we didn’t know how our developer advocacy work like creating articles and tutorials translating into revenue. So this planted the seeds for Dub,” Tey mentioned.
He added that after launching Dub.co, he realized that the affiliate house was antiquated and messy with not many instruments for personalization. That’s when he understood that there’s extra to hyperlink monitoring house than simply URL shortening companies.
Whereas the corporate’s main income supply is companies and enterprises, it additionally presents a free plan for folks to shorten their hyperlinks and monitor them. Notably, the startup is working with Malaysian authorities to make the most of the open-source aspect of the mission to construct out a hyperlink shortener and tracker for authorities. Plus, corporations like Twilio use the SaaS hosted model of Dub.co and customise it in line with their wants to trace their hyperlinks, campaigns, and occasions. What’s extra, YouTube channels like Huberman Labs is utilizing Dub’s answer to trace associates.
Dub.co launched a brand new product known as Conversions this week, which may monitor real-time advertising and marketing clicks changing to signups or gross sales. The startup mentioned this can assist corporations monitor granular metrics like buyer acquisition prices, retention charges, and lifelong worth to higher perceive advertising and marketing returns. Dub.co also can combine with instruments like Shopify and Stripe to higher monitor conversions.
Tey famous that whereas Dub.co presents AI options, it doesn’t need them to take over core merchandise. At the moment, customers can use AI to create customized studies or get ideas for title and outline for various hyperlinks. The startup can also be utilizing AI for auto-tagging hyperlink to current classes.
Joseph Jacks, founding father of OSS Capital, mentioned that the Dub.co has a bonus over competitors with its open-source nature, higher consumer expertise and design.
The corporate has raised $2 million from traders together with OSS Capital; Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch; Balaji Srinivasan; design service Framer’s founders Jorn van Dijk and Koen Bok; former Fb designer Soleio, who has been an early backer of Vercel, Perplexity, and Figma; and Cal.com CEO Peer Richardson.
“Links are the foundation of the web — pair that with attribution and the addressable market is massive, tens of billions minimum,” Jacks instructed TechCrunch over electronic mail.
“By turning short links into attribution engines, Dub can help marketers answer the age-old question of ‘What’s my ROI on my marketing spend?’ — backed by real-world conversion data.”
