Plug and Play’s CEO Corner: Brian Ley, BiddRocket

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newsletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on Brian Ley of BiddRocket.



What does your company do?

BiddRocket is a behavioral science company that studies how groups of people make decisions based on payment data only. We help brands defend their market position by identifying the customers they can't afford to lose. Our Contigo.io technology can take simple off- and online sales data and identify the 7%-10% of your customer base that is the most influential.



How do retailers leverage your solution?

By focusing on 7% of their customer base that is the most influential and connected, CMOs can reap huge ROI gains when compared to conventional broadcast marketing. Retailers use this list to better target loyalty programs, stop negative word of mouth before it spreads, and give a clear move to action in the confusing world of big data.



Our primary customer base consists of retailers who cannot afford having sophisticated data processing infrastructure, lack cutting edge data science methodologies, and want meaningful results fast.



What is your background as CEO and what led to the development of the company?

The initial idea came from doing ethnographic research at a nightclub. I noticed that people tend to line up and pay with their friends, then call or text other friends who showed up later. As I obsessed over this, I noticed online sales also showed similar patterns. I wanted to learn more, but no one could give me a map of these hidden information networks, so I decided to do it myself. Considering 30%-50% of all consumer purchases are the result of word of mouth, I felt this could create a massive opportunity.



It took me about two years to pull together a team smart enough to solve this problem. Collectively, we come from the world of computational sociology, machine learning, data science, and global payments. I have gotten this far by continuing to make the next hire smarter than the last one and having an amazing co-founder. I could not be more excited about the results we are seeing in our latest case study.