Summary
In this conversation, Kurt Bell from Dash.fi discusses the innovative corporate credit card solutions offered by the company, focusing on their unique value propositions such as cash back incentives and ad pay protection services. The discussion highlights how these offerings can significantly benefit businesses engaged in digital advertising and shipping, ultimately leading to substantial savings and enhanced financial management.
Takeaways
- Dash.fi specializes in corporate credit cards for digital advertising.
- The main value proposition is cash back and high limits.
- Ad Pay Protection is a complementary service to the credit cards.
- Businesses can save significantly on ad spend with Dash.fi.
- Incremental savings can reach $30-40K throughAd Pay Protection.
- Cash back on ad spend enhances overall value for clients.
- Dash.fi targets companies with substantial digital advertising budgets.
- The combination of services provides a competitive edge.
- Understanding client needs is crucial for tailored financial solutions.
- Dash.fi aims to simplify financial management for businesses.
What We Cover:
- 00:00 Introduction to Ad Refunds in Ecommerce
- 02:41 Understanding the Impact of Fraudulent Traffic
- 05:31 Navigating Refund Requests with Meta and Google
- 08:08 Identifying Bad Actors in Ad Traffic
- 10:55 Trends in Ad Spend and Diversification
- 13:21 The Evolution of Payment Methods in Advertising
- 16:15 Emerging Advertising Channels and Strategies
- 18:59 The Future of AI in Advertising
- 21:37 Leveraging Cash Flow for Ecommerce Success
- 24:31 The Changing Landscape of Ecommerce
- 27:06 Dash.fi’s Innovative Solutions for Brands
- 34:06 General podcast ad.mp4
Guest Information
Kurt Bell is the Director of Enterprise Sales at Dash.fi, where he helps businesses access innovative financial solutions to drive growth.
With a strong foundation in business and leadership from Weber State University and experience mentoring teams in the Dominican Republic, Kurt is passionate about building lasting client relationships and delivering impactful results.
Work with LedgerGurus
If you need help with your ecommerce accounting, reach out to us at LedgerGurus. We are an ecommerce-specialized accounting firm, and we can handle all your numbers so you can focus on growing your business.
Transcript
Stephen Brown (00:00)
Did you know that ecommerce brands are leaving thousands of dollars on the table in ad refunds or optimizing their accounts to avoid ad refunds? Hi, I’m Stephen Brown with LedgerGurus and with me today I have Kurt Bell from Dash.fi. Kurt is the Director of Enterprise Sales at Dash.fi and we’re going to talk about advertising refunds or even more importantly, how to avoid them. Kurt, thanks for joining me.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (00:25)
Yeah, Stephen, great to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this and appreciate you making time.
Stephen Brown (00:30)
Yeah, tell us a little bit about your journey to ecommerce. How you got into this ⁓ part of the industry. Give us your background.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (00:38)
Yeah, yeah, happy to. So I’ve been in the ecommerce sales space for about coming up on six years since 2020. And I kind of fell into it by happenstance, to be honest. I was fresh into the software sales scene, was working at a different company here in Utah and was in someone I had gone to college with at Weber State had just started a new SMS marketing platform for the ecommerce scene called Via SMS. So brought me in, you know,
first five or six employees to help build up the sales team there, scale it to about 120 people. It was a great experience. And more than that, I just fell in love with working directly with founders. And so I ventured out of Ecom after that for a year and just missed it way too much. So when I met Zach Johnson, our founder here at Dash and had the opportunity to come back, that was about two and a half years ago and haven’t looked back since. Just love the opportunity to deal directly with founders, building cool businesses and get to work directly with them.
Stephen Brown (01:33)
Now, the reason I wanted to have this conversation, I met one of your colleagues. He told me about what you guys were doing and I wasn’t aware of the issues around ad refunds. I have been aware about the issues with shipping, but ads, like I want to dig into this. So how common are refunds or issues with ad accounts?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (01:54)
Yeah, it’s ⁓ more common than you would think, Stephen. I think what’s interesting as we speak with brands, I think the overall sentiment is that their ads are running incredibly efficient. They’ve put protections in place. They don’t believe they’ll have a high volume of bot traffic, fraudulent traffic, invalid traffic coming from their Meta and Google ad campaigns. But it’s been interesting as we’ve gotten into it and have…
100 clients plus on this platform of the ad pay protection, that the average is in between around three to four and a half percent of a company’s spend is being wasted on fraudulent or invalid traffic. And so it’s more prevalent than companies think.
