Exclusive: Arthur Querou, CEO of Vibe, Talks about the Blockbuster Acquisition by Walmart

**Jeremy Bloom** (0:00)
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**Ari Paparo** (1:26)
All right, welcome to Marketecture. We have an emergency special bonus podcast straight from Cannes with the man of the week, Arthur from Vibe, CEO of Vibe. Arthur, how does it feel?

**Arthur Querou** (1:38)
Surreal. Surreal, to be honest.
We, of course, so for those who might not know, we announced that vibe.co is about to be acquired by Walmart. And yeah, we worked so hard with the Walmart team to be able to announce that in Cannes, like within actually quite a pretty short time frame. And being able to announce it here at home for me is...

**Ari Paparo** (2:04)
For you, yeah.

**Arthur Querou** (2:05)
Yeah, so it's pretty amazing. And you know, the reaction, the market reaction has been phenomenal. So we're super, super happy about all that.

**Ari Paparo** (2:16)
So how long, Arthur, what's the story in brief? Like how long have you been doing Vibe? It feels very short, like five years. And then tell us about the prehistory, because you were in a different startup that you kind of sold to fund this.

**Arthur Querou** (2:29)
Yes, correct. So we started Vibe, like working on Vibe, I would say, in 2022 while we were doing KMTX. And Vibe is pretty much a spinoff basically of KMTX. So KMTX was a keyword targeting solution based in France, was pretty much a leader in that niche space in France. And when we saw the potential of Vibe, we basically sold KMTX to fund Vibe ourselves. And so we sold KMTX to SeedTag.
And yeah, and since then we've been operating super hard on Vibe, and which led us to today.

**Ari Paparo** (3:06)
And a huge European success story. So the team's French, based in France. And most of your VCs were European, right?

**Arthur Querou** (3:14)
Yes, correct. So the tech and product team is based in France.
Both my co-founder and I were based in the US. And all the go-to-market teams are based in the US. We solely operate in the US., by the way. But there's definitely a concentration of talents when it comes to ad tech in France, like, you know, with all the past success stories, with like, Brightio, Teeds, et cetera, et cetera.

**Ari Paparo** (3:35)
Yeah, French definitely punches above its weight in ad tech. You don't see that many, you know, sort of German startups that go global.
So it's a great story. Now, I know you're not disclosing the price. The Wall Street Journal reported 1.2 billion plus incentives. It's interesting. The one thing I will say about the price is that I looked today and, you know, Mountain's market cap. First of all, do you see Mountain as a comp, as a direct competitor?

**Arthur Querou** (4:00)
I think the market sees us as competitors, definitely.
I think the reality is a bit different than that. We tend to operate on, like, different sectors in a very different way as well, the way we, like, go to market, et cetera. Yes and no. I won't do some language that some other companies use, but in a way, we are, and in a way, we're not.

**Ari Paparo** (4:21)
Yeah. So, their market cap is roughly a little shy of 700 million this morning. So, it's kind of interesting because I think you also don't disclose your revenue, but like, the last time you posted to LinkedIn about your run rate, was it 200 million ARR when you publicly disclosed last time?

**Arthur Querou** (4:40)
227, I think, was the latest number.

**Ari Paparo** (4:45)
So, growing really fast, but maybe smaller than in gross revenue, than Mountain in all likelihood. And we don't know what the final price was, but it's a big price. That's all we know.