Meet Dappier 💰

monetization stack for the emerging AI internet

Hey everyone,

Today, I'm very excited to share with you a new platform called Dappier that is launching publicly worldwide and on Product Hunt 🌎

But first, let me talk about why I am bullish on Dappier and their mission.

It all starts with a lunch in Austin.

A few weeks ago I had a serendipitous lunch meeting IRL in Austin with a founder who I first got to connect via Twitter.

His name is Dan Goikhman and what stood out to me in that lunch were two things: a) the irresistible guac in my burrito bowl and b) Dan’s unrelenting passion for helping media companies and content creators “benefit” from AI vs viewing it as a threat.

He’s been in the media/ ad tech space for over 20 years and he kept iterating how most of the media are being too short-sighted by viewing AI LLMs as a traffic thieves.

I fundamentally agree with that belief.

In stead of viewing AI as a threat, more businesses should welcome the innovation and adapt accordingly. This has been true for every major leap/ paradigm shift in every decade. Want an example?

Think of live streaming when Netflix was pioneering that trend. Gradually every media company/publisher embraced the tech and now we have Disney, Paramount+ and HBO all with their dedicated livestreaming services and millions of customers.

Anyway, Dan’s passion led me to agree to work with him and his team at Dappier to help in this mission.

So today, I just hunted their latest launch “Dappier 2.0” on Product Hunt and decided to feature them on here so they can tell their story and share some lessons with us ❤️

My ask for you?

Check out the launch on PH and show your support. Your quick feedback, upvotes, comments and suggestions are all welcome :)

Additionally, if you’re curious to learn more about Dappier, below’s a recent interview I did with Dan. Here’s the text excerpt for you:

Interview with Dan Goikhman, CEO of Dappier.com 

1. Who are you and what’s your background?

My name is Dan Goikhman, I’m a serial entrepreneur with a strong background in technology and media. I have co-founded and exited number of successful companies including Mojiva (a pioneering mobile ad technology company - acquired by Pubmatic), and Powr.tv (a market leading CTV publishing company - think like Wordpress for TV apps - acquired by Bitcentral). In those roles I’ve led strategy and revenue, and have a lot of experience building strategic partnerships with world class people and companies.  Overall I’d say that I’ve spent the last 20 years or so at the intersection of media and emerging technology allowing me to bring a diverse set of skills and insights to Dappier.

2. Can you share what your product does? What problem does it solve and for whom specifically?

Dappier.com is an end to end AI creation and monetization platform designed for media companies and data providers. Our platform enables businesses to create, deploy, and monetize data models and launch AI-driven chatbots, experiences, and apps based on those models. We address the challenge of data utilization and monetization, helping media companies unlock new revenue streams by making their proprietary data available to AI developers and applications. This solution is particularly valuable for content creators, publishers, and organizations looking to leverage AI to enhance user engagement and operational efficiency.

By providing our marketplace, and providing for a pay-as-you go model for data we democratize data access for emerging AI companies around the world while creating a sustainable business model for content and data owners.

3. How did your background or previous experiences prepare you for this startup?

My previous experiences in founding and scaling tech companies that serve media companies have been crucial in preparing me for Dappier. Through my time at Mojiva Powr.tv I gained deep insights into the digital media landscape and became very familiar with monetization strategies and ad-tech. In addition to learning the ropes I’ve also been able to build incredible relationships with industry leaders across the digital media landscape for the last 20 years allowing me to understand the intricacies of content distribution, user engagement, and monetization. 

4. How did you all meet as a team? What prompted you to come together and work on this mission? 

My co founder Krish and I met in 2007 when we were first getting started in our careers after college and started working on Mojiva. His brother Akshay joined us as head of product at Powr.tv some 10 years later and we’ve been working together ever since!

5. Can you share a specific moment/story when you realized Dappier could really make a huge impact in the world?

We got started working on Dappier about a year ago when my co-founder Krish and I started thinking about how generative AI moving up the stack into core consumer experiences from Google, Meta, OpenAI, X and others was going to impact media companies. A few months back, when all the articles started coming out about how AI was going to be a “traffic destroying nightmare” I had an A-Ha moment that media companies should instead start thinking about a future of AI agents and emerging AI experiences as the birth of a  new distribution channel for their content rather than the death of their old model.

6. How are the early pilots going? What are some learnings from the market?

The early pilots have been very exciting with a number of market leading media companies signing trial agreements and deploying our solutions in front of millions of users. The feedback and testing  has helped us refine our platform, making it more scalable and intuitive for our users. Key learnings include the need for a flexible monetization model - including options that include both pay-per-use and ad-supported models. In addition, we’re seeing a lot of positive momentum and willingness for publishers to try the service and have a lot of requests to help them quantify the level of data scraping, they might be currently experiencing - something we’re working on.

7. What big change do you hope to bring via Dappier in the next 5 years?

In the next five years, we aim to democratize AI technology for media companies and data providers building an ecosystem and monetization framework for content distribution to millions of AI applications and agents. We envision a future where every media brand can leverage AI to enhance their offerings, engage their audience more deeply, and unlock new revenue streams. Our goal is to become the go-to platform for content and data distribution and monetization and a critical resource for the AI developer ecosystem.

8. What are some wins you’re happy to share and celebrate?

We’re excited about our partnership with polygon.io which is going to allow any AI platform to access real time stock prices via our data model marketplace and we’re really excited to ramp up our partnership with John Snow labs which is going to provide over 2000 healthcare data sets for AI companies to leverage to build innovative apps and experiences . We’re excited about our partnership with The Publisher Desk, because they own and operate over 100 sports and lifestyle sites. Our go to market with them includes all aspects of our platform both owned and operated AI experiences for their sites and apps as well as licensing to AI platforms. We also have a number of trial agreements with major publishers and publishing groups that will be able to share more about soon..

9. What’s some hard-earned advice you’d share with other founders building AI startups?

I would say remain flexible and make sure you’re constantly learning from your customers. When we got started with Dappier, we had a general idea of how the ecosystem might play out and we have an idea of what our customers want but it’s only through active customer discussions that we can actually get to the product that really scales and solves real problems.

10. Where can people learn more about Dappier? 

The best way to learn is by doing!  Start creating your own data models & AI agents on Dappier.com today!

Be sure to also follow us on X (@dappierAI) & ProductHunt for the latest updates - especially as we bring in new data models from some really cool vendors & data providers from all kinds of verticals. 

If you’re looking for more technical know-how and how-to’s when it comes to AI, RAG, and getting the best out of your LLM-driven experience or AI agent, be sure to follow our dev blog at dappier.medium.com.

---

That’s all I have from the interview folks. Thank you for reading!

Once again, if any of this resonates with you, join the launch party/discussion and add your comments and feedback on Product Hunt here.

Your support would mean a lot to the founding team and to me :)

Thank you so much! 🙏