Stephen Brown (02:32)
And is that what most of this is, is bot traffic, fraudulent traffic? Like, is this where the problem spend comes from?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (02:41)
Yeah, yeah, there’s without getting too far into the weeds, there’s about 40 different data points that we’re looking at as a company, but essentially comes down to bot traffic, click farms, and but also can be as simple as out of geo where you’re targeting people specifically here in Utah, but you’re seeing traffic come in from Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, etc. And so it’s really we’re looking for the parameters you’ve set an ad campaign, the traffic that’s coming to your site, does it fall within those parameters? Or does it fall outside of it?
Stephen Brown (02:54)
Hmm.
Gotcha. I actually have a story. I’m sure you have one too, but I had a customer, big customer. They had their pixel get taken over by bots and their Facebook pixel. And it just there, this was about a year and a half ago their ad spend just started to deteriorate, deteriorate, deteriorate. They started digging in and figuring out what was going on. And when they got in, they were just like, it was… ⁓
the ROAS was just terrible. They ended up deciding, you know, I wasn’t super involved, but they ended up deciding to start a new pixel, which, you know, was a nightmare. So they had to completely reboot, retrain it, it cost a lot of money to, you know, they lost, they didn’t really lose sales, but they had a huge loss for about a one to two month period while they were pushing to get that, that pixel retrained. So I have seen, I guess what you’re describing, but it sounds like this is a
common at least a smaller scale with a lot of brands.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (04:03)
Yeah, yeah, correct. I think, you know, the idea is it’s a product we hope the amount of fraud traffic coming to their website decreases over time. That’s our hope. Like we don’t want companies to continue to have high percentages of fraudulent traffic. The hope is by, you know, the solution we’ve come up with to help solve for the problem, as well as Meta Google, these companies are making edits on their end and adjustments to help prevent it that ideally that number decreases over time. That’s the end goal on our side. It’s not to
profit from the fraud traffic. Traffic gets more to provide a solution that solves for it.
Stephen Brown (04:36)
I I have a big question as you think about this and maybe you’ll have the answer or not, but Meta and Google, these guys are huge. They have huge technologists. They have AI. How in the world are they not filtering out this fraudulent traffic automatically? Do you guys have any idea why that happens or is it just a big black box?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (04:56)
I think it’s honestly a big back box. we actually, I can send you link after this, there was a CNBC article released last last week, that in 2024, 10 % of Meta sales came directly from fraudulent ad campaigns. So I mean, when you consider 10 % or it quotes it, 16 billion came from running online ads for scams, banned goods, et cetera.
Stephen Brown (05:13)
Good heavens.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (05:21)
It’s a problem Meta practically solving for about 10 % of the revenue coming from fraudulent ads. If the ads aren’t being protected, then what does it say about the traffic coming into those ads, right?
Stephen Brown (05:31)
Yeah, It’s an economic disadvantage for them to do the right thing. So they’re probably not going to invest a lot of time in that. If somebody was trying to let’s say you get fraudulent traffic, I gave you the example of what my an extreme example of what one of my customers did. But my understanding from you guys is that you can request refunds. How does that work?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (05:36)
Hehehe.
Yeah, we’ve kind of taken a two pronged approach to it. Number one is creating IP exclusion audiences within the Meta and Google ad account. So If you’ve got a list of X amount of visitors that came in over the last 30 days that were deemed fraudulent and invalid, first off, let’s put those in an audience, exclude them from future targeting so you’re not paying and running ads to target people that we know are bad actors or are, you know, would really lead to invalid traffic. That’s step one.
