Blackbird, investors pour $2m into adtech start-up MagicBrief

MagicBrief, a new start-up from the former creative director of healthcare technology firm Eucalyptus, is bidding to become the go-to single platform for advertising teams ­globally.

MagicBrief co-founders Dan Nolan and George Howes.

A new start-up from the former creative director of healthcare technology firm Eucalyptus has landed $2m in backing from high-profile investors including Blackbird Ventures, in a bid to become the go-to single platform for advertising teams ­globally.

MagicBrief is the brainchild of Dan Nolan and his co-founder, former Eucalyptus executive George Howes, who told The Australian the start-up was borne of frustrations and growing pains in scaling up Eucalyptus, which is now one of the nation’s most valuable healthcare start-ups with a valuation of more than $500m.

In an interview, the co-founders said the MagicBrief platform allowed performance marketing teams and advertising creatives to collaborate more easily, including the ability to save Facebook, Instagram and TikTok ads with one click, and use AI to break down ads into keyframes.

“As the team at Eucalyptus grew in terms of people, there were parts where we started to see a breakdown in terms of ­people wouldn’t know the right assets that were on hand or the briefs that were being worked on, or even fundamental pieces like the ads that have worked previously and the underlying context,” Mr Howes said.

Blackbird Ventures general partner Nick Crocker.

“Particularly because the company scaled so fast, there was a real need to often bring people up to scratch but there was a range of problems associated with that.

“And the thing that was really interesting is that after leaving Eucalyptus, I consulted with various other start-ups at a similar stage, and you could quickly see those same problems that we had were very common.”

Eucalyptus runs digital health brands including Pilot, which focuses on men’s health and weight loss, along with Kin, Juniper, Normal and Software, which have each been scaled up using performance marketing.

“There are a growing number of tech products that focus on analytics, tracking and attribution, but the most impactful variable, the creative itself, has largely been forgotten when it comes to marketing technology,” Mr Howes said.

“Most team leads don’t really want to think about workflows or the creative process. They just need a high output of proven concepts that can generate enough sales so they can afford to take bigger creative swings.”

Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle.

Mr Howes and Mr Nolan have raised $2m in a seed funding round for MagicBrief at an undisclosed valuation, from investors including Blackbird Ventures, Archangel Ventures, Vimeo founder Zach Klein, UsTwo founder Matt Miller, Spriggy founder Alex Badran, Halter founder Craig Piggot and Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle.

“Digital marketing is constantly having to evolve, to dodge pain points that are created by, say, SEO changes, or a social media company’s policies being updated,” Mr Doyle said. “Or even a new competitor that can pop up on the block literally overnight. “A bunch of creatives sitting in a room together concepting ideas just isn’t fast enough these days.”

MagicBrief co-founder Dan Nolan said MagicBrief’s goal was to replace existing disparate workflow tools such as Google Sheets, Dropbox and Slack with one tool that a whole team could use wherever they were located. He said the Sydney-based company had now racked up thousands of users despite being less than a year old, with the US its biggest market.

“It’s been a great deal of fun so far, getting to work with an extraordinarily talented team, and people who are committed to the cause and the vision, it’s been a treat,” he said.

“We’re getting stuff to market as quickly as possible and the feedback we’re getting from our customers is helping drive that flywheel. Everyone has their own custom messy workflows, and our customers have been saying ‘where have you been?’, so it’s just been a pleasure to bring them this tool that makes everything much easier.”

Blackbird Ventures general partner Nick Crocker. Picture – Supplied

Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle.