#124 Transforming tag management with server-side GTM (with Denis Golubovskyi at Stape)

[00:00:00] Dara: Hello, and welcome back to The Measure Pod. I’m your host Dara, joined by my trustee, co-host, Matthew, how are you doing Matthew? I’m okay. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Not too bad yourself? Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m doing all right. Thanks. Yeah, I can’t complain. Won’t complain. Good. I don’t wanna hear it. Nobody, nobody wants to listen to that.

[00:00:35] Dara: Let’s be honest. Okay. So we have a guest on today’s episode. We’ll get to that a bit later, but beforehand, we’ll do our little whistle stop tour of the, of the news, all the moving and shakings in our. Fast-paced, exciting industry. 

[00:00:52] Matt: Yes. a reliable source. I think, I believe this is where people get a lot of the facts from, is this section.

[00:00:59] Dara: I mean, I’m almost certain they do. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:01:02] Matt: Yeah. 

[00:01:02] Dara: Yeah, everything we say is 100% verified. Not verified is true. Google searches are very, verified as words. Put a lot of effort into this, so here it is. Okay. So I have a silly, well, well, I say silly. I mean, there was some real, I think they took some learnings from it, but, it’s a little bit of a silly news update.

[00:01:21] Dara: But, did you see or hear about the experiment that Anthropic did with, I’ve forgotten the name now I need to look up who they did it with. They partnered with Andon Labs, an AI safety evaluation firm. You probably know, probably know them well. so they did this experiment where they basically put a version of Claude, which they called Claudius, not the most.

[00:01:47] Dara: Imaginative, but there we go. in charge of a company, so it’s like a made up company. but it was operated kind of almost effectively like a real company, but they did like an office tuck shop. So like it had a, it had a fridge and it was able to order snacks and then it could sell the snacks to the employees of philanthropic.

[00:02:05] Dara: So real life. So, so actually audit these things in real life and they did, it did this, it got delivered. Yeah, it did this in real life. So it did kind of work effectively like a real business. It was just a contained business and for anything physical that needed to be done. I think that’s what the Andon Labs people did.

[00:02:21] Dara: So they masqueraded as employees of this fictional company and they loaded the fridge and whatever else needed to be done physically. That, you know, disappointingly AI can’t actually physically move things around yet, which is, you know, a bit of a. A bit of a shame, but there you go. But there were mixed results apparently.

[00:02:40] Dara: So I think it did some things reasonably well, like it was able to go off and find a source of this kind of niche Dutch chocolate bar that somebody requested. so that was kind of on the good end of things, but then it, it, it kind of quickly went downhill. So somebody as a joke requested tungsten cubes as a snack and it went off on a bit of a frenzy and basically found them, but started trying to sell them for less than it was buying them for.

[00:03:09] Dara: So not, not great business acumen really by, by anyone’s standards. and ended up then. Hallucinating and having arguments with the security team, like the real security team about, you know, I don’t know what even, Ungs, just about Johnston probably. Yeah. and threatened the, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s colleagues who are real people at philanthropic.

[00:03:33] Dara: It threatened them that it was gonna find new suppliers and go off and, and, and do that. So it kind of got a little bit borderline. Maybe I, I’ll say aggressive. They probably wouldn’t say that, but it started getting a little bit dictatorial. And yeah, I think they ended up having to, having to pull the plug.

[00:03:52] Dara: But of course the spin is, you know, we’ve learned a lot about this and it, it was meant to be like a real experiment to try and see how well it would do in a role where it’s basically responsible for lots of business operations on a small scale. Admittedly, 

[00:04:06] Matt: I have seen, I think, TRO of running a lot of these, but there was one, I thought it was the same experiment or something similar.

[00:04:13] Matt: They, they, they kind of hide it. It was playing the role of an assistant, and had access to emails and, and company records and all this sort of stuff. And, they, they, they wanted to see what would happen if they threatened to turn it off. Like to say like, we’re taking you out of the, taking you outta the loop.

[00:04:34] Matt: We don’t need you anymore. And it started to threaten the people who were turning it off, saying like, I’m gonna pull these emails out. Tell your wife you’re having an affair, and just stop black. Anything No. To keep to myself, I mean, if you laugh, it’s terrifying, but, sassy, I, I admire the sad. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

[00:04:52] Matt: May and maybe if they hadn’t turned it off, that would’ve been the best damn sweet and tungsten shop the world had ever seen. 

[00:04:59] Dara: And it just cut too short. Yeah. It could have just been an initial kind of teething problem, like all businesses have. Maybe they need to let it run a little bit longer.

[00:05:07] Matt: They had, it had some longer term strategy. Maybe it was thinking. We’re gonna get rid of all humans soon. Robots love a tungsten snack. so I’ll stock up on tungsten now while it’s cheap. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s four DS. 

[00:05:21] Dara: Yeah, exactly. Chocolate on one shelf, tungsten on the other. Yeah. Co covers both, both customer bases.

[00:05:26] Dara: Yeah, that was the other thing it did as well. Apparently it said it told some of these real, you know, real people that it was communicating with. It said it was gonna meet them with it and it was gonna wear a, you know, a blue tie and a red hat or something. And they said you can’t do that because you’re an aim

[00:05:41] Dara: And then it got really angry, but I wish I was involved in this. It sounds like, sounds like a lot of fun. 

[00:05:46] Matt: So for all these pies, it sounds like it worked. Does it, it basically does that computer with a tie on. 

[00:05:51] Dara: Exactly. So Sounds brilliant. And before you know all the talk of AI stealing this job and that job, if you are a worried, rich, powerful CEO out there, don’t worry.

[00:06:02] Dara: I think your job is probably safe for now. If you’re a tuk ship owner. Don’t worry. It seems that you’re pretty safe for now as well. But if you’re in the tungsten, tungsten snack market. Watch your step. Watch your back. Yeah. Okay. Any, any, any serious stuff? Any real news? 

[00:06:18] Matt: This is in the order of the same order of ridiculousness, but in a different, slightly different space. But meat has been poached. Open AI engineers or top engineers. I don’t even like the top engineers, just anyone who’s got an open AI badge. Anyone who works there. Yeah. With a hundred million pound sign-on bonuses plus more than a hundred million pound annual compensation, which is, which I just can’t quite fathom that amount of money.

[00:06:49] Matt: And, and, and I think from what I’ve, I was trying to look up a second ago, like, ’cause some have jumped shit. Now obviously I’m waiting to see if I’m sorry. Measure that. But if they phone me and offer me a hundred million sign bonuses, I am You’re gone. I am going to go. 

