Personal SparkToro Startups Team

The Chill Work Manifesto

Shortly after Amanda Natividad joined SparkToro, she coined the term “Chill Work” to describe the unusually patient, mature, laid-back approach we take to building this business. And for the last three years, it’s become a bigger and bigger part of how I think about not only this company, but everything I do professionally. Today, I want to share a documentary…
SparkToro Team

Two Announcements: SparkToro V2 Coming Soon and Brendan Hufford (Temporarily) Joining the Team

How is it only August? It feels like two years since January. Especially here at SparkToro, where the year’s had so much upheaval, despite our attempts to maintain Chill Work. Shortly after our pricing change in February, Twitter/X’s new owner announced a bevy of pricing and access changes to their API, including the deprecation of data SparkToro’s infrastructure relied on…
Product SparkToro Startups Team

SparkToro Year 3 Retrospective: Investor Payback, Systemic Challenges, and V2 on the Way

3 Years ago, SparkToro launched in the midst of a world-changing pandemic. In 2021 and 2022 I wrote updates about this business’ journey, both because I love to transparently share the adventure, and because we’re passionate about spreading the model SparkToro’s used to fund, grow, and bring value to customers. Let’s continue that tradition today 😊 Here’s the good news:…
Data Product SparkToro

NEW: Custom Search & Custom Audiences Offer Incredible New Ways to Use SparkToro

Three years ago, if you wanted to uncover which podcasts Data Scientists listened to, or find out which social accounts were most followed by people who talk about Organic Chemistry, you’d need months of surveys, interviews, and manual data collection. Then, in April of 2020, SparkToro launched, and high-quality answers to those questions could be found in seconds. Since launch,…
SparkToro

SparkToro’s Prices Are Going Up (but not for everyone)

Here’s the short version, friends: Starting February 9, 2023 (one week from now) we’re rolling out new, higher prices for each of SparkToro’s pricing tiers We’re also adding more features and benefits to those tiers, including unlimited searches per month* for all subscription levels If you’re a subscriber to SparkToro at any tier today (or you sign up before Feb.…

NEW: Audience Tracking is Now Available in SparkToro

Since our launch in 2020, SparkToro has helped thousands of marketers uncover the most popular demographic and behavioral attributes of their target audiences. Emphasis on “most popular” 😉. That data is undoubtedly valuable: it helps folks know where and how to reach their customers online. But, in the two years SparkToro’s been active, we observed a handful of our smartest,…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

Which Subreddits Does Your Audience Follow? What Do They Talk About? Starting Today, SparkToro Has the Answers

Today, we’re launching a new “Reddit” tab in SparkToro. It will show you the Subreddits to which the audience you search for most-heavily subscribes, and the text content of their Reddit posts. This feature is briefly available for all paid subscribers. In a few weeks, SparkToro is updating our prices & packages, at which time it will be exclusive to…
Events Marketing SparkToro

Introducing SparkTogether 2022: Because the Marketing World Needs Better, More Unique Events

On November 10th, we’re running SparkToro’s first-ever marketing summit: SparkTogether. It’s live. It WON’T be recorded (because our presenters are sharing confidential numbers and information). And we’d love to have you there. For details and tickets, check out the SparkTogether 2022 Event Page, or read on for more background. Early bird tickets are on sale until Oct. 8, then prices…

SparkToro Demographics: 3 Underrated Ways to Upgrade Your Marketing

It’s been about one year since we launched Demographics in SparkToro, and it’s one of our most popular features. Many of our customers use the insights to develop personas, run programmatic ads, evaluate brand marketing partnerships, and more. But I have a feeling there are even more creative use cases that our community hasn’t yet tapped into. So I’m outlining…