That’s been very successful and that’s where that three to four and a half percent savings has come from there. Step two is then through the typical support process with Meta and Google, requesting a refund for the traffic that has, you know, did make it through to be able to request a refund for that spend that was wasted on that traffic. And I would say that’s been less successful than the proactive IP exclusion, but we’re still seeing,
some sort of refunds in the form of ad credits hitting the ad accounts for these companies.
Stephen Brown (06:50)
Why is it hard to get the refunds? Are they just resistant? Are they requiring a lot of evidence? What is it about that process that is problematic?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (07:00)
All the above, right? I think, Meta and Google aren’t companies that are looking to give back money if they don’t need to, right? And then there’s also the data piece of it, what’s legally defensible as invalid traffic or not. And there’s, you know, they have every right to make those claims there. And so it’s kind of filtering through that data to get down to, the gross number that we send out to them in terms of a refund request is never what, you know, is given back. There’s always kind of an ⁓
Stephen Brown (07:06)
Give money back, yeah.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (07:26)
conversation back and forth and then doing it down to what is the legally defensible amount that should be credited back to the customer.
Stephen Brown (07:33)
Now you guys are doing this with technology. Could a brand even do this manually? Is it something they could even do or would it require a ton of data analysis to understand what the fraudulent traffic is?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (07:46)
Yeah, I mean, the actual short answers. No, it’s not something they could do on their own unless they had access to, you know they built the pixel with the AI agents looking for the exact data points that we, you know, are continually fine tuning to know what to be looking for when the traffic is coming through. So could it be done? Yes. Would it be difficult and labor intensive on the brands part? Yes, it would be.
Stephen Brown (08:08)
OK, so this is probably why nobody’s doing this. Or it’s just too data intensive. You really need technology to do it right.
So tell me a little bit more about how you guys identify bad actors, like in the data. What is going on that you are determining is fraudulent traffic?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (08:29)
Yeah, I think, you know, we’re looking at the IP address, we’re looking at the geographical area that they’re visiting from, we’re looking at the duration of website visit, how long were they on the site? Was it a spoof? Did they actually stay and visit the website? Like I said, there’s about 40 different data points that we’re looking and that’s above my, that’s more on the engineering side that would have the fine tuned details of exactly what we’re looking for. But at a high level, those are kind of some of the hot points that we’re looking at with this traffic that’s coming through.
Stephen Brown (08:39)
you
Is there anything unique that you guys are seeing on Meta versus Google? That’s where you guys are focused. Are there differences in fraudulent traffic that happen on those two platforms?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (09:06)
I would say Google has been a little bit easier to work with in terms of identifying the billing ways simply due to the you know, clicks being an easier thing to trigger versus how do you identify it on the Meta side. So, the refunds we’ve seen are higher on Google. The preventative savings we’ve seen are higher on Google. So between the two, brands that are spending heavily on Google are seeing higher savings than those that are maybe more Meta-focused.
Stephen Brown (09:30)
So 3 to 4 percent, if I’m spending let’s say $100,000 on ads a month, that $3,000- $4,000 a year, that’s like $36,000- $48,000 a year. That’s a lot of money. It starts to add up, especially when you’re getting squeezed in so many other areas.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (09:52)
Yeah, it is. And what’s interesting for us is we’re a card-first company, right, Stephen? At Dash.fi, we offer corporate credit cards specifically for digital advertising and shipping spend. And our main value prop is high cash back, high limits. And then this ad pay protection service is more a supplementary or complementary product to that. So companies come to us for the upfront cash back on their ad spend.
but then we add additional value by the incremental savings. So yes, mean,you know, 30, 40K coming back from the ad pay protection is significant, but then you couple that with what they’re getting on the cash back side and it gets much more aggressive there.
Stephen Brown (10:32)
So let’s talk a little bit about ad spend. We look at people’s financials. I would say for a low cost of goods sold brand, ad spend is quite possibly the highest category of spend that they have. Not uncommon to see direct to consumer brand spend, 20 to 35, sometimes even more percent of sale on ad spend.