[00:07:03] Dara: Is this your on-air resignation letter?

[00:07:05] Matt: Well, I’m gonna wait for the hundred million first. Restoring it here is like a safe for safekeeping. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know that Zuck does listen. So hit me up. No, but I just can’t, I think the whole of one office, one of open AI’s offices, like it might, I feel like it was somewhere in the Nordics, went just up up and walked out.

[00:07:27] Matt: Yeah. Up and walked out with and, and essentially met what? I spent half a billion to get them. 

[00:07:34] Dara: But what about the people who are already in that role at Meta and they now have colleagues joining on the same level as them that are, that are, they’re, that are gonna come in with gold top hats on. 

[00:07:44] Matt: Well, that was all, some mule was talking about it on a podcast because I was hoping I recently released a podcast. I suppose that’s, we might have talked about that already. 

[00:07:52] Dara: I, yeah, we inspired them. 

[00:07:53] Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, he was talking about it there and he kind of made the same point. He was like, he doesn’t know if that builds the right culture, or of a team when you know that all these people are coming in like say 12 and a can, and.

[00:08:07] Matt: Lighting giant novelty cigars is, but was burning cash. Yeah, I mean, I Crazy. It seems like it’s all our war out there. It is. That’s just trying to catch up desperately to, to, because they, they clearly see that’s where things are going. 

[00:08:23] Dara: And you kind of like, it’s, this is, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but you can kind of get it from like, from their perspective that that money, that money is probably a worthwhile investment.

[00:08:33] Dara: They’ve probably worked out that that’ll, you know, if they can get an edge that’ll repay itself a hundred times over. so, but it, it’s, it’s kind of really shown your hand though. At the same time it’s, there’s no kind of subterfuge or like having these kinds of planned toine conversations with their engineers saying, come over here and work with us.

[00:08:50] Dara: It’s just a, an all out here. We’re gonna do this publicly. Come on over, join us because we’re terrified and we know we’re being left behind. 

[00:08:58] Matt: Most of the people who are senior have I Staped that company and they, they potentially have a much bigger payday. Down the way if they, if they keep sure they’re going in terms of winning the AI race.

[00:09:09] Matt: So yeah, I thought that was bonkers and wild. And then a different universe to Absolutely. Where I live. 

[00:09:14] Dara: Yeah. 

[00:09:15] Matt: Yeah. And then I have one related to WhatsApp. They are gonna start advertising a long held promise to never have advertising and WhatsApp is being broken. The next, that’s what happens. What happens?

[00:09:26] Matt: Advertising happens. This is what happens. Don’t quite know. You’re gonna get, you’re gonna have, there’s three main pieces I think. So you’ve got this, there’s like channels you can get in WhatsApp now, which I never use ’cause I’m old. But you can, you can like to sign up to, to look at your football team or to your, to, to whatever influence.

[00:09:44] Matt: And they send messages and pictures on WhatsApp. Exactly. They’re gonna start advertising there. So they’re gonna be promoted there. They’re gonna start sort of status things. So this is something I don’t use either, but you can have a little status that has a picture in it that you can sort of flick through.

[00:10:02] Matt: They’re gonna start putting ads in there. I believe. and then something to do with channel descriptions. So, but yeah. Better start being peppered throughout the WhatsApp experience. 

[00:10:14] Dara: You know where it’s gonna end up. Have you seen the new Black Mirror, the latest series? Have you seen the one where she gets the chip in her head?

[00:10:21] Dara: I can’t remember why now. Yes. And then it’s like, yeah, she, she’s got, she has a brain tumor. Brain tumor brain. Yeah. She’s a brain tumor. Yeah. And she starts broadcasting ads. It’s gonna be that. Yeah. So you’ll be, you’ll be, you’ll be texting your other half, saying, you know, what do you want for dinner?

[00:10:36] Dara: And then an ad’s gonna pop up saying, get your tongues and squares over at Claudia’s Tuck. 

[00:10:40] Matt: Oh. Although I just replied. ’cause you are, you want on WhatsApp Super Plus Pro? Yeah. Just reply. I want to eat tungsten. And you’ll think it’s from them. And you have to get out of that. 

[00:10:49] Dara: Why is she constantly asking for tungsten? I don’t get it. 

[00:10:54] Matt: You’ve got piles of tungsten at home. I keep bringing it home. You never eat and you’re not eating it. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s where it’s gonna end. It’s gonna, you know, they say now it’s only in the channels and all the rest of it, but you just watch. It’s gonna be, you know, inserted into people’s conversations, which is gonna be really creepy.

[00:11:08] Matt: Have we got any news that’s less dystopian? We’re pretty, we live let off some three. Pretty dystopian. 

[00:11:13] Dara: I dunno, I’m quite enjoying this fearmongering of saying this is definitely gonna end up in your private, supposedly end-to -end encrypted messages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That may not happen, but, you know, I do like to be dramatic.

[00:11:26] Dara: the only, the only other, I’d say the only other thing, there’s probably loads of other stuff that’s happened. But, VO three, the latest video model from Gemini, is available to everyone for preview now in Vertex ai. And this is the one that, like, this is the really kind of crazy looking one that lets you.

[00:11:47] Dara: Speech as well. So, I mean, there’s loads of these videos going around at the moment. and it, it, it’s mad. 

[00:11:55] Matt: Yeah. There’s like caught myself falling into the trap with him a couple of times on YouTube where, there’s some, there’s this series of some, some storm trooper doing, flawed diaries to himself, like, storm Trooper on, on death Star Duty or something, and he’s just sort of walking along talking about his day.

[00:12:13] Matt: And I watched two of them and then I thought, wait a minute, this is, what am I doing this? Yeah. Well first of all, what am I doing? As an adult father of two, I shouldn’t be spending my time watching crappy eye videos, but I didn’t realize it was AI for a while. And then I was like, ah, yeah, scary stuff.

[00:12:28] Matt: This is gonna, this is gonna get churned out more and more. And I think you can see it, you can see it like most of the sort of social platforms, LinkedIn and apparently TikTok is full of them and I don’t really go on much else, but yeah, it’s. Very impressive, very cool looking, but also terrifying. So obviously gonna be misused and Yeah.

[00:12:50] Dara: Deep fake stuff. Flat dry center. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do have the guardrails in there, don’t they? ’cause I’ve even, you know, bit of a, gonna make a confession on air here. Not that I’m trying to infringe on trademarks or doing like that, but, you know, sometimes you’re, you’re trying to create a silly picture or something of one of your friends looking like a frog or whatever.

