Since its inception, the world huge internet has opened up the web to everybody. It makes it attainable for all of us to attach, share, and talk like by no means earlier than in historical past. The introduction of the cell smartphone made that even simpler: out of the blue, you possibly can have the world’s info in your pocket and get instantaneous entry to associates, leisure, and knowledge. 

However the smartphone and its ecosystem of apps additionally introduced new challenges: mega platforms that personal the system, the working system, and even the movement of knowledge. These platforms, which survive by proudly owning the consumer’s time and eyeballs, began erecting partitions to maintain folks inside and beat back competitors.

9 years in the past, my co-founders and I constructed an app on this ecosystem filled with limitations. We confronted these challenges first hand. We struggled to get our app found, run primary campaigns and to construct the pathways for sustainable enterprise development.

Department is the answer to walled gardens. Department hyperlinks break down the partitions and make the cell ecosystem extra open, linked, and related for the top consumer, whatever the platform they’re on. 

Now, seven years later, Department’s platform has been chosen by over 100,000 cell manufacturers and we straight attain greater than 3 billion customers world wide, tens of billions of occasions per day. We’ve got expanded our merchandise to transcend simply cell, connecting customers from offline-to-online, desktop-to-app, TV-to-app, and past. We assist our prospects each create and measure these experiences. 

Department’s development speaks to the continued fragmentation and shifts within the cell ecosystem. Cell system adoption is now over 90% of the worldwide inhabitants, which implies it’s common. And COVID accelerated the adoption curve by years, turning cell apps from a nice-to-have into table-stakes for just about each shopper model on the planet — our digital lives at the moment are lived in a world of cell apps, not web sites, and cell is now not simply the realm of ad-supported gaming. In truth, we now spend greater than a 3rd of our waking hours on our telephones, with 92.5% of that point spent in apps. 

However the latest modifications within the cell ecosystem, from sweeping {industry} privateness modifications like ATT, to the explosion of latest system sorts, to new rules world wide, imply that apps are struggling to outlive. The cell ecosystem is extra siloed and fragmented than ever, regardless of the progress we’ve made. We’ve got much more work to do.

As we speak, I’m excited to announce that Department has raised $300 million in new funding at a valuation of over $4 billion. This may permit us to double down on our product investments to unravel these new ecosystem challenges, whereas additionally delivering on our dedication to the safety of consumer privateness:

• We’re considerably increasing our industry-leading cell linking platform (MLP), to assist manufacturers unlock new methods to develop by way of their owned and natural channels, and higher combine cell as cross-device and offline-to-online crossover experiences change into a part of customers’ on a regular basis lives.
• We’ll proceed reworking our cell measurement companion (MMP) options for paid media, offering prospects with state-of-the-art, privacy-first measurement to navigate cell promoting in a post-IDFA world.
• We’ll speed up our analysis into new, next-generation options to enhance app discovery and transfer the ecosystem ahead right into a extra privacy-centric period.

Our new valuation (greater than double any conventional MMP within the {industry}) exhibits the boldness from the market — and perception from our buyers — within the want for a bridge throughout all of the chasms in cell that break experiences and forestall measurement.

Since my earliest days as an entrepreneur, I’ve been in awe of the ability of an open and linked web. Department has actually constructed the web of apps, and there’s a lot extra left for us to construct. This ardour and imaginative and prescient is now shared with a workforce of extraordinarily proficient those that now numbers greater than 500 throughout 16 Department workplaces across the globe. 

I wish to take a second to thank everybody who has labored to carry Department thus far. On your initiative, ardour, and dedication. As a workforce, we have now labored onerous to make the cell expertise higher for each smartphone consumer on the planet, and this new spherical of funding will create numerous alternatives to place our shared values into motion bringing a extra linked, open, and related ecosystem.

And, as we enter this new chapter of our enterprise, we’re all the time on the lookout for proficient, pushed, and passionate new teammates to hitch our workforce. For those who’d like a seat to assist change the way forward for cell, try profession alternatives at Department. Construct collectively. Develop collectively. Win collectively.