It is with the roadblocks that innovations come in and so was the case for Branch Metrics. Alex Austin, Mada Saghete, Mike Molinet and Dmitri Gaskin co-founded their first startup Kindred, a photo book printing mobile app and faced a gazillion challenges throughout like any other startup. Their biggest struggle was to grow the audience of Kindred. It got coverage in beginning but that did not last for long and so did not their user base.
The functioning of marketing on mobile phone was different from how things were on web. App installs were super expensive and strategies that worked on web did not give results on phone. After discussions one fine Sunday, they came up with the idea of deferred deep linking. It is an aspect of mobile deep linking where until the application is installed, deep linking will be postponed.
They spoke to their other friends who had startups like Zynga and Trip.com and realised everyone faced similar issues. This gave them the idea to create something that not only solves their problem but everyone else’s as well. This was the beginning of Branch Metrics and they started with building with a routing and matching system that would take the user to the app upon clicking the link. They ensure that the users reach the right destination. Branch Metrics can also track where the users are coming from which again helps their clients to understand their markets better.
The company was founded in Palo Alto in 2014 and their product, Branch.io facilitates free deep linking technology for mobile app developers for them to retain users. The startup has raised good amount of investment as well with last Series D funding of $129 million.