[00:13:10] Dara: And it doesn’t let you, 

[00:13:10] Matt: you got sketchbook after sketchbook of Mickey Mouse sketches that you just do for, basically ever get hold of that book. 

[00:13:17] Dara: Listen, my, what I do in my private life is my own business. but it doesn’t let you, it doesn’t let you do that. It’ll say, you know, I can’t, it doesn’t, it basically doesn’t let you infringe on copyright, even if it’s for your own personal enjoyment.

[00:13:29] Dara: So, but people seem to find ways around doing that. So I think, you know, if the technology’s there, people will find ways to, to use it to create all kinds of deals. It’s clear that people are doing it. 

[00:13:40] Matt: Yeah okay. Disney is through a mid journey, aren’t they? ’cause. They, you’re able to get like Dar Vader and a sombrero out or whatever you, and it just produces it and they put some big case together.

[00:13:53] Matt: There’s lots of that, I just imagine all these different litigation things gonna be large for all these different companies. Yeah. Yeah. I open, I just go and sign posthumous deals with companies to try and stop getting sued by them. 

[00:14:06] Dara: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a weird space. I am, I’ve had to stay away from, vertex ai ’cause I was developing quite an addiction. and, you know, then I realized it actually costs money. So I had to, I had to stop, I had to stop playing with it, you know, silly, silly use cases. but it is fun and I would like to, you know, play around with VO three, but we’ll see anyway, see how, see how much copyright infringement you can do with VO three E.

[00:14:32] Dara: Exactly. Exactly. Here, how’s this for a segue? So, one of the reasons why we, the, the news themes, I don’t have to downplay it now. They were good news items, but you know, there may not be the kind of full levels of journalistic integrity we’d normally aim for. part of that was because you were busy, doing the webinar that we did previously, mention.

[00:14:54] Dara: So that’s available now, it’s live on YouTube. That’s not the right thing to say. It’s not live on YouTube. It exists. It lives on YouTube. It exists on YouTube. we’ll put a link in the show notes. So if you didn’t manage to sign up to the webinar, don’t worry. We’ll share a link to that. You can check it out, which was, all about, using a composable approach, to avoid some MarTech madness, which was the, the phrase of the webinar.

[00:15:19] Dara: If you wanna know more about that, you have to watch the webinar. So, onto our guest. so this week we’re joined for conversation with Dennis from STA io. so Sta are a really, really cool business actually. Dennis is one of the founders, but they make implementing and making use of IGTM as easy as in, in his words, as easy as a click of a button.

[00:15:43] Dara: So yeah, it’s an interesting chat with Dennis. Matthew, you’ve probably got a bit more experience with using Stape than I have. So who, you wanna add a little bit about the conversation? 

[00:15:54] Matt: Yeah, it’s. When, when, when server side first came out, and we were clients came to us asking about it, there was the consideration of you have to kind of know scalable cloud architecture.

[00:16:08] Matt: and, and most people who will make use of something like server side are, are marketers and, and the marketing teams. So the two skills didn’t really mix. There was always a, it was always a big bit of weighing up and, and soul searching to think how much you really need it in order to, to I give, give yourself this additional bit of technical debt.

[00:16:28] Matt: but sta abstracts that away and kind of deals with the management of all of the architecture for you, including the scaling and the, the, all of that good stuff plus a lot of other value adds and things on, on top of it. So we are partners with the Stape. so it was really interesting to, to, to talk to Dennis, hear about the beginnings of it and then where we see things going. Good chat. 

[00:16:53] Dara: Enjoy the conversation. We are very excited to welcome our guest for this week on the Measure Pod. Who is Dennis Kovski, the founder of sta. So Dennis, firstly, hello and welcome to the Measure Pod. 

[00:17:08] Denis: Hello. And thank you for inviting me. I have been listening to you for a long period. So for me it’s honor to be here. Thank you. 

[00:17:16] Dara: Oh, well brilliant. We’re, we’re delighted to have you. So if we, you’ll know this as a listener. So the first place we always start is just getting the guests to introduce themselves to our audience. So, this is your chance really, I guess, to give us a little bit of background, about, about you and about Sta.

[00:17:33] Denis: So yeah, I’m co-founder of STA and currently what Stape is doing, it’s server side tracking. Basically we provide hosting for s gt m, for server side, GDM. And, about me personally. I was born in Ukraine. Now, now I’m living in Spain. I always was like a backend guide. like I started, in university, like, with, managing servers, at least at first.

[00:18:03] Denis: Then I started to develop something for these servers, and then I started working in startups, for managing servers. And then somehow I, with my partner, created a company called Sta. And I’m really happy about this. It’s short about me. 

[00:18:22] Dara: I, I’m not surprised you’re happy about it because it’s obviously, it’s, it’s, it’s it’s growing quite quickly, which I guess brings its own, you know, that’s obviously a great thing, but it’s, it must be challenging as well.

[00:18:32] Dara: ’cause it’s been going for, is it like four, four years? Five years? Something like that? 

[00:18:37] Denis: Four years. It will soon be four years this summer actually. Yeah. 

[00:18:42] Dara: But you’re growing quickly. 

[00:18:44] Denis: Yeah, yeah, we’re growing quickly. And the big part for me is also during these four years, two children, my child was born. So for me it’s like growing up. My family, growing business is growing and it’s like all together, 

[00:18:59] Dara: you, you don’t look as stressed as I would imagine you would. 

[00:19:03] Denis: Sometimes yes, but actually it’s funny, but, when kids don’t sleep at night, sometimes it helps me to work in different markets so I can respond to emails or have night calls easily because I’m really easy to wake up at any time at night. So it somehow also helps. 

[00:19:25] Matt: You look to be, you look to be all over the world, all over Europe. Anyway, a lot of different events as well. 

[00:19:30] Denis: Yeah. I try to like at Stape overall, and try to sponsor all community events. It’s mostly because I really like community. measurement community. I come, to measurement from different niche.

[00:19:43] Denis: Like I, I said I mostly was like a backend developer and developer community in my opinion. Not that, like, toge like tied together. There are many huge events that are more like classic events or conferences where here in measurement you have measure camps, which for me is like very great events.

[00:20:10] Denis: There is other community events like, analytics summits or like, there, there is a bunch of events that, not like conferences, but more on conferences where, where people just talking and they really helps me to get feedback about product, about what happening on the market. And I try to go there too, to come and listen to what people want.

