Dipp is a Taiwan-based startup that created Massimo, an AI-based advertising platform. Massimo uses an algorithm to instantly generate any content a brand may need when doing digital marketing across Facebook, Instagram, or wherever images are displayed online.
Jennifer Chen, a designer and marketing expert from Taiwan, and Mikhail Abramov are the co-founders of Dipp. They met in college and have both worked in advertising in New York before starting Dipp together.
“Basically, I handle most of the business strategy side of things, and he does a lot of branding and actual designing,” Jennifer said. “We’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve both worked in the advertising and design industry for many years in New York City. When we started our company, it was important for us to find someone that we knew would get along so that we can have a smooth start.”
Massimo, human-like AI-based design
Dipp’s platform Massimo is named after Massimo Vignelli, the designer of New York City’s iconic 1972 subway map. Jennifer remembers how hard it was as a young designer looking for a job to start her career, and Massimo Vignelli was one of the few people who answered back to her. He wasn’t offering a job, but said something that had a major impact for her. He replied: “You know, our studio is very small, but we’ve looked through your work and we really wish that one day in the near future our studio will be big enough to have the opportunity to have you.”
When the Dipp team was deciding how to name their platform, the name Massimo just seemed the right choice to describe what they wanted to show to their users.
“We wanted our AI designer, Massimo, to be very much human-like. Even using big data to do design, the platform still has the aesthetic that a human would have. You see these very talented designers and illustrators in Taiwan who make great things, but they usually choose to go freelance or independent. This is because there are a lot of people in Taiwan that do not appreciate design but instead treat designers like production artists, and when it comes to production artists, it’s not something business owners want to spend a lot of money on.
“What Massimo is really trying to do is to replace the lower end of design, so that good designers can work on better jobs and be appreciated for their creativity, while small business owners who are just looking for production artist to do the day-to-day social media content can have a very efficient way to do what they need to get done.”
Marketing in the age of e-commerce
According to a report by China Insights Consultancy (CIC), a consulting firm in Hong Kong, between 2015 and 2017 the e-commerce market in Taiwan grew from NTD727.4 billion (USD22.8 billion) in 2015 to NTD1,108.6 billion (USD36.4 billion) in 2017. The report also expects the market to double by 2022.
Charlie Jiang, a founding partner of CIC, mentioned that possible key factors of this growth “are the continuing growth of internet penetration in Taiwan (73.3% in 2017), growth in the user base of e-shoppers and number of online orders, an increase in average spending for each e-shopper, and changes in consumer behavior.”
Jennifer also experienced this trend in Taiwan. “When we arrive in Taiwan, we noticed a lot of interest from e-commerce friends, so that’s what we’re focusing on. I think there’s something very interesting about Taiwan. Compared to a lot of Southeast Asian countries, it’s a developed country. It has a good appreciation towards technology and innovation.”
What Jennifer calls “appreciation towards technology and innovation” reflects the high internet penetration technology of Taiwan among its population. The Consumer Barometer by Google ran a series of surveys in Taiwan in order to understand their online behavior and what kind of devices they use to access the internet. They found out that, by 2017, 92% of the participants said they used their mobile device as a main source to go online. On another survey, it was reflected that 32% of the participants first saw the advertising of a product via the internet. The Taiwanese public’s appreciation towards technology and innovation is very high. At the same time, it seems that, at least within Taiwan, the marketing sector of the companies is accommodating to the customer’s needs and evolution.
C2C mobile commerce in Taiwan has its challenges for the digital marketing and the online advertising industry. For Dipp, the way online advertising is done in Taiwan is very different from what the team was used to doing in the US.
“Taiwanese advertising resellers are similar to your traditional corporate media. They do a lot of ads for a lot of companies, and they can be small. That’s when we noticed that Taiwanese brands, if they have any slightest advertising budget, don’t really want to do anything themselves. They would much rather let this group of people help handle their small advertising budget than to do it themselves on Facebook or Google, even though these platforms are self-serve.
“Therefore, our user acquisition has been kind of difficult. It’s time-consuming because we educate our clients that they can do these things themselves. It’s almost impossible, but a lot of ad-resellers are now very interested in what we do because we solve a lot of their problems in creating content very quickly. This is a new-found direction for us in Taiwan.”
Government and startup investment
“In November 2017, we were exhibiting at the Web Summit in Lisbon, and we went there as an American team from New York City. We had the opportunity to meet Taiwan Startup Stadium (TSS) during the conference. A that time, I just wanted to know more people in Taiwan to figure out whether it would be a good decision for us to come here. At the end of the day, I was moving a bunch of foreigners to Taiwan. I wanted to make sure it would be worth it.”
Taiwan Startup Stadium is one example of the incentives the current government of Taiwan is implementing as part of the National Development Council Action Plan to create a robust startup ecosystem in Taiwan and raising Taiwan’s visibility internationally.
“For Dipp, TSS helped us land in Taiwan. There are many government-based initiatives that help both outbound startups and inbound startups. That’s something that I personally have never experienced in the States. In New York City, we were a part of a co-working space or a startup community situation, and I think it’s great to be with other people who are doing the same difficult thing: trying to build a startup.”
“But I needed someone to teach me more tangible skills, like how to establish a sales funnel. We’ve spent a lot of money learning those things on our own, and now that I think back, if we were in Taiwan earlier, we probably didn’t have to go through that. In Taiwan, we’re a part of the AppWorks startup accelerator. It’s a six months program, and we got to be exposed to the best corporate network of all kinds of relationships. They helped us to get connected with whatever it is that we need.”
Startup scene in Taiwan
However, Jenn also mentioned that the society’s mind set about the startup culture and language barrier are issues for Taiwan to become more competitive in the international arena.
“I do find that startups here are not as open about their work, and Taiwanese investors are not as willing to take risks. I think those things lead to a not so strong foundation for Taiwan’s startup ecosystem.
“From what we’ve heard, there are some risk-averse investors and I think that forces startups to not want to raise money, or to not want to go the usual route of venture capital. They don’t want to do what the rest of the world is doing, and I think that’s not ideal if Taiwan wants to become relevant in the global startup industry.”
What’s next?
“In Taiwan you have to have a Chinese language platform, so we’ve built a Traditional Chinese platform for our Taiwanese users. It will also help us with the Hong Kong market, which is one of our expansion goals but we haven’t reached a milestone we want to reach in Taiwan just yet. We’re also looking at Malaysia, because Malaysia also operates on Chinese and English, and e-commerce is just starting to pick up there. It will be very interesting to ride their e-commerce wave.
Dipp has experienced the following benefits that are promoted by the new action plan set by the government:
- Meet startups funding needs in their seed and early stage.
- Loosen restrictions on foreign talent employment in the 5+2 industries and on business capital/revenue requirements for startups applying for foreign student interns (MOL, MOEA).
- Assist corporates to get involved in startup activities, including participating startup events, launching startup incubation programs or encouraging intrapreneurship (MOEA)
- Include e-commerce as a new industry category in Over-the-Counter Market listing (FSC)
- Encourage overseas Taiwanese businesspeople to return to Taiwan, invest in startups, and help build overseas business channels (OCAC)
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