LATELY CEO: KATE BRADLEY CHERNIS COUNTRY: UNITED STATES STARTED: 2014
What is the company’s origin story? Believe it or not, I used to be a rock ‘n’ roll DJ – my last radio gig was broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for XM Satellite Radio. Alas, radio is a major boys’ club. I felt squashed, invalidated. And, of course, there was sexual harassment galore. But what really bothered me was not getting credit for my work. So, I moved to another music-related company, but it was the same thing all over again. I was miserable. Always crying. It was such a toxic situation because I hated my job and felt stuck. One day, my dad lovingly shook me by the shoulders and said: “You can’t work for other people and there’s no shame in that.” Eureka! My husband bought me Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start . Somewhere in the first few pages, it reads: ‘Don’t make a plan, just get started.’ The next day, I went to a business lunch with two incredible humans who turned out to be angel investors. They gave me $50,000 to start my first company. True story! As I was marketing that first company, someone else noticed and offered me a chunk of change to consult them on marketing. Suddenly, I was working with Walmart, United
And some eyeball-popping AI advancements that I can’t tell you about. But let’s just say, if you wanted to push a button and create copywriting that sounds like Lady Gaga, I may be able to arrange that in the near future. What is the next step for the company? We continue to focus on the origin process – how purposeful, interesting and relevant content can be created as a partnership between AI and humans. Lately knows and predicts what engages your target audience or customers, then it suggests messaging based on what it learns. Feed Lately blogs, online articles, podcasts, webinars and – BOOM – the AI provides you with social post ideas to jumpstart any organic content push. In order to communicate effectively, everyone has to write. Yes, we live in a world where there are podcasts and video, but in the end, that all gets translated into text, one way or another. Nowadays, if you’re not using AI to help with basic communication – you’re effed. It’s impossible to catch up without it. Hence, Lately.
What one thing does the company need right now? Capital. We have 100% trial- to-sale close ratio, thanks to dogfooding our own product. Yet, we have more demand than we can keep up with. Of our qualified leads, 48% go untouched because we can’t get to them. We have product-market fit, 300+ customers, many of which spontaneously evangelise us on social every single day. We’ve seen 140% growth in the last seven months, but I still have to work 98% harder than my male counterparts to raise funding.
Way Worldwide, National Disability Institute, Bank of America and thousands of small and medium businesses and non-profits, all with different marketing skill sets and budgets. So, I built a spreadsheet to organise my mind, and my spreadsheet system ended up getting us 130% ROI YoY for three years. Ta-da! The idea for Lately was born. What is the company working on right now? A partnership with Gary Vaynerchuk/Vayner Media.
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