Jellysmack Closes Deal to Acquire Analytics Startup AMA

Authentic Media Ascension (AMA) experienced a special birthday this year. Three years to the day that the YouTube data analytics platform was founded, it finalized a deal to be acquired by Jellysmack. 

The inked arrangement marks the second acquisition in the global creator company’s history following the procurement of machine learning video editing platform, Kamua in November 2021. 

Twenty-two year-old Mateo Price is AMA’s founder and CEO. As part of the buyout, Price has accepted a role at Jellysmack as Director of YouTube Development. In his role, he will work with Jellysmack’s product and partnerships teams to automate parts of AMA’s existing platform and better support Jellysmack’s creator partners.

Price founded AMA after launching his own sports oriented content site in his teenage years. Early on, he found himself drawn to the analytics and community development aspects of the creator economy. Eventually, he decided he could bring the most value by helping other creators better understand their data to grow their audiences, viewership, and revenue metrics. 

In order to get the ball rolling, Price started sending cold outreach messages to some of his favorite creators, offering to do deep data analysis for them and recommending practical, low bandwidth adjustments to increase revenue––and he offered to do it pro bono.

“I had a mentor who suggested that I reach out to a couple big YouTubers I know, and offer to work with them on their analytics to better understand their audiences,” Price says of the company’s origins. “So I just reached out saying ‘Hey, I’m part of your community. I’m good with data. I’d love to help you find the intersection between producing content that feels authentic to you while helping you better understand your audience and grow faster. Can we chat?’”

It worked. Price was able to secure several pilot projects with well established creators who had seven figure subscriber bases under their belts. 

That included YouTuber and productivity pundit Ali Abdaal, who boasts 2.8 million followers at time of press. Abdaal was able to increase his revenue by over 200% year over year after leveraging AMA’s data insights and agency services, as well as through a collaboration with the nascent venture project on an educational course.

Likewise, creator and basketball enthusiast Jesser was an early collaborator with AMA and saw similarly impressive results. Jesser successfully grew his YouTube subscriber base by over 50% within one year after partnering with AMA to better understand his channel’s data. Today, Jesser has nearly four million subscribers to his YouTube channel and has increased his revenue by more than 50%.

All in all, in the three years since its launch, AMA has helped its creator partners unlock more than $6 million in incremental revenue.

More recently, the startup connected with Jellysmack co-founder Michael Philippe and Chief Operations Officer Axel Demazy. At the time, AMA was ideating how to better productize its offerings in order to support more creators at scale. 

Needless to say, one thing led to another.

“That partnership led to a discussion about each of our visions for the future, and it turned out there was a lot of alignment.”

Mateo Price, founder of Authentic Media Ascension and Jellysmack’s director of YouTube development

Jellysmack ran pilots of AMA’s deep data analytics platform in order to hack growth for its extensive creator partner roster.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Once fully onboarded, Price says that he will initially focus on working with Jellysmack’s product and engineering teams to automate AMA’s key functionalities, as well as determine other applications of AMA’s data analytics solutions across the organization’s wide range of offerings for creators.

“If we automate what we do, we can use the data insights to support creators’ future content as well,” Price adds. 

AMA’s acquisition underscores the collaborative spirit of the creator economy in which the rise of self-made celebrities and increasing interest from entrepreneurs of all disciplines can achieve greater heights by bringing their respective strengths to the table, sharing knowledge, and working together. 

“In this industry, you cannot stay stagnant. We’re always looking to be as cutting-edge as possible with regards to platform optimization. Mateo clearly developed a successful YouTube optimization strategy and has an incredible data analytics skill set––it was obvious we wanted him helping our creators,” said Lauren Schinpper, vice president of corporate development at Jellysmack. “He’s built something exciting in a very short period of time.”

Having sold his first company at just 22 years old, Price reflected on this milestone occasion in his career, and how he knew Jellysmack was the right partner for Authentic Media Ascension in the long run. As it turns out, the two creator economy focused businesses shared an ethos about what constructive partnerships within the industry should look like.

“The conversation centered around determining how we build a really great offering to help YouTube creators grow,” Price reflects. “It’s about aligning incentives to make it a win-win relationship for everyone involved.”