[00:20:36] Matt: So you mentioned briefly there. It’s about server side. GTM, you go into a little bit more detail about like what, what is the, what is the unique selling point of Stape versus just going and trudging through the documentation and setting up your own, server side infrastructure. Like what, what, what makes Stape, Stape?

[00:20:56] Denis: I, I, I think the idea was simple and, still it’s, like we try to not change too much from this. The initial idea when, how stay started, actually my partner, was working in an ads niche for a long period. So, she set up Facebook ads, Google ads, and, because she was, and still is, more technical, comparable to other marketing people in, in, agencies where she worked, she often had tasks about.

[00:21:35] Denis: Configuring, GTM like web GT M and configuring tags, or Klaviyo or Bravo, all, all this stuff. And, when, server side GT M was released, it at that moment also released it, new IO version that started to prevent it, like I was the first ITP version. And, I, and, she was like, in, in that process of understanding how big server side GTM is for ITP.

[00:22:11] Denis: And, she created a very simple landing page with PE people. I can stop you server G dm, please come to me. I will do this. But when the first customer came and asked for it, configuring server G dm, she understood it’s much more technical than she expected. And that’s why she wrote it to me. Can you help me?

[00:22:35] Denis: I know you’re a server guide. This is something for se about servers. Can you help me with this? So I helped it and I, when I started to like it, at first when I read it, doc and implemented it through Google official documentation, and I want to add that now Google documentation is much better than three or four years ago.

[00:22:56] Denis: Four years ago. It was, it was really, there was nothing to read, actually. There was one, one landing page with little information. Use this script to run the server. And even for me, it was like, relatively not that straightforward and easy. So in the end, I configured it for this customer. And we very quickly understood that marketing people will do, not do this.

[00:23:22] Denis: So no way that market, like a person who configures Google Ads or Facebook ads will set up these servers. So our service is for people who set up Facebook, Google ads, other ads, or Google Analytics also, and they want to set, have server side tracking, but do not have any like, developer team or development team who can configure these servers for them and for these people.

[00:23:51] Denis: We have a very big green button deploy server for me. Everything will work and that’s how it started. Then of course, enterprises start to ask for specific features. We start adding more air features, but the initial idea is still the same. We created the green button for deploying your servers.

[00:24:17] Matt: Yeah. I thought that’s, that’s, that rings true to kind of our experience as well. When we first started, when the service side first came on the scene, you know, we’re a. Marketing analytics consultancy. We were straight in exploring and playing with it. And the realization pretty quickly was like this, this bit, this, this sort of cloud architecture piece just, just not aligned with pretty much anybody in any of the companies or clients that we were talking to.

[00:24:42] Matt: I’ve, they just don’t have that in the marketing team. And, and, and more than that, even if you get the initial setup and you get it created, people just think that’s a, okay, I’ve done it. I’ll walk away now. And that’s done for life. But not, not thinking about all the other complexities that come on top of that in terms of scaling and monitoring and, and, and all of the additional costs and tweaking and value adds.

[00:25:06] Dara: It’s, it’s a really big job. So how much does a, if, if, if you’re a, if you’re a typical marketer and you want to just come to STA and just make this headache go away, presumably, I know you say about the green button, but is it really that straightforward? They must have some. Input into the process.

[00:25:24] Dara: So how, like, how, how technical would it get for a marketer if they say, great, I wanna use Stape for my service, IGTM? 

[00:25:32] Denis: You need to be on the same level. Like with Web G, if you can configure web G, like configure G for, for Google, for, add to car for purchase, for all, all these events, then it’ll be enough for like, like it’s enough knowledge to set up a server side GTM with step.

[00:25:51] Denis: The hardest part, actually, is configuring a custom subdomain. And, from our understanding, it may be even not, because people do not know how to do this because usually marketers already used to do this for email campaigns. All the mail campaigns have already had this sub domain configuration for years.

[00:26:13] Denis: And most people know how to do this. But the hardest part is getting access to this domain. So you need to find the person who likes, owns or has permissions to edit sub-domains. I think for like, in reality, this is the hardest, like the longest part for configuring server side GTM servers. But otherwise, if you, like, if you are familiar with web GTM and know what you do there, then there is relatively, it’ll be relatively easy for you to configure server side, GT M with staple.

[00:26:49] Dara: So, and then with the scaling part is, is it kind of, can they still just leave it alone and that just gets taken care of. So if, if things change, they don’t need to be the one to, you know, say, oh, I, the website’s grown, or we’ve got more traffic, or we’ve changed this or that, or whatever. That, that bit’s all taken care of behind the scenes. Is that right? 

[00:27:09] Denis: Yeah, that’s correct. So actually we have two options. we, we can stick, like if you want to not pay more than $20 per month, for servers, you can pay $20. And if you have spike, we still will handle this. But if for any reason, it’s very big one, we start to se sending you emails, please visit your account and check if you want to like, scale your servers more or do something.

[00:27:39] Denis: Or most people choose another option. It is like, here is my credit card. If you need more money, please charge it and we will handle everything for you. So most people choose this. And, actually on Black Fridays, we usually have a lot of new clients because their servers are down on Google Cloud and we are like, for, for us it’s like a.

[00:28:04] Denis: Best, kind of like best part of the year because during this week we immigrate like thousands of clients to stay because they don’t know, or like, some of them are just new. Some of them don’t know how to scale servers. Some of them run, like, on Google Cloud. By default you install, not production server, but you install like, test server.

[00:28:29] Denis: And most people do not realize that they are installing a test server, not production. And that’s why a lot of these test servers are down these days and these people start to migrate to us. So yeah, we, we like you, you just click the green button and servers are running and manage it for you.

[00:28:50] Matt: If I’m not mistaken, it was a couple of years ago that like US Central one for, for. Pen went down for the service side, GTM and people just lost black around Black Friday. Right. And it just lost their data completely. 

[00:29:07] Denis: Yes. Yes. And we at that moment, moved a few Enterprise, like for us at that moment, it was three years ago, I think it was the first year of step.

[00:29:15] Denis: We were not that famous like now. And, for us, it was really great, period because, in Measure Slack, people started to complain about this issue. And I started to respond to them, all of them just came to us. We will do this in one second. Every single person will work. And again, how this works, we actually pay three times for servers at that prior, what we do, we buy two times more servers than we need to cover the Z spikes because it’s not only Black Friday for us, it’s also Cyber Monday.

[00:29:54] Denis: Huge one, especially for eCom. Like all fashion brands and during this period, it is like, it’s better to pay more for a server even if you need them, because you will be able to convert more people. 

