Taking data to the cloud

With the explosion of data, every application is now a data application. Learn why this has hundreds of software teams building their applications in the cloud across multiple use cases and industries.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–September 1, 2021–

Mitsubishi Group (MUFG) the second largest banking and finance group in the world has injected another $120 million investment into the Mars Growth fund, a 50/50 joint venture owned by MUFG and Liquidity Capital. MUFG has a broader strategic relationship with Liquidity and this latest investment represents their cumulative investment of $220 million to date.

Mars Growth Capital provides debt financing solutions to technology companies in Asia Pacific and Europe. Since its inception one year ago, the fund has recorded exceptional performance through ten transactions to the value of $80 million, executed across Asia, Australia and Europe, with demand exceeding $2 billion during this period.

Through its strategic collaboration with MUFG, Liquidity is focused on revolutionizing the credit underwriting process for the business sector. Recognizing the challenges for high potential companies to secure non-dilutive capital from traditional financial institutions, Liquidity developed DYNAMiCS, a world-first, machine learning platform that can perform fast and thorough, data-driven due diligence on companies to assess their performance and growth potential.

DYNAMiCS uses algorithms to accurately predict future revenues, cash balances and other relevant financial covenants unique to technology business. Each of Liquidity’s four funds, including Mars Growth Fund, use the platform to inform their investment decision making, oftentimes in a process that takes less than 24-hours to complete.

Liquidity Group has provided over $750 million during the last year to over 50 growth companies across USA, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, including top unicorns such as eToro, Homer, Resident, Infinidat, Acronis, Infra.Market, and others. Its financing ranges from $5 million to $100 million, and is committed to 24-hour due diligence using its first of a kind platform – DYNAMiCS.

Ron Daniel, Liquidity CEO, said: “MUFG’s ongoing investment in our funds is a vote of confidence in our technology, capabilities and potential. Mars Growth Capital’s performance to date is a reflection of the strength of our methodology of combining our team’s professional investing expertise with our bespoke DYNAMiCS technology solution. We are excited to continue our ongoing partnership with MUFG, who shares our ethos to support innovative, technology-driven companies across key market segments.”

Rio Hiroshima, who manages Mars Growth Capital’s operations on behalf of MUFG, said, “Since launching the fund just one year ago, we have quickly positioned ourselves as the market leader in growth financing for technology companies across the APAC and EMEA regions. Market demand, coupled with our strong investment performance has enabled us to grow rapidly and increase the value of the fund to $200 million. We are excited to continue our partnership with MUFG as we continue on the same dizzying trajectory into 2022”.

Yaron Primovich, the fund manager on behalf of Liquidity said: “Our partners at MUFG believe in our value proposition, and share our ambitions to be the global leader in growth financing. We hold a unique position in the marketplace because our underwriting platform acts as a data-driven oracle to identify and assess the potential of prospect companies. DYNAMiCS can cut through masses of information to analyse the strength of different business models, end customer behaviours and financial situations, arming us with insights to determine a company’s ability to meet future debt repayments.”

“In a post Covid-world, businesses across the globe are on the cusp of even greater levels of innovation and expansion, further fuelling companies’ appetite for growth and debt without dilution. We are excited to play a crucial role in helping these companies optimise on this opportunity”.

In addition, Mars Growth Capital has registered high levels of demand from hundreds of companies, in less than one year since its formation.

Notes to Editor

About Liquidity

Liquidity was established in 2018 by Ron Daniel, Yaron Sela and Oron Maymon. Liquidity manages $800 million in several funds worldwide. Among the partners in the company are Spark Capital, Meitav Dash and the Mitsubishi Banking Corporation. The company is considered a world leader in business credit management for growth companies using the machine learning technology it has developed. www.liquiditycap.com

Mars Growth is a joint venture between Liquidity Capital and MUFG that offers tech startups a one-of-a-kind funding alternative, enabling them to double down on their hyper-growth without giving up equity. Its trajectory-based funding model allows them to work with startups and growth-stage companies side-by-side, taking on financial risk. Part of the Liquidity funds arm, Mars Growth invests in SaaS providers that demonstrate over $3M in ARR and 30% year-over-year growth, with an average ticket size of $3M-$100M.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210901005448/en/

Alex Bayliss
[email protected]

Taking data to the cloud

With the explosion of data, every application is now a data application. Learn why this has hundreds of software teams building their applications in the cloud across multiple use cases and industries.

