In recent weeks, PayPal's Honey, which claims to find the best coupon codes for your transactions, has been at the center of controversy. The tool reportedly secretly earned affiliate revenue by changing the attribution of product link creators who posted in their videos. The central question was how affiliate links work and how money is paid to the person with the last link when a user makes a purchase.
Former Vercel employee Steven Tey says his open source URL shortening and link tracking service Dub.co solves this problem by eliminating the need for coupon codes and embedding them in links. I think it can be done.
The company builds attribution and affiliate products that creators can use to create their own links. And users will only get the discount if they use that particular link.
“We want to make attribution even more transparent, not only for creators but also for companies, to avoid situations like the Honey Scandal where anyone can steal attribution,” Tay told TechCrunch. spoke on the phone.
Tey started Dub.co while working at Vercel as an open source URL shortener. He added link tracking along the way. He built this project to better understand the products Vercel was shipping. Over time, Dub.co became a full-fledged SaaS service. Mr Tay will retire from Vercel at the end of 2023 and founded the company around the same time.
“Tracking attribution was a big problem when it came to understanding where our revenue was coming from. At Vercel, we were trying to figure out how developer support, such as writing articles and tutorials, translated into revenue. This planted the seed for the dub,'' Tay said.
Image credit: Dub.co
He added that after launching Dub.co, he found the affiliate space to be outdated and cluttered without many tools for customization. That's when he realized there was more to the link tracking space than just URL shorteners.
The company's main source of revenue is businesses and businesses, but it also offers a free plan to shorten and track links. Notably, the startup is working with the Malaysian government to build link shorteners and trackers for authorities using the open source side of the project. Additionally, companies like Twilio use the SaaS-hosted version of Dub.co and customize it to their needs for tracking links, campaigns, and events. Additionally, YouTube channels like Huberman Labs use Dub's solution to track affiliates.
Dub.co this week announced a new product called Conversions that lets you track marketing clicks that lead to registrations and sales in real time. The company said this will enable businesses to track detailed metrics such as customer acquisition costs, retention rates and lifetime value to better understand marketing returns. Dub.co can also integrate with tools like Shopify and Stripe to better track conversions.
Tey pointed out that while Dub.co offers AI capabilities, it doesn't want its core product to be hijacked. Now, users can use AI to create custom reports and get suggestions for different link titles and descriptions. The startup also uses AI to automatically tag links to existing categories.
Image credit: DUb.co
Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital, said Dub.co has an advantage over the competition due to its open source nature, superior user experience and design.
The company has raised $2 million from investors including OSS Capital. Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel. Balaji Srinivasan. Jorn van Dijk and Koen Bok, founders of design service Framer. A former Facebook designer, Soleio was an early supporter of Vercel, Perplexity, and Figma. and Cal.com CEO Pia Richardson.
“Links are the foundation of the web, and when combined with attribution, the addressable market is huge, at least in the tens of billions,” Jacks told TechCrunch via email.
“By turning short links into an attribution engine, Dub helps marketers answer the age-old question, ‘What is the ROI on my marketing spend?’ — Backed by real-world conversion data ”