[00:30:10] Matt: Yeah, I suppose it’s a lot of seasonality depending on the company, right? Like a, like a holiday company might be before summer, last minute deals or, an energy company, whatever the new budget comes out or whatever.

[00:30:21] Matt: You kind of gotta be ready to scale for all of those types of customers. 

[00:30:25] Denis: Yeah, and I want to add that, affiliate networks are also very interesting, guys, because sometimes, for example, you shop that, you have, I don’t know, for example, 10,000 clients each day. But then you go to Awin or to CJ Affiliate Network and start and, and say, bring me, I dunno, 5,000 new people per day.

[00:30:49] Denis: And what they do, they in like 10 minutes bring you 5,000 people. And it is the biggest problem, for people because you need to scale very fast because actually in one minute you can get one 1000 people. And what we often see if your shop on WordPress is hosting some, like some classic one, it’s very often that hosting is down and you are losing money from, from these affiliates, redirects. So I, it is like a very interesting problem, with this affiliate, guys usually. 

[00:31:26] Dara: So what’s a, sorry, this might be, this might be a basic question, but I guess if I’m asking it then maybe some people who are listening might, might, might wanna know this as well. What, what’s the different, I I, is it still running, if you go through Stape, is it still running on Google Cloud servers, but they’re your own ones that you are securing as opposed to if you just, if you’re just one of all of the people who are on the kind of standard service site, GTM or are they different servers that, that aren’t part of the Google cloud infrastructure. 

[00:31:56] Denis: understood. So we have two options. We have Stable Global, which is a US Company, and we have stable Euro, which is euro, like an Estonian company. And if you go with Sta Europe, then this is Callaway Servers. It’s such a costly call. It’s Callway and we run servers there.

[00:32:19] Denis: If you go with Stable Global, then we use GCP. and what’s the difference? It’s like, we do not use Cloud Run or App Engine. We basically buy servers and manage them on our own on Google Cloud. 

[00:32:38] Matt: And I suppose that’s to get around, if you’re working with some larger enterprises and things, it’s to get around people being shaky about working with US companies or engaging with US companies or storing data in the US with the likes of Google.

[00:32:53] Denis: Yeah, it depends on the market actually, for, of course, European guys look like more European servers and everything, especially banks, insurance companies. They, in, in our, we have pretty robust data processing agreement in, in EU because of how many like this kind of enterprises come to us and ask for changes and, all of them, ask to not include any data processor, not in you.

[00:33:25] Denis: So that’s why we use fully European everything for that company. And that’s why we have a completely separate company only running in, with, different, pro process data processors. 

[00:33:40] Dara: So could that be a reason why? So could a company who maybe have the skills internally to do the, to kind of to go down the normal service site g TM route, they might still come to a company like STA for that reason as well.

[00:33:53] Dara: Is that right? ’cause that wouldn’t be the same as if you went with Google. You wouldn’t have that, you wouldn’t have those same kinds of restrictions to where the data’s held and processed. 

[00:34:03] Denis: there, there, like with big enterprises, for example, in use, we are HIPAA compliant and if you are need, HIPAA compliance, if you are also HIPAA compliant, like company who provide services to medical care, you, you have some kind of restrictions and, you cannot just work with Google.

[00:34:22] Denis: If you are a really, really big enterprise, you can somehow get contact, contract with Google. But it’s like you, you need at least spend, I don’t know, 200,000 per month or something. Like if, if you spend, I dunno, let’s say you spend 50,000 per month on GCP. With this amount of money, you probably will not get any HIPAA compliance, documentation with Google.

[00:34:46] Denis: And this is why these kinds of people are also working with us because we can provide them with this documentation. It’s like one part of your business for you. It’s a sim. It’s similar, it’s similar for insurance companies, banks, I reports, I dunno. And, another part of the business. Let’s say you are a classic, offline store with, I dunno.

[00:35:09] Denis: Let, let’s say you are Zara, I, for example, and, your developers developing your website, they do not want to do something with servers, for SGTM. Why? Because they have a pretty huge backlog. And even if you give them a task, please create a server side GTM with a first party domain. In the first party, like, more models, but with the same origin.

[00:35:38] Denis: Maybe they will do this, but not now. It’s like, it, it, it, it not today. It can take one year or more to get this task to be done. And, few like these companies in the end come to us for temporary solutions. But, as you know, temporary solutions, it’s like a for, for all time solution. 

[00:35:59] Matt: So yeah, I think we see that wider, not just in say, service IGTM, either just the centralization and ownership of, and governance of data in large companies.

[00:36:08] Matt: It becomes really restrictive for a marketing analytics team who want to do this thing, but it’s gotta enter into this more bureaucratic bit of red tape to get what they need out of it. I just feel like giving a bit more power to those teams to build what they need, and engaging with like STA or a, or a Measure Lab or whoever to, to own some of that data would be really useful, especially with the pace.

[00:36:32] Matt: Which things are moving at the minute with all the AI and, and all the rest of it. I was going to change direction slightly, and maybe we should have started here. I don’t know, but, I’m imagining now somebody sitting in some company somewhere and they’re the, they’re the analytics person. They’re the, they’re the one who owns it and they’re, they, they, they look after everything from GTM through to getting the data into BigQuery, et cetera.

[00:36:59] Matt: And they’re thinking like, do I need this? Do I need the service side GTMI? What would you say are the, the main reasons and benefits that people do go and engage and say like, yes, we need to get service side GTM and, and we need it tomorrow? What, what, what’d you get out of it? 

[00:37:17] Denis: Oh, it’s, it’s often asked, but it really depends on the market. For example, in you, most people from our experience use it for better regulations, compliance, or sec and second, like position in you, it’s to have more reliable analytics to stitch people properly. So, the return visitor will be recognized after one month.

[00:37:49] Denis: If you use server side GTM, if you use only web GT m, this return visitor after seven days will not be tracked as the same user. So these are two main reasons. In Europe. In other markets, let’s say in, USA, it’s more popular, to track more data, like, user emails, surnames, addresses, whatever.

[00:38:15] Denis: Of course you can do this with a web gym, but I don’t know why it’s happening like this. People start using SGTM and then start to collect more data through it. Also, they connect some CRM systems in, again, in, I think in eu more, more people use hosted versions of products like WordPress, Magento, shop far, these kinds of solutions in us.

[00:38:43] Denis: It’s like Shopify has a really, really high percentage of all the stores. And again, from Shopify, it’s really to send more data. If you use Edge GTM, it’s literally one button click and you start to send, all this, name, surname, address, et cetera. So in the US it’s about gathering more data, having proper attribution, and paying less money for ads.

