Is Electric Guitar building a stairway to AIM unicorn heaven ?
“…data has been called the new oil. This is the new oil. We will strike a lot of oil…”
To fully understand the structural shifts shaping the advertising and marketing industries, fast forward to page 22 of Electric Guitar’s admission document created for its listing on the AIM market.
It’s a second stock exchange listing for the company in as many years. The first was in 2022, when it came to the main board of the LSE as a SPAC which is the dissonant acronym for Special Purpose Acquisition company. It had two years to make an acquisition and it did so by buying 3radical, a business that Electric Guitar founder and CEO John Regan had long been aware of.
“Advertisers are trying to make things people want, as opposed to making people want things. So that’s the big change,” says Regan who explains that advertisers are now on the quest to collect first party data and that is what 3radical excels at.
According to Regan there’s not many companies involved in the first party data collection space, but he predicts in 18 months time there’s going to be a land grab for data of that nature and the enterprises who specialise in it.
“If you talk to chief marketing officers, the last survey that I saw, something like 60% of them said that they want to focus on first party data this year,” enthuses Regan. “I would argue the other 40% just haven’t quite woken up and smelled the coffee yet.”
3radical, its exposure to the APAC region and the £8 million its invested into developing its technology is no longer available to others, and has given Electric Guitar the veil of respectability of a buy and build business at the cutting edge of digital marketing and data curation.
As for the shape of future acquisitions Regan describes data as the new oil and is eyeing complementary technologies to help Electric Guitar achieve unicorn status.
He’s also a firm believer that residence on the AIM market is the place to do it.
As he explains to Sarah Lowther (in this video). “Firstly, the way in which AIM is regulated is much more suitable to a fast growing tech business like us. We’re able to do things in a much more flexible way. But the second thing is also people look to AIM for exciting businesses. And so analysts are constantly looking at AIM companies. We want to be researched and analysed. We want investors to know what we’re doing. We want them to share in our journey and the excitement and potential that we’ve gotten there. And the third one, of course, is AIM attracts the type of investors that invest in our type of business. We’re a fast growing tech business and so that’s the right place for us to be.”
Follow the company on ‘X’ @guitar_ltd
The author was remunerated but does not hold shares in the company