Presented by AdColony

About four years ago, a report came out that showed the average number of SDKs used by gaming apps and the number wasn’t pretty — it was nearly 18 SDKs per app, with gaming categories like Trivia, Strategy, Casino, and Role Playing games even higher.

It was an eye-opener for the industry, because app developers up to that point were very enthusiastic about SDKs, as they provided apps with all sorts of capabilities and features (e.g., analytics, communication, monetization) that would be time-consuming to build.

However, you have to proactively invest in analyzing and monitoring SDKs’ behavior and keeping them updated and compatible — much like you’d take care of a child — to make sure it doesn’t negatively impact your app performance. SDKs can cause app size bloat, bugs, slowness, battery drain, and privacy issues.

Now imagine 18 of these high-maintenance, ill-behaving SDK children running around amuck in your house. Only instead of broken furniture and floor spills, you’re seeing poor performance, dissatisfied users, and uninstalls. You might even get banned from the App Store or Google Play if you haven’t properly vetted your partners and vendors. (Yes, that can and will happen.)

Many app developers said enough is enough and started Marie-Kondo-ing their apps, removing SDKs that no longer brought them “joy” (measurable utility and/or money). Publishers really focused on the tippy-top ad networks and removed many others as not worth the storage space.

As this was happening though, advanced bidding was taking off, which increased inventory access and auction efficiency for all ad sources by replacing the traditional ad waterfall with simultaneous real-time bidding (RTB) from ad networks and DSPs. With more buyers, there is more chance to match an impression with a higher value bid, as well as increased fill at higher values from exposure to more bidders.

Then came Apple’s Privacy rollout with iOS 14.5. With the privacy rules now in effect, apps must get explicit user consent before collecting and using consumer data for targeting purposes. While some apps and categories are getting workable opt-in rates, no one has or will get 100% or even close to that. This means that there are significantly fewer addressable devices, and ad networks will be forced to optimize targeting in other ways (cue: contextual). Every company will have different signals, too, including devices that have opted in, and while many will have some sort of solution in place, some will have none.

So in a complete reversal from the calm and collected few, highest-performing ad SDKs, and assuming you want to maximize your revenue, it makes more sense to have as many people publicly bidding on your inventory than just a couple of people. It’s like a cattle auction, where you have a high volume of bidders who desire one item versus Sotheby’s, with a far smaller group of potential buyers. Granted, the latter is auctioning off high-ticket items so they are looking for a premium audience, and with a cattle auction, it can get a bit chaotic.

The best way to avoid the chaos of too many SDKs is to adjust in accordance with the overall weight of your app. That is, if your app is lightweight, like a hyper-casual game, you’ll have more space to work with and could reasonably fit 10-15 SDKs. If you have a more hardcore game, I recommend having under five. Ironically, it’s the apps that are less bulky that tend to rely more on ads for revenue generation, so they’d need more monetization options and a larger auction audience.

Generally speaking, though, while you do want to optimize toward less battery consumption and network data use, not every app is like Pokémon Go, where your battery runs out at lightning speed. More ad SDKs will serve your monetization goals, as long as you vet them carefully to make sure they’re not breaking privacy rules, because remember, the buck stops with publishers. The actions of your ad network ultimately come down on you!

Additionally, the balance of power for ad networks is up in the air right now. Just because you got great results from an ad network before Apple started enforcing the privacy rules of iOS 14 doesn’t mean you will get the same results now! It’s time to reconsider your monetization partners and select the ones that are equipped and ready to be successful in this new environment.

Justin Welter is VP Brand Performance and Business Development at AdColony.

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