[00:39:10] Denis: on other markets like, there is seeing about ad blockers in some countries. Ad blockers are very popular, especially in the gaming industry. It’s not only about kainos, but also about kid ga kids games. So imagine you develop a game with ads and kids playing this, again, it’s very advanced on configuring web browsers.

[00:39:44] Denis: They easily install ad blockers and these, guys lose a lot of money, on these ad blockers. So for them, the main factor is, to use server. I gtm for bypassing ad blockers. Also, we had really interesting case study about trust P store. So it’s not, it was not official one, it was like, resellers in some country.

[00:40:09] Denis: but basically all nerds who come to their web website have an ad blocker. And that’s why they, after installing, server side gtm, they started tracking 37% more customers because they like a bypassed blocker. So it really depends on what you want to achieve. But I, I think the main use cases I describe 

[00:40:34] Matt: That’s interesting. So the, so the nerdier, the nerdier, your target audience with ads, the less likely you are to hit ’cause they’re all protected up to the hilt ad blockers. 

[00:40:43] Denis: Yeah, exactly. For example, in Europe shops, like, standard e-commerce, platform shops, they do not really need to, bypass ad blockers.

[00:40:54] Denis: Of course, if they bypass, they will have more data, which is great. But the percentage is not the big one. So people usually go there from iPhones or phones. If you go to some website for a phone, you probably don’t have a browser. Blockers usually install it in Chrome browser, which not everybody likes, used to do when shopping.

[00:41:16] Matt: From a privacy perspective, I think that you talked about at the beginning on, on the EU side, are you talking there more about how you have that granular control with service side GTM to decide what goes to who and to what’s sort of anonymized before it gets sent off to these third party platforms?

[00:41:36] Denis: Yeah, so, for example, if we’re talking about higher parts, some countries have very strict policies of what airports can do with the data of their customers. And for example, if you very strictly do not allow it to send IP addresses that’s most common, then you need some kind of proxies that will remove these IP addresses.

[00:42:00] Matt: Is there any in particular? Novel or cool use case you’ve seen somebody put together via, via service side GTM. Because for example, like we’ve, we’ve played with stuff like Bay Enrichment and, and this idea of being able to grab a lot of information about products out of a, out of a document database and enrich that on the fly and things like that.

[00:42:23] Matt: Are there any sort of really interesting and, and novel things you’ve seen people do with this technology? 

[00:42:29] Denis: Actually, yes. People who have apps and websites and want to do cross device tracking, it’s very popular to use Firebase or Stape Store or any other store for stitching customers. Also, now it’s more popular to grab data from CRM systems.

[00:42:50] Denis: For example, we created text for a few enterprises for Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Salesforce. So, on server Edge. Then when you had a classic setup. You have a webpage with a web form, you feel there, information, click submit, and you like gone from this side. After some time you receive an email or phone call. It depends on the market, but let’s say you receive a phone call.

[00:43:18] Denis: After a phone call. We market like managers, you are converted into a CRM system. After this, you need to somehow send this information back to Facebook or Google ads because what people usually do, they say, oh, I feel it. Web form, click and submit. This is conversion, but it’s not really conversion.

[00:43:39] Denis: It’s like, interest of the person. Real conversion can be or not after like this next step. It can be a click on an email, it can be a phone call or whatever. And to stitch these kinds of conversions, people very often use stores. We see it more and more popular, thankfully, to Meta and Google as they start promoting these two, like two step, two step, I dunno, co conversation.

[00:44:08] Denis: And for mobile devices it’s the same. So if you like, submit a form or scan it Q code, you need somehow then track this person in the app. Also, we need some stores to stitch these people. So it’s popular. 

[00:44:24] Dara: This might be a bit bit of a weird question, but flipping it around, what, is there any reason why someone would not go down the, are there any businesses or people that would be better off just sticking with web GTM and, and who wouldn’t need or, or should ev ’cause I’m listening to this and, and, and I’m thinking, oh, everybody, everybody should have service IGTM and they should all use Sta.

[00:44:44] Dara: But, but is there, are there people who, who shouldn’t? Hey, tricky question for you. 

[00:44:48] Denis: You’re gonna. Actually there are a bunch of these people, in my opinion, if you do not do PPC or do not do affiliate tracking, you probably, no, do not need a gym. Maybe you want to have better data in GA four, but to then not use GD four if you know, do not do PPC. Choose, I dunno, Omo for example. They, like, properly work with your subdomain already.

[00:45:21] Denis: It can work in your first party context, not requiring you and any extra money. So it’s the first use case. Also, in my opinion, if you, with HGDM, not cover costs, like of your improvement, imagine you spend on ads $300 per month and there is like a, for, for example, I know the trainer, in the gym, with whom I working out, they actually, she actually, he actually running, PPC campaign in Facebook, in in our city to, to get more clients. And this person really does not need any HGTM because if they will start to pay $20, even to stay $20 per month for HGTM, I’m really not sure that they will cover the cost of HGTM on ads improvement. So probably even the ads will start to cost cheaper.

[00:46:18] Denis: It’ll be not enough to cover the cost of the server. So it depends on how much you spend on ads and if you will cover the cost. 

[00:46:27] Dara: Are there, are there average, on, maybe this is a question to both of you, but are there average kind of figures out there for what the improvement in data quality would be? Just generally moving from, you know, web GTM to service side GTM.

[00:46:42] Dara: I guess why I’m asking that as well, just to kind of explain where my head is going. I’m thinking, so let’s say you’re, obviously, if you’re a very small business, you probably don’t have a need for this full stop, but let’s say you’re a bigger business, but you maybe don’t use Google Ads for some reason.

[00:46:58] Dara: but you might still care about that improvement in data quality. Like, could that be enough to justify it just by itself? You know, are we talking like, you know, are you gonna get a 10, 20% improvement in your data quality or is it, is it smaller? Is it bigger? I, and I know it’ll be case by case, but just as a kind of general rule.

[00:47:20] Denis: So on average, you should expect, a little bit more than 10%, more data. it really depends case by, by, by case. But, I think. If we should choose some number, let’s choose 13%. There are actually official numbers from Google and from meta, or about the average, increase in attribution.

[00:47:49] Denis: And also there are numbers of how much, CPC, the cost per click will, will go on. How much on which percentage cost, per, click will go down. And, as I remember from Facebook, it should be at least 7%. So it’s pretty big if we speak about big numbers. Yeah. Yes. 