Are you guys seeing any interesting trends around ad spend? Any interesting insights around ad spend as we’re here in 2025?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (11:03)
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think you’re spot on. That’s what we see on our end as well as in between 20 and 30 % of their revenues, what they’re allocating to the ad spend side of things. What’s been interesting, I’d say, in the last, call it, nine to 12 months is the diversification of vendors that we’re seeing come through on our cards. Whereas previously it was two. It was Meta and Google, is almost where all the spend’s going. Now we’re seeing, Apple Appslovin store, or these different areas come in where they’re advertising on different platforms. You’ve got, you know,
Pinterest, TikTok, TikTok shop, et cetera. So people are diversifying. think that’s a function of performance on Meta, not being as lucrative as it once was for them, but also just trying to diversify the strategy and reach more customers across different areas.
Stephen Brown (11:47)
I read an interesting some report yesterday about TikTok Shop. It said TikTok Shop is now as big as eBay. That was a little bit of a shocker for me. I think that might be global sales, but there’s been a lot of hype around TikTok Shop and I wasn’t sure how real it was. But when I read that article, was like, okay, you know, still it’s eBay is microscopic compared to Amazon, but that’s a big,
That’s a big jump in terms of that ad spend. So yeah, add diversification. Any interesting platforms? So you mentioned Pinterest. Anything, that’s surprising to you guys besides the diversification?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (12:15)
Agreed.
No, not necessarily. I think what’s interesting on our end is just the way brands are thinking about how they’re paying for their ads. mean, that’s where we live day in and day out is the way that they’re actually paying these vendors for the advertising spend that they’re running. And so I think, not sure if you want to dive into that today, but I think that that’s more of the interesting findings on our end of band and where we’ve been able to kind of.
It kind of take a leadership role in kind of the education piece to brands in terms of what we’re seeing, what’s working and how they can implement it in their own company.
Stephen Brown (12:50)
No, let’s go down that path. This ⁓ this is interesting. Tell me more.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (12:55)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think a couple of different ways. mean, previous prior to what we’ve been able to create, there were kind of two schools of thought. There were brands that were spending high enough volumes that they, typical credit card and AMEX capital one, you know, a personal guarantee card from the founders wasn’t working, right. It didn’t have high enough limit or capacity. So they switched over to invoicing terms with Meta and Google. That was a little bit more stable for them.
Or they were spending low enough or they were prioritizing the Amex Skymouse or whatever they may have been getting, right? That they wanted to stick with the personal guarantee card. What that would lead to is, you know, paying it off on an almost daily basis or by daily basis, right? And not really being able to take advantage of the float. What we’ve seen is there’s Dash.fi as well as a few other cards in the space that are offering more flexible payment terms.
that allow a company to have the best of both worlds, that they can still have their negative cash flow conversion cycle and push out payment terms in a way that’s profitable for them as a business, while capturing some sort of cash back incentive back to the company that can be used in multiple ways, right? It can be taken as personal benefit to founders to supplement income. It could be used to…
Increase payroll right to hire new roles and or we’ve seen it, you know just sent back to the bottom line to increase EBITDA to increase the valuation as they’re looking at as an exit opportunity but that it just feels the conversation shifted a little bit from Companies are realizing that invoicing terms are great but what is the actual amount of float you’re receiving there? And is it worth sacrificing two to three percent cash back on your largest line item in your business?
Stephen Brown (14:34)
hmm
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (14:34)
And vice versa for those that have the low limits, how one is their higher cash back and higher longer payment terms available to help them find a middle ground. So I think that that’s been the trend we’ve seen. It’s been very exciting to be a part of.
Stephen Brown (14:49)
What’s spend amounts are you seeing with your customers? I mean, I’m sure it varies widely, but are you guys working with people that are spending 100K a month, you know? How big of a volume of spend are you seeing on ads?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (15:04)
Yeah, mean, starting point for us, we start work with companies once they’re around the hundred to $150,000 a month on Meta and or Google is when we come into play. And on the high end, we have companies that are spending upwards of 15, 20 million per month running through the card, which is insane to me that there’s that amount of spend going through a credit card was something that was was very new to me joining this space, but it’s being done.
Stephen Brown (15:29)
20 million a month.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (15:31)
Correct, yes.
