"We Process 1 Trillion Clicks Per Month" — Interview with Stanislav Litvinov, CEO of Affise

Since 2004, I've been building affiliate networks across virtually every niche — from adult and casino to SMS subscriptions. The only vertical I skipped was pharma.

Almost from the very beginning, I ran into the problem that there were practically no ready-made engines available, so we had to build a custom solution for every project, which dragged out launch timelines significantly.

You could say the idea was born back in 2004, but it took over 10 years to actually start building it — I'm quite far from programming myself, and I needed a technical co-founder.

Around 2015, while working at a well-known casino affiliate network, I met my co-founder Dima Zotov. We worked together, realized we understood each other well and had mutual trust, then went our separate ways for a year to pursue our own projects.

At that point, I had launched several affiliate networks in the mobile installs space. By then, ready-made engines like HasOffers and GetCAKE were already on the market — but they fell well short of what we needed. They charged per click, support was weak, and updates were basically out of the question.

In the end, Dima and I decided to show the entire market what professional software should look like — and launched Affise.

We launched almost entirely on our own funds, with the involvement of partners from my previous businesses who helped not only with capital but also with setting up the financial and legal infrastructure. They now run their own fund, V-Tree Equities.

Counting only the actual cash spent — not accounting for time costs (Dima did most of the development up to MVP for free) — we spent just over $1,000,000.

Exactly — for the most part, everything was custom-built, plus there were two major players on the market: HasOffers and GetCAKE.

The numbers are correct, it was just one round — Series A. Besides Leta and TMT, we raised money from Silicon Valley angels who, in addition to funding, gave us access to their network and act as ongoing advisors on various business scaling matters.

The core principles are the same as in any other industry. They look at the potential market size, the project's current traction, the pain points it solves, and the team.

There are key metrics that matter in any SaaS business, and affiliate SaaS is no exception: ARR, ARR Growth, Churn, LTV, CAC, CAC to LTV, Rule of 40, Run Rate.

You need to incorporate a company in a well-understood jurisdiction with transparent rules, structure, and governance to raise investment into. Registering a C-corp in Delaware, USA, is the recognized standard.

Seven years ago, when we were building the company, we relied on YCombinator practices.

We are — most likely next year. It will all depend on our metrics and performance.

HasOffers and CAKE were our competitors from day one. They held the dominant market share, and we were the unknown guys.

Today, things have changed dramatically. We've grown and displaced them across many GEOs. In India, for example, both HasOffers and CAKE have virtually wound down their operations and closed their offices.

We've now outgrown the affiliate marketing platform business and offer a broad range of services — including our recently launched mobile attribution — with a goal of delivering 360° performance analytics through our products and integrations.

The HQ is registered in the US. That's standard practice tied to investor rights protection. Beyond that legal entity, the group includes five more companies: a significant portion of senior management is based in Lithuania, with additional entities in Germany, India, China, and Cyprus.

The only connection to Belarus is me — I was born there :-)

In 2019, we had a significant number of employees in Belarus and one of our largest offices — over 700 sq.m. In spring 2022, we sold the Belarusian entity, so the group no longer has a presence there.

This question isn't relevant to us — we're a company with public investors, so full compliance with all sanctions requirements is a top priority for us. Accordingly, we don't ask ourselves "what happens if we don't" :)

It seemed to me that the attendee mix had shifted noticeably toward other GEOs, largely due to the relocation of a large number of projects out of Russia. Though I can only speak to that based on the meetings I personally had.

Over 1,000 B2B businesses — from small agencies to publicly traded companies listed on stock exchanges, and companies that buy advertising during the Super Bowl (the most expensive ad inventory in the world).

We have a very well-balanced client portfolio — we're not dependent on the top 10% of our largest clients, but we do see clients grow with us. If a client comes in at $500, chances are that within six months they'll have scaled with us and their contract value will have changed — as will their own revenue.

In some regions, the mid+ market is essentially ours. There are regions where we face competition, and we win on the strength of our service.

We're launching new products and expanding the market through them. So it's hard to say exactly what our market share is — because we're constantly expanding the market itself where we operate.

Everflow, Trackier, Hasoffers, CAKE.

The company's valuation will become clear when we raise the next round. So we'll wait until next year to talk numbers.

After the war started, our metrics took a hit, but we've since recovered our positions and continue to move forward.

The launch of two new products — Affise Reach and Affise MMP.

The first didn't deliver the results we expected, so we're preparing a relaunch in the near future.

Affise MMP, on the other hand, turned out to be very well-timed — given the difficulties faced by the leading players in that space. It also allows us to reduce the number of redirects when tracking mobile apps through Affise Performance, which is especially relevant for media buying models running from FB to mobile apps and landing pages.

That comment mentioned volumes. Well, the volumes have grown even further since then. We publicly announced at some point that we process over 1 trillion clicks per month. Not millions, not even tens of billions — a trillion. And that's not counting conversions or impressions.

Since then, we've significantly overhauled the technical and server infrastructure of the product and have maintained a stable 99.9999% uptime for many years. On top of that, we comply with rigorous data privacy certification standards such as SOC 2. So there's no need to worry about your data or statistics loading issues.

No, we haven't. We are one of the few platforms certified under SOC 2 — one of the most rigorous and demanding American security certifications. The certification process took us over a year and required us to rebuild both the product and internal business processes, such as employee access to various data, in accordance with SOC 2 requirements.

We also have all the necessary tools for secure authentication, role-based access management for client employees, and the most powerful system for logging any actions within the platform — enabling us to track errors or sabotage by client-side users.

Affise is an ecosystem. The unified space encompasses several products: Affise Performance, Affise MMP, and Affise Reach. We offer a comprehensive solution built specifically for our clients.

As I mentioned earlier, our goal is to deliver 360° performance analytics through our products and integrations. Thanks to the deep integration between products — such as Affise Performance and Affise MMP — we are able to provide solutions that have no equivalent on the market.

Around 100. Europe, India, China, Israel.

Dozens — but in terms of volume, some of them are very large.

To keep improving our products and the integrations between them, as well as developing integrations with third-party services to build the most cutting-edge solutions on the market — as we like to do.

What we're already doing and will continue to do:
1. Developing the core product Affise Performance, to which we're adding the ability to process payouts via Affise Pay, along with deep customizations for specific verticals.
2. Developing Affise MMP — a comprehensive solution for mobile app developers that covers not only attribution, but also financial modeling and subscription metrics calculation, which no other attribution solution currently provides.
3. Relaunching Affise Reach as a solution for SaaS companies to create and manage referral programs. 4. Deepening the integration between Affise Performance and Affise MMP — a connection that already delivers one fewer redirect than any other solution on the market.

Our primary goal is to offer clients innovative solutions that help them achieve their objectives and enable businesses to grow faster, more efficiently, and with greater control.