Team Success

Tyco Time

David Chun

01.26.22

How do you build credibility and brand recognition for your brand? Equilar's big break came through developing media partnerships, which led them to one launchpad opportunity.

Summary:

How do you build credibility and brand recognition for your brand? Equilar’s big break came through developing media partnerships, which led them to one launchpad opportunity.

Thuy

In the beginning as you go, you’re going out and selling this new idea, the subscription service for Equilar, were there some who needed extra convincing, and when you encountered resistance like that, how do you proceed?
David_Chun

David Chun

We were fortunate enough that there was a company who was, tried to kind of had a product in the space, but they decided they were going to wind it down and they ended up buying data from us, which was nice. And then people like with any new product, new company, who are you, are you guys going to be around, what's your agenda? So, we actually fortunate for us, we were able to partner with a number of media organizations early on, and that helped us you know, develop our brand equity.

Thuy

And how did you achieve that early on with the media organizations? Did you give them a free service to begin with, just to get your name out there and get your brand known?
David_Chun

David Chun

Absolutely. So the big break for us was unfortunately it's not good corporate news, but this is reality. So way back when you remember Tyco. So this is in 2001, it was a reporter at Reuters, Tim McLaughlin. I so distinctly remember this call. It was one of those moments that like it’s so fresh in my mind still, and he calls up and at this time we were, you know, five or six people, right? Sitting in some small little room in San Mateo. And he is like, Hey, I heard about you guys. I heard you guys have compensation data. I'm doing a story on Mark Swartz, who was the CFO of Tyco at the time. What did he make last year? And so we ran the numbers, we double checked it. And we emailed Tim and said, okay, according to our, he made 51 million or something to that effect somewhere in that neighborhood. So next morning on the web, according to Equilar, Mark Swartz in it and so that like, wow, this is how it works. And having had a long career in journalism industry, you're looking for sources and like, well, who else uses them? And so, hey, well, we've made it with Reuters the next, we're in Fortune. The next thing, New York Times is calling us. And so yeah, we were fortunate enough that we were able to execute and proud that we never had to do a correction. So we're very fortunate enough that, a big part of our culture is like, okay, if we're going to send this out to the New York Times, we got to make sure that every number on that is correct.