Stephen Brown (15:33)
So
that’s, let me do the math. Let’s say if that, just keep it easy. If that’s a third of revenue, 60 million a month, that’s like almost a billion dollar brand. I think right, 720 million. Yeah, pushing, that’s a huge amount of ad spend. Holy crap, all going on a card. Let’s go back to the diversification of spend. Historically, you’re right. I feel like it was Meta and Google.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (15:43)
or trending. Yeah, correct.
Stephen Brown (15:57)
How much are brands spending as a percentage of ad spend on the others? Are you seeing, is it, you know, and it’s probably really brand specific, but are you seeing any brands that are spending a lot of money, like more than 10 % of ad spend on non-meta Google channels?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (16:15)
There are some. Yeah, I would say the majority of clients we work with with, 70 to 80 % of the spend is all on Meta. And then another 20 to 30 % is broken up pretty evenly. Like if I were to to take a step back, I think when I first joined, it was Meta 70 Google’s 20, the other 10 % spread across smaller channels. And now I’d say it’s more Meta 70 and 30 % is split.
Stephen Brown (16:22)
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (16:42)
very evenly across the other channels with Google taking a smaller spot there. That’s what we’re seeing on our end, least, across our customer base. And they’re adding and flowing who they test it with, what they did. Especially the very successful brands we’re working with, they are always pushing the boundaries, testing new channels. They’re iterating consistently to see what’s working.
Stephen Brown (17:02)
Let me let me pull on something you said to. Did I hear right that you guys are seeing Google spend decline?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (17:10)
A bit yes, and that’s obviously on our card part of that’s because Google if I Now that I’m saying I love part of that is because Google stops Accepting card as a form of payment, right? So there’s still those that are so our data is gonna be very heavily skewed that way, right? There’s still those that Google allows to pay with the card So take that in consideration with with that comment. I should have clarified there
Stephen Brown (17:19)
⁓
Okay.
No, that makes sense. ⁓ Anything that you feel like is accelerating that you guys are seeing in the data data, it’s it’s because I feel like ecommerce, they’re always like looking for the next thing and there’s, you know, last year I felt like there was a ton of hype around Apple Applovin I’m not sure if it’s materialized or not. And ⁓ this year there’s been a lot of buzz. You know, there’s also been a lot of buzz about TikTok shop and seeing that article, I was like, okay, maybe the buzz is real. ⁓
Are you seeing anybody starting to accelerate or are these ⁓ newer channels still kind of in that emerging status?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (18:08)
I’d say AppLovin is still very much part of the conversation. I think they’ve opened up there, you know, to the general public at this point, instead of the beta model where more brands can get in. We’re seeing the brands that were previously in it continue to double down and spend more there. We’re seeing other brands start to join in. So I’d say that that’s the one when we think of the AppLovin and TikToker, the two emerging channels that we’re seeing in terms of where brands are spending outside of Meta.
Stephen Brown (18:34)
Okay, yeah, that seems about right. What are you guys, are you guys thinking about, I mean, I know it hasn’t really emerged, but it feels like next year there’s a good chance we’re gonna see ad programs on AI. ⁓ I I haven’t seen anything tangible. I mean, the biggest thing I’ve seen is that ChatGPT is facilitating in-product checkout. And I’ve been watching really closely and there’s…
There’s nothing on the roadmap, but I read an article a while back that said that it looked like they were hiring for an ad platform team. I’ve got to figure it’s only a matter of time before you’re able to advertise in these platforms. Have you guys had any thought or have any inside scoop on AI related advertisement or are you in the same boat where you’re just kind of waiting and watching?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (19:22)
Yes, I would say waiting and watching no inside scoop. I think it’s definitely something that’s top of mind for us and something we’re looking for to be early adopters there, right? But I think you’re right. It’s a matter of time, huge monetization opportunity for them to monetize on the advertising front. think things I’m seeing same as you just in the DTC community are people optimizing their SEO to be able to rank higher in the ChatGPT responses, etc. I know brands are prepping for it as well and like the natural organic side of things, but
Now I wish we did have an inside scoop there, it’d be nice.
