The CEO of Northbeam Sees $31B in Ad Spend - Here’s What Actually Grows a Brand

About this episode

Austin Harrison is the CEO of Northbeam, the marketing analytics platform that measures over $31 billion in ad spend across the top DTC brands in the world. He doesn't see what works for one brand. He sees what works across the entire industry.

In this episode he breaks down:

- What the brands that explode do to grow this fast
- The one metric most operators completely ignore (and why it predicts your next three months)
- How small founders can beat big ad budgets with authentic content

If you run or want to build an e-commerce brand, this is the closest you'll get to seeing the whole game from above.

Connect with Austin & Northbeam:
Northbeam: https://www.northbeam.io/ 
Austin on X: https://x.com/MAustinHarrison 
Austin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maustinharrison/

Follow Elevator:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Elevatorgoods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods
X: https://x.com/elevatorgoods
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fCirPyNlzTxT4hOOH0tVC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elevator-talks/
Website: https://elevatorgoods.com/

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:10 What Northbeam actually does
04:30 The origin story
06:08 Building with AI before ChatGPT
11:10 Has AI killed the moat?
16:46 The tailwind behind clean data
24:47 What winning brands do differently
29:31 How small brands can win too
31:28 Spending big on ads without going broke
35:44 The metric most operators ignore
43:00 Early signs of a slowdown
46:00 The new breed of founder
55:04 The most overrated metric in e-commerce
57:35 Why hiring fast is a trap
59:10 The channel everyone underrates
1:02:14 The truth about being a founder
1:03:58 The real job of a CEO

#ecommerce #elevatorgoods #dtc