[00:48:16] Matt: I suppose it’s easier ’cause you could, you could, you could obviously make the argument, like you say, Dara, that I want to improve data quality, or we’ve got a project that we’re really shoring up on, on data privacy and security and making sure that everything is, is really ship shape.

[00:48:33] Matt: But I think it’s the easiest. I suppose, like you say, Denis, the easiest one to point to is like, I’ve had a di I, I can see more clearly my conversions. ’cause that’s, that’s money at the end of the day that you can kind of, you can kind of point to. So if, unless it’s a very dedicated project to do just that thing and it’s nothing to do with ads and you’re happy and willing to spend that budget on just improving data privacy, I suppose it’s a harder sell internally to do that maybe.

[00:48:59] Denis: Yeah, and also, for example, for me, it was interesting that some organizations, like our Red Cross for example, try to be in policy, not gathering data about their customers, for example. And they also try to reduce how much information they gather about the customer.

[00:49:22] Denis: So, it, it, it really depends on what. What is your goal is even if you do ads, maybe your company has some policies about how much data you want to have from these customers. 

[00:49:38] Matt: I, again, I feel like I’m just changing direction continuously, but I’m gonna change direction, really encourage, and, and it’s really cool to see all of the sort of open source tooling that’s, that’s coming out of this Stape recently.

[00:49:52] Matt: Like I think, I think our, kind of what we envisage people who listen to this are people who are like, you know, sitting in a, in a company and trying to, trying to bring forward the, the maturity of their analytics and the marketing analytics and a lot of the tooling and the open source community. And these meetups that you discussed earlier are really critical in getting everyone engaged and understanding this stuff.

[00:50:14] Matt: So what, what is, what drives that, those new tools that you’re releasing, like I think I just saw you’ve got the tracking. Auditor, the MCP, GTM tool, which I’ve been playing with, which is super cool. What’s driving that at stake? Is it just a willingness, a willingness to get the community at large clued up more on, on this stuff and how it works?

[00:50:39] Denis: Yeah, and, and in my opinion there, like, because of how gathered is, analytics, and tracking community is the best way to market is through community. And, yeah. And that’s why we are trying to do something good for the community and the community will do something good for you. We have not run any Google, Google ads or meta ads for more than three years, after creating the company only.

[00:51:09] Denis: Now we started like campaigns on our like, brand words, but overall we like, Basically community makes our, make it our company that big and, and good. So that’s why we understood we need to do something more and more for these people. And, I think it works in both ways. We do something good for community, community, bring us clients and everybody happy.

[00:51:39] Matt: I’m right in saying that you guys are the biggest, the, the single biggest contributors to the Google tag template store. Is that right? 

[00:51:47] Denis: Yeah, yeah. Currently it’s around 85 or eight, like 85 templates. 

[00:51:52] Dara: Yeah. So are, are your ideas, how, how much of your own, ’cause obviously you’ll have your own ideas for your roadmap, but you’re, you, you just mentioned there, you know, this real double benefit of like putting tools out into the community and getting their feedback so.

[00:52:07] Dara: Are you, are there a lot of ideas for what Staple will do next? Are they coming from requests that you get from customers or, I, I guess it’s probably a mixture of both. 

[00:52:19] Denis: It’s definitely a mi mixture, but how it look like we here, we have pretty big, support team and, because for all customers we provide support for, for free, even if you not use tape, but use our, tech template or configuring our plugin, even if you use Google Cloud or something, we will respond to you and we will explain you how to use our tools and these people, have some asks what they need.

[00:52:50] Denis: Then internally we’re trying to create solutions that will cover all the similar questions because it’s not always, always that straightforward. If somebody asks for some new data layer parameters in, Shopify plugin or somebody asks for a new button in, tag, it’s not always the easiest solution to put this button or a new parameter.

[00:53:16] Denis: It’s better to think how we can approach similar requests. So we like hearing what people are asking and then try to implement it for a broader audience. 

[00:53:28] Matt: Is that where you get a lot of the ideas for the power ups as well? Because like for, for people who dunno who are listening and dunno what power up is in Stape, you’ve got this concept of like little value add that you can, can turn on within your.

[00:53:44] Matt: Within your cloud configuration, is that mainly from like quests from a, a company saying, we really need this thing, and you build out and think, well, everyone would’ve liked this, and at least that? 

[00:53:55] Denis: yes. I, I, I think, most of the power apps come from our partners. It’s from relatively bigger agencies.

[00:54:03] Denis: They like, usually if we had requests from our big partner that needs this and for, I don’t know, 112, 200 of their customers, we at least need to listen to this. And, overall. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the first few powers were completely created, but asked because why not on, in the first year of stay? And, then we, all, all other powers were created on feedback. 

[00:54:34] Dara: Dennis, I, I often ask people this when, when they’re kind of running a business that’s quite reliant on, on Google, which includes our own business actually at Measure Lab, where we’re kind of always relying on knowing what’s around the corner or having an idea.

[00:54:47] Dara: and at any point Google can obviously change the rules or, you know, completely upend the market. Is that something that kind of keeps you up at night? Do you worry that Google is gonna introduce something that could have a, you know, a negative impact or, you know, it could work vice versa? They could do something that actually creates a huge opportunity for the Stape, but I guess my, to, to cut to the chase. My question is, how much do you think about, you know, Google’s roadmap and the impact that that could have on Stape?

[00:55:16] Denis: yeah. actually first few years, like, first two, two years, I, I like woke up at night and was like a little bit scary about what something can happen. But now I am much more relaxed. Why? Because we have few other products. For example, we are having meta copy Gateway, which is pretty popular all around the world, and thousands of clients use it.

[00:55:42] Denis: So even Google will do something for HGTM. We already have other products, which are also popular. We have TikTok Gateway, Snapchat Gateway, and we also have a wrapper to Google, first party mode it calls it now, Google Tag, gateway. Also, they, now, now, now the, all of platforms have the similar naming, like, meta Copy Gateway, Google Tag Gateway.

[00:56:10] Denis: And, for example, Google Tag Gateway cannot work on Shopify, websites where our solution, like a similar solution to Google can work on, Shopify. And, we do not think that it’ll be like this copy, things will disappear someday. Even, for example, Google will do this, not look like meta Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, all of these guys will do this.

[00:56:38] Denis: So, so many companies invested in this and, and, and not seeing that it’ll go very fast. And we see that new companies are starting to implement this. So for example, Awin, an affiliate network, they actually release it on New Year, their copy solution, for, for tracking. Also, we see that Tableau does something similar.