Stephen Brown (19:54)
To me, it just seems like the logical next step because I’ve been watching a lot and the term I’m hearing is GEO, Generative Engine Optimization. And really what it looks like is just instrumenting your listings. You know, being like, I own a co-owner brand and my operating partner, we talk about this almost every week and he’s like, there’s like a ridiculous amount of parameters you can put on a product listing. And
our thesis based on what we’ve read is, you know, you could just keep putting stuff on there and on there. And that’s the organic side of things. But to me, having an ad platform, it’s just seems obvious. I read about how much open AI is losing in terms of money. So it’s like, surely they’re going to come up with an ad platform at some point. At which point it’d be really interesting to see what happens because the amount of
traffic that’s going to these AI chatbots, you know, forget in product chat checkout, you could just do ad platforms and you’re probably going to see a tremendous amount of income in those areas as long as they do them right.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (20:58)
Yeah, it’ll be very interesting. And then the next question on that is attribution, right? What are the solutions that help solve for actually attributing what’s coming through Chat GPT advertising back to your storefront, et cetera, and measure performance to know whether or not it’s worth investing in, right? So lots of questions.
Stephen Brown (21:13)
Yeah. Well, you’re
already seeing attribution. We looked at our brand and there is, you are seeing attribution coming from ChatGPT. I’m not sure how exactly how that’s being done other than maybe, you know, just looking at referral traffic. Once you get in product traffic in app checkout, that’ll be really easy to attribute. I’m assuming they’ll be able to see, but again,
The attribution is, that’s like one of the mysteries and also controversies, I think, in ecommerce because these platforms like to take a lot of credit for a sale and you’ve got the emergence of these third-party tools that try and independently give attribution. It’s just a very interesting part of the ecommerce ecosystem.
Any other interesting trends around ad spend that you guys are thinking about, talking about? Obviously, we’ve talked about the fraud. We’ve talked about some of the patterns. Anything else that you guys have been a surprise or an interesting insight as of late?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (22:17)
No, not necessarily. I think the one other thing that I touched on a little bit that again, that more bias is what we do day in and day out is just the way that the rewards are being used. I think is something that’s interesting to me. Most companies, you know, they’ve got the travel points, which are great that they’re leveraging, but being able to one, switch to true cash back and then leverage that cash back for meaningful business expenses. It’s what’s
been interesting to me and that’s all customer led on our end, right? It’s interesting to see as we sit down and kind of strategize, hey, here’s your rewards. How do you want to use them? How can we help you and to hear what they’re coming up with of the, you know, it can be fun things like purchasing season tickets or box seats or whatever may be funding lifestyles, which are fun to hear about. But then you hear the, we’re able to hire X, Y, Z role or we are able to increase our ad.
budget by 3 % because we just put the card back on file in the ad account and ran it there, which led to X amount of revenue or just every company approaches it differently. But for me, I find it fascinating when they’re plugging it back into the business and we’re able to see like the real impact that cash back is making something that you couldn’t do with like a point or something like that. So that’s the only trend we’re seeing. And we’re trying to take our learnings and how do we help teach the market of what are some of the best practices. But yeah.
That’s, I think we’ve hit on where we play every day.
Stephen Brown (23:39)
No, that’s a good point. I’ve got to tell you because we support them on the accounting and the finance. And I found it really interesting that sometimes ecommerce operators, get so focused on the benefits that they don’t always think strategically about the business. It is a nice fringe benefit. I won’t get wrong. I’m a business owner. I two businesses.
The fringe benefits of card spend are awesome. But I would argue that cashflow is one of the biggest challenges of every consumer product business because of the long inventory lead times. Sometimes if you’re, you know, with payouts, it’s fairly quick with Shopify, you know, it’s usually about two days, about 14 days with Amazon, up to 14 days. And then,
When you get into like wholesale, can be like 30, 60, 90. And I feel like your card spend as a cashflow lever is under considered. People are more quick to go out and get expensive debt. Like, let’s go get a Shopify loan. Then take a step back and say, yeah, this, you know, points based system is nice, but perhaps I could put more cash into the business.
