Is an altruistic holding company too good to believe? Know Co. begs to differ

“I don’t see it as altruistic. I see it more as I’m a big believer that if you create a healthy ecosystem, everybody can win and thrive together,” said Seth, who founded Know Co. in 2016. “The advertising world is more open to the idea of working with good partners all around. … It’s an industry that is far more open to working with people all the time. And so I don’t totally feel the vibe of being the be all, end all.”

Know Co. is essentially made up of three distinct units from which the agencies it’s invested in — from Canadian media shop Mediology to Denver-based Authentic Audience, to Austin, Texas-based KEN Media — can work with. They include:

IKPN (which stands for Independent Knowledge Partner Network), takes 5%-15% investment stakes in agencies it feels have the potential for growth. It also houses intellectual expertise in the fields of new business development, HR, financial and legal guidance, and general support for agencies looking to expand. It operates under the aegis of Lindsay Rutherford, a former HR executive who’s become a business-side consultant to those agencies.

A technology division develops proprietary tools that its agencies need or don’t exist in the market. Knower Tech is that division’s development arm, and it’s built such tools as a cookie-less audience graph called RainBarrel, a dynamic ad creator called AdRetriever and a machine learning search tool called RoverWords.

Finally, a third operating division houses expertise and access to major platforms and tools. For example, it enables the agencies it has a stake in to be able to access Amazon’s DSP, Google Marketing Platform, Xandr, The Trade Desk and other ad tech tools through a unit called Dandelion, which has licensing deals with all of those giant platforms. Another unit, LoKnow, gives agencies access to turnkey programmatic fulfillment.

It’s all added up to what Seth described as a “nine-figure business,” although he declined to elaborate on how much more than $100 million Know Co. generates. “We realized, if we just took a 5, 10, 15% investment in an agency, they would realize we were there for their success,” said Seth. “We’re not there to hurt them and we’re not there to go around them. Because their wins are our wins.”

One halo effect of investing in numerous agencies — up to 16 at this point across the U.S. and Canada, but likely 20 by end of year, said Seth — is their desire to share knowledge and best practices with each other, not unlike (but also very unlike) a holding company, said Rutherford.

“As we started introducing agencies to each other, and as they started to build and form those relationships, they started sharing,” said Rutherford. She also noted that not every agency the company reaches out to is a fit for investment.

“Sometimes we’re not the right investor for a company because they don’t want to share, they don’t want to collaborate, and they’ll be really honest and upfront about it,” she said. “The ones that want to be a part of our network want to be able to hear feedback. They want to be able to work in conjunction with somebody else to make sure that they can give the very best to their client.”

In some cases the agency invested in is a small shop with one or just a few people, that’s on the fence about how or if to grow. When IKPN takes its stake, it will sit down with the principal(s) and hammer out a business plan for growth while offering the slate of tools and tech that agency can tap into.

For example, Mediology is a small Canadian media strategy firm in which the CEO, Sam Richardson, purchased the agency from her parents. She considers Mediology “the OG” of IKPN, as the first agency it invested in.

“It’s allowed us to evolve and really focus on our business and our craft and our people,” said Richardson, whose revenue has doubled and whose five-year growth plan is already 16 months ahead of pace. “We’re running and growing the business, knowing that I have in my corner a braintrust of individuals with extensive industry experience in various categories that are affordable and accessible that frankly, wouldn’t be affordable within our business model.”

Krista Ripma is founder and CEO of search specialist Authentic Audience, which before IKPN approached her with investing, was just her. Ripma said she had been given advice by others to not try to scale her business but changed her mind once she heard what IKPN and the other Know Co. units could assist her with. Today Authentic Audience is a five-person shop with growing revenue.

“They’re like my business parents,” quipped Ripma. “The biggest difference [working] with them is the risks that I’ve taken. I would not have taken them without their advice in terms of working capital, but mostly in terms of people. And that’s where they’ve been really instrumental.”

To a neutral observer who’s heard of Know Co. but never met or spoken with them — Seth admits the company has intentionally flown under the proverbial radar for the last eight years — Steve Boehler who runs media consultancy Mercer Island Group, said the concept is smart if not unique. He cited 19York, for example, but one could also consider Dawn Collective in that same spirit.

“There’s going to be a need for all these agency services, especially if somebody like Know Co. can help elevate the game of these individual agencies,” said Boehler. But he also said offering access to the major platforms isn’t necessarily the distinct win that Seth believes it to be. “I don’t know that having a special relationship with Google, etc., really is enough to elevate anybody’s game. Because, for the most part, there’s other ways to get most of this stuff,” he added.