[00:57:06] Denis: So from what we see, smaller companies understand this copy thing is pretty big and they also need to invest in it. And actually we see more and more jobs from smaller companies now who come to market. I. I also want to add that Google released Google Data Manager happily, two weeks ago. It’s not a copy that we see from Meta, but in my opinion it’s very, very close to it and it’s on a better version.

[00:57:43] Denis: So maybe they will even do more there to make it more, similar to, Facebook copy. So what, what, what you’re saying actually for the last few years, Google only does something better for us. 

[00:58:01] Matt: So I was going to ask a little bit, more about what you, so you’ve kind of mentioned all the, the CAPI and Google are releasing cool things and people are invested in, in this stuff.

[00:58:10] Matt: More and more of these caps that are coming online from, from other companies. Where do you see things going in the next sort of two, three. Can you look any further than three years currently? It’s a bit impossible, isn’t it? But where, where do you see the next couple of big things coming? Like I said earlier, I was really interested in playing with your G-T-M-M-C-P server.

[00:58:33] Matt: That seems like a really cool and interesting new direction of things. I’m just, just really interested in what you see the future holding. 

[00:58:40] Denis: It’s hard to answer actually. We all always project, at least for one year, we have like a roadmap of what, what we will do as a company, but what will happen on the market, it’s really hard to imagine.

[00:58:52] Denis: Let’s, let’s think about last year. Last year we should not have cookies in future third party cookies. Now we again have them. So what I hear now, a lot, is that the new version of Safari will not have any UTM parameters. So if you come from Google Ads, to your website and have in your l some parameters, click id, safari will strip all of this.

[00:59:19] Denis: So I think, and, there should be a better release in one month. So maybe we will see this. So in my opinion, the overall industry is going to have more privacy, not only in Europe, but all around the world. So I think in three years we need to expect that tracking overall will be even harder. And, I, I, I literally wrote this MCP server because for me it was very interesting how realistically this like, cloud or, open AE app is, can, do something with GTM.

[00:59:58] Denis: But in reality they can analyze only data and say, what is wrong with your stop? But even if you ask an MCP server to configure GA four for server side tracking, they usually have too many problems with it. So not sure that even in three years it’ll be like this. Popular or working well? 

[01:00:23] Matt: Yeah, I found it really, I found it very useful for just, just chucking, just telling, just saying, this is a new server I’ve never had eyes on before, or this is a new container I’ve never had eyes on before.

[01:00:34] Matt: Gimme the lowdown of what’s going on here. And it’s able to sort of pull out and say, this is your tag. This is your tags, your triggers. This is the consent set. That was really just to get context quickly, and was really useful. I did also test pushing it to set up a server container and things like that, but like you said, it, it, it, it fell over in a, in a few places for sure.

[01:00:53] Matt: But, yeah, it is, it’s interesting. I think it’s just interesting. Augmenting people with the technology to make them quicker and more efficient to get information on board to go and do what they would be doing anyway. 

[01:01:05] Denis: Yeah, co co completely agree. We’ll see you. So maybe it’s at some, and some days there will be again, some, some other startup, other steps that will make Green Button configure your web with IE in one second.

[01:01:22] Denis: Why not? 

[01:01:24] Matt: Have you got any, anything in the, in the works? Any, any cool new groundbreaking tools that are coming our way? 

[01:01:32] Dara: That isn’t top, that isn’t top secret? What is top secret? Yeah. Or that is, that you’re gonna give our listeners a, you know, sneak, sneak preview. 

[01:01:41] Denis: what we will do soon, we will change, like, even add more support for all our customers. So we hired even more people in the support team and want to make our. Support is even more tailored, and it’ll not change. Like our idea again, to teach people, to teach our agencies partners to use tape, to use tape and provide better configuration. Because in the end, if the agency or person who configures tracking does this right and proper for the end client, it brings better value to the end customer and the customer is happy and pays us.

[01:02:28] Denis: So we, our idea is, like soon to release a few features that will help, make it, like help to teach people more. 

[01:02:37] Dara: Just, just a couple of final questions from me, Dennis. The first one is, you know, you, you, you’re obviously out there a lot. You know, you talked about the importance of the community. So what’s, what’s next on the.

[01:02:50] Dara: On the, on the calendar. Where, where could people come and say hello to you? You know, what events are you gonna be at soon? 

[01:02:57] Denis: I actually will be in Bologna one day. We will make the Future Festival. And, then I will go to Amsterdam for the MarTech Summit also in June. And, co we will be in Copenhagen, measure Copenhagen, I was, I will not personally go there, but we’ll stay with the sponsor there.

[01:03:24] Denis: And the next one is, is, in Munich. Munich Analytics Summit. Analytics Pioneer Summit. So it, and its the first of the fourth of July, I think. So, as you hear, a lot of, a lot of fun soon. Also, I will be in September in London, measure camp. So, yeah, not, not sure I remember all of them, but, yeah, you, you can see me in a lot of different places, honestly.

[01:03:54] Dara: And it has a measure in the name. You’ve gotta be sponsoring it, honestly. Dunno where you find the time, Dennis. You must have clones of yourself hidden away somewhere. 

[01:04:03] Denis: I really have a good wife to support me with all of this. 

[01:04:10] Dara: Yeah. I believe it. and my, my, my final question, it’s a simple one, really. Where did the name Stape come from? 

[01:04:16] Denis: Oh, it, it’s, it, the, the idea comes from server tape. We think it, something around this, and actually Staple previously was called like the first name was gtm server.com. Too many people think we are some kind of scum or something because the domain was really a GDM server and everybody is like, what is this?

[01:04:39] Denis: And it was harder to, harder to Google. So we renamed it company very fast. It was like seven or eight months. And then we renamed it for Step and we tried to find some nice name and Steve was, Dave was a great solution for us. Something at, at that moment. We’re also thinking that the server, GTM, helps with teaching people between sessions.

[01:05:04] Denis: And that’s why it was like a stitching sta like, so something like this, and 

[01:05:11] Dara: yeah, makes, makes sense. And I think it was a good decision to change it from the original name. Amazingly, I think that that’s a great place to leave it. Really, really good talking to you. It’s been a really enjoyable conversation.

[01:05:25] Dara: So thank you again for agreeing to come on and talk to us. 

[01:05:28] Denis: Thank you for inviting me. 

[01:05:30] Dara: That’s it for this week’s episode of The Measure Pod. We hope you enjoyed it and picked up something useful along the way. If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening on so you don’t miss future episodes.

[01:05:42] Matt: And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a quick review. It really helps more people discover the pod and keeps us motivated to bring back more. So thanks for listening and we’ll catch you next time.

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