I’m using a different card strategy or just using cards at all, right? I’m like, lever number one, leverage your cards, leverage the terms as long as you can because cashflow is a challenge for every brand. And I just think they don’t always think through the full picture. Is it about, you know, are you chasing ad spend or are you chasing enterprise value? And enterprise value comes through profits, through cashflow, things like that.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (25:25)
Yeah, I you’re spot on. And I think the way we’ve worded it as well is if you know our cash back ranges, depending on the amount of float that you’re looking for are going to be in between two and 3%, which is top of the market. And if you’re any brand were purchased today, would you like a two to 3 % discount on your Meta bill? The hands in the room would go up immediately, right? But but it’s interesting how many brands are still hyper focused on well, I’m optimizing my points to get this many travel, the flight first class, etc. And we still hate
We always say, hey, leverage your travel cards, max out the benefits, because most of them have interim. There’s a way to play both. We’re not saying you shouldn’t enjoy the fringe benefits, but at the long run, you’re leaving money on the table for the business if you’re hyper-focused on that and not the enterprise value. I think you’re spot on there, Stephen.
Stephen Brown (26:10)
Well, you’ve been in ecommerce for a while. What year did you start with ecommerce tech?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (26:16)
Stephen Brown (26:17)
2020, we’re like in a different era of ecommerce. 2020, mean, I would say like, so we got going in ecommerce probably about 2016 is when we started focusing. So we’ve been around and I think about it, there’s multiple eras with the COVID peak being like an era onto its own, right? The hyper spending, the high valuations, but
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (26:28)
Awesome.
Stephen Brown (26:42)
comparing 2020 or even 2019 to 2025, it’s like, it’s a totally different game. The margins are tighter. The costs of lending are higher. The ad, you know, we’re talking here, talking about ads, the ad efficiency is, it’s not even the same equation from 2020 to 2025. And I feel like brands need to be, they’re gonna have to really look at every
lever of profitability that they can because it’s just not easy money anymore. It’s now roll up your sleeves, grind it out to profitability industry.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (27:17)
I you’re spot on. I think that’s definitely what we’re seeing, especially those that have made it on invoice in terms in the past or realizing just how much money is being left on the table for very relatively like the difference of leveraging a card on, you know, net 30 terms versus invoicing and averaging out to net 45, but keeping the cash on hand for 15 days more is not earning them incremental yield, right? In a bank account.
And so that switch has been very solid move for them. think something I’m noticing as well, just selling into companies in 2020 versus now is buyers are very savvy. They’re very savvy, they’re very educated. Companies are streamlining their tech stacks. They’re only bringing on software or services that are truly value add and are moving the needle. And so that’s why it’s been so fun to be a part of this team here at Dash and Build It is just knowing the value we’re adding is real and significant. And I also…
don’t take for granted the companies we get to work with. They’re companies I see in online every day, companies I see in the store when I go, and to know that they place their trust and confidence in me and in Dash.fi is no small thing and pushes us to make sure where you have to come with your best foot forward, because they’re not just bringing on any vendor, whereas 2020 may have been a little easier to get into companies.
Stephen Brown (28:33)
Yeah, I mean I think about it in a lot of ways. feel like ecommerce, it’s just a different form of retail in terms of the financial profile, right? You may not be spending as much money on real estate, but you are probably spending more on customer acquisition. Although there’s a lot of craft brick and mortar retail out there. But I just don’t, you know,
In 2020, it was almost like, this is this magic elixir of money. And now, mean, even looking at Amazon, most of their profits are coming from AWS. You know, as a percentage of, you know, profit to sale ratio, they’re making a lot more margin off of AWS than they are off of Amazon.com, you know, the store. And
I think there’s some inherent advantages of ecommerce, but we’re just in a different era where it’s going to be a fight. It’s going to be a slog. You have some intelligence you don’t get from brick and mortar that allows you to understand the consumer better than ever. But it’s not the gravy train that it was a few years ago. And I think I’m with you. I think those who are going to survive are going to be more savvy. They’re going to be more operationally and financially.
intelligent than they ever were and we’re probably going to see a lot less of those you know you see those guys like on Facebook ads and YouTube ads that are selling a course how to make a lot of money on ecommerce like I just feel like the era is quickly coming to an end
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (29:58)
Yeah, I think you’re spot on. The operators that are winning are true operators and they’re iterating, they’re diversifying. We talked a little bit about diversifying ad budgets for the diverse saying from being only e-com to branching into wholesale to even having retail, you know, representation, they’re diversifying payment methods. I mean, they’re becoming true structured businesses, which you can appreciate on the on that finance side as well. When you look at, know, the balance sheet P &L, what’s leading to that.
