The marketing analytics scale-up has raised $17.5 million and is now valued at $132.5 million. Mutinex president of US and Multinational, John Sintras, and chief revenue officer Danny Bass tells B&T the focus is on constantly evolving its product, growing in the US, and eventually setting up shop in Singapore. And their Gen AI product Hendren, the Norse god of knowledge, is apparently going gangbusters.
For outsiders, the US has already been a hard nut to crack. Ask any agency boss from the UK who tries to cross the Atlantic and put up sticks and it usually ends up in retreat.
Mutinex is already doing this, but has crossed the more treacherous journey via the Pacific. It already has a team of 10 led by John Sintras; Mutinex co-founder and global CEO Henry Innis spends a lot of time Stateside.
Mutinex has “dozens” of clients in the US in sectors including online gaming, alcoholic beverages, automotive, CPG, QSR, education and financial services.
The company wouldn’t reveal any brand names, but is confident it can grow its headcount threefold in six months to a year. Mutinex’s global headcount now numbers around 75.
B&T caught up with Sintras and chief revenue officer Danny Bass via a video call to New York to find out more about what their latest injection of money would unlock and their plans for growth.
But first this publication wanted to find out why Mutinex is being so heavily backed and finding traction in the challenging US market.
“We’re solving pain points that have existed for years,” Sintras said. “I‘ve been in the industry for more decades than I care to remember on client side and agency side. These pain points in measurement and having the confidence to make big decisions with capital allocation of media and marketing investments has always been difficult, especially as the market has fragmented and become faster and faster and faster.
“We’re solving these problems that every marketer faces quickly, in a cost efficient manner and through an SAAS product, which is new. We are universally being reported up to board and C suite level and it’s so encouraging to see this platform being able to do that for marketers to give them the gravitas they need to make big decisions and to grow.”
One advantage that the Mutinex suite of products have is the ability to slice and dice their analytics via geography and at a campaign level.
Usually MMM tools provide a snapshot of overall media spend but Mutinex has recently upgraded its tool to allow marketers to break down the data by regions – including at state level – and individual campaigns.
This granularity, Mutinex argues, gives them an advantage in a country as vast and complex as the US, which often has different regulations and dynamics between stats, whether it’s New York, Texas or California.
Hendren ‘A Hit’
In August, Mutinex launched a new tool called Hendren that operated in a way similar to ChatGPT. It allowed marketers to use its MMM machine in a similar way to Chat GPT, asking queries and receiving a report in a matter of minutes.
Danny Bass, who joined Mutinex a few months ago from an illustrious career agency side, where he was most recently Dentsu Media’s boss. Bass was present at the Hendren launch and told B&T the new tool has received “universal praise”.
“What it does really, really quickly is it lets people invest more time back into human capital,” Bass said. “ When I was working in agencies you would see the amount of time people are spending to put these reports together. Sometimes, marketers will get a call from the C-suite at 6pm asking for a board report by 9am the next morning. That burns the night away.
“Hendren can get you to that within seconds, if not minutes. It allows your smart people to have the conversation they should be having.”
Aside from the US and constantly evolving products, Mutinex has its eyes on Asia, but is in no rush to get there. It is headhunting for a rep in Singapore to begin making inroads.
“There’s a wealth of opportunity for us, but it’s such a complex market,” Bass admits. “If you consider the size and complexity of markets like China and India, and then you factor in the size of Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, it’s just incredible.
“There’s certainly enough interest but we want to do it properly. Right now the focus is on Australia, New Zealand and the US.”
Why investors are ‘bullish’
On the APAC front, co-founder Matt Farrugia is likely to play a greater role getting the Mutinex message out to that market. As B&T reported earlier this week, Farrugia’s role has pivoted away from day-to-day operations to take greater stewardship of Mutinex in the APAC region.
Farrugia and Innis said they are grateful for the latest round of funding, a $17.5 million shot in the arm, led by Marbruck Investments and supported by EVP and Archangel Ventures.
“We are razor focused on improving our fundamental processes including onboarding speed, usage of data and expanding our predictive analytics capability and suite,” the pair said in a joint statement.
Tom Aouad, investor at Marbruck commented: “Mutinex’s phenomenal path to date has hit an exciting inflection point, driven by their AI advancements that allow clients to replace traditional marketing consultants. Their technical team’s capabilities and efficient enterprise onboarding through DataOS and Growth OS, coupled with an impressive US client base, set them apart from competitors in market.”
Rayn Ong, a partner at Archangel Ventures, added: “In venture investing, you don’t often see software companies scale their revenue following a triple, triple, double, double, double (T2D3) growth trajectory. Henry’s team at Mutinex has achieved more than that, by delivering very high ROI to their blue chip customers. Armed with a strong moat, I’m very bullish about the AI capabilities that will come next. We are grateful to be one of the lucky investors of this fast rising super star Aussie startup.”
Mutinex launched as ‘Mutiny’, but so far there is very little rebellion from the market about its product offering. If anything, investors and brands are jumping on board the ship as the Aussie start up charts a course across America, Asia and beyond.