Yeah, we’re kind of seeing a separation of those that rode away versus those that built really solid foundational businesses.
Stephen Brown (30:29)
So we talked a little bit about how you guys are solving the problem. Dash.fi, what was the background there? Was it just? Did your founder see there’s this problem and decided, and I need to go solve it because only technology can do it? How did you guys get into doing what you guys are doing?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (30:46)
Yeah, we talked about ⁓ attribution earlier. So Dash.fi actually started as an analytics and attribution platform for media buyers. That was about five or six years ago. And Zach, our founder, Zach Johnson, kind of realized there was a gap in the market in terms of how people were paying for their advertising spend. Like we were talking about, they were either on invoicing or they were using a personal guarantee, Amex or whatever it may be. So he got into an accelerator with Visa, built what is the Dash.fi card.
And then from there scaled that for the last four years. then about a year ago, just over a year ago, again, saw a gap in the market with the bot traffic, kind of the different litigation and reports that were out there, took his analytics and attribution background and built this product, which we’ve titled AdPay Protection, this pixel that helps identify and rolled that out in conjunction with the card. So, it’s been interesting.
How our roots kind of led to the product that’s helped propel a lot of our growth. But that both products, mean, technically the Pixel doesn’t have a lot to do with the card directly, right? But they’re both focused on helping companies maximize the return they’re getting on their ad spend from a savings level. And that’s where we found the synergy there. But yeah, that’s kind of where we started, how we got where we are and where we’re going.
Stephen Brown (31:59)
And you were telling me before we started recording that you guys started shifting your focus from capturing refunds to just avoiding the fraudulent traffic altogether. So you guys are trying to get in front of that instead of waiting for it to happen.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (32:12)
Correct, yeah, think as the refunds, we’re still seeing some success there, but with response times delaying and things like that, it how do we add more immediate value to the customer? And those preventative audiences or, know, exclusion audiences, very easy, immediate, simple way to be able to show a brand, you know, immediate impact on their ad budgets.
Stephen Brown (32:33)
Is there any directions that you guys are thinking about that you haven’t ⁓ pursued yet? Like any interesting problems that haven’t been solved yet that you’re wanting to solve? Or you guys just heads down trying to continue to execute on what you’re doing?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (32:47)
No, I think we’re always, Zach’s a true visionary founder where he’s always thinking of problems that haven’t even crossed my mind yet. So without sharing too much, think you’ve alluded a little bit to the shipping solution we’ve come out with. You talked about AWS, how do we solve these same problems that are in the AWS side, the cloud service side of the world. There’s a lot that we’re thinking through. And then the AI component as well. But yeah, we’ve got plenty in the works, which is good.
Stephen Brown (33:14)
That’s exciting. Well, I think it’s great to have solutions like what you guys are doing. As like I said, this year has been another year of margin squeeze with tariffs. And I think brands need to be looking at ways to claw back margin wherever they can. And it’s awesome to have people like you out there in the industry that are trying to find ways to help brands claw back that margin. If somebody wanted to connect with you, what’s the best way to do it?
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (33:39)
Yeah, first of thank you, I appreciate that, Stephen I appreciate the conversation. I really enjoyed this today. I think if people are interested and wanted to learn more, I’m on LinkedIn, Kurt Bell, or my email, kurt@dash.fi or the, you know, learn more form fill on our website, but I would love to love to chat with anyone and everyone that’s interested in learning a little bit more.
Stephen Brown (33:59)
Awesome. Kurt, thanks for joining us today and ⁓ keep up the good work.
Kurt Bell – Dash.Fi (34:04)
Awesome, thanks Stephen, we’ll talk soon.