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Interviews

The Structured Playbook for Ramping Up Digital Marketing

The Structured Playbook for Ramping Up Digital Marketing

How to Build a Customer Feedback Engine with Enquire CEO Matt Bahr

How to Build a Customer Feedback Engine with Enquire CEO Matt Bahr

The Ebbs and Flows of Scaling a Startup with Loop CEO Jonathan Poma

The Ebbs and Flows of Scaling a Startup with Loop CEO Jonathan Poma

The Case for DTC Customization with Prose Co-Founder Paul Michaux

The Case for DTC Customization with Prose Co-Founder Paul Michaux

How to Leverage Sustainability to Drive Revenue Growth

How to Leverage Sustainability to Drive Revenue Growth

How to Scale a DTC Growth Agency with Common Thread’s Taylor Holiday

How to Scale a DTC Growth Agency with Common Thread’s Taylor Holiday

Building Web3-Enabled Commerce Engines with Novel CEO Roger Beaman

Building Web3-Enabled Commerce Engines with Novel CEO Roger Beaman

The Future of Unified Commerce with Violet CEO Brandon Schulz

The Future of Unified Commerce with Violet CEO Brandon Schulz

Unlocking Brand Design & Development with Doris Dev’s Justin Seidenfeld

Unlocking Brand Design & Development with Doris Dev’s Justin Seidenfeld

Why Shogun Built a "Head" for "Headless" with Co-Founder Nick Raushenbush

Why Shogun Built a "Head" for "Headless" with Co-Founder Nick Raushenbush

Leveraging Reviews as a Growth Engine with Junip CEO Stuart Arsenault

Leveraging Reviews as a Growth Engine with Junip CEO Stuart Arsenault

Tactical Lessons from Scaling HelloFresh with CEO Dominik Richter

Tactical Lessons from Scaling HelloFresh with CEO Dominik Richter

The Next-Gen Operating System for CPG with Cresicor CEO Alex Whatley

The Next-Gen Operating System for CPG with Cresicor CEO Alex Whatley

The Taika Playbook: Designing Custom R&D Engines

The Taika Playbook: Designing Custom R&D Engines

Influencer Marketing & Gen-Z Community with TBH CEO Elena Guberman

Influencer Marketing & Gen-Z Community with TBH CEO Elena Guberman

MuteSix Field Guide: How to Unlock Your Brand’s Optimal Ad Strategy

MuteSix Field Guide: How to Unlock Your Brand’s Optimal Ad Strategy

Cutting Acquisition Costs and Democratizing Data with Disco's Conner Sherline

Cutting Acquisition Costs and Democratizing Data with Disco's Conner Sherline

Headless Upgrades and Category Dominance with Builder’s Steve Sewell

Headless Upgrades and Category Dominance with Builder’s Steve Sewell

How to Build a Luxury DTC Brand with Last Crumb CEO Matt Jung

How to Build a Luxury DTC Brand with Last Crumb CEO Matt Jung

GTM Tools and Driving Reliable Revenue with ShipBob’s Casey Armstrong

GTM Tools and Driving Reliable Revenue with ShipBob’s Casey Armstrong

Leveraging Automation and Socializing Stacks with Alloy CEO Sara Du

Leveraging Automation and Socializing Stacks with Alloy CEO Sara Du

Loyalty Trends and DTC Referral Flywheels with Smile CEO Mike Rossi

Loyalty Trends and DTC Referral Flywheels with Smile CEO Mike Rossi

Angel Investing, Growth Tactics, and eComm Stacks with James Beshara

Angel Investing, Growth Tactics, and eComm Stacks with James Beshara

Networking Flywheels and Flexible Financing with Settle CEO Alek Koenig

Networking Flywheels and Flexible Financing with Settle CEO Alek Koenig

Designing Zero to One Growth Funnels with Julian Shapiro

Designing Zero to One Growth Funnels with Julian Shapiro

Jeff Chang on Growth Funnels, Acquisition Playbooks, and Rapid Testing

Jeff Chang on Growth Funnels, Acquisition Playbooks, and Rapid Testing

Sahil Bloom on Content Strategy, Brand Voice, and Audience Growth

Sahil Bloom on Content Strategy, Brand Voice, and Audience Growth

Data Paralysis and DTC Growth Levers with Source Medium’s Feifan Wang

Data Paralysis and DTC Growth Levers with Source Medium’s Feifan Wang

ObviBackboneHiyaImmiMilaKitsch
info

How it works (for brands)

Automatically find winning ads from top brands

Stop coming up with ads from scratch or going through ad libraries by hand.

Automatically find winning ads across the internet with filters like time running (2+ weeks), like to comment ratio (10:1+), revenue ($100M+), platform (Shopify), & more.

Replaces AdSpy & Foreplay.

Automatically find winning ads from top brands

Copy winning ads with AI

Picking the right creative (from your library of 10,000 files) to show during your (1 minute) script is an extremely tedious puzzle game.

Instead, swipe right or left on ready-to-run ads generated by AI (based off winning ads we automatically find for you).

Uses AI to layer videos from your Creative Library, do captions, & generate voiceovers (powered by OpenAI Voice Engine which we have exclusive access to).

Copy winning ads with AI

Optimize winning ads with AI

No more waiting weeks for reshoots (and not being able to properly iterate).

Take 1 perfect source video and instantly turn it into 20 videos with AI.

A/B test hook, story, & call-to-action to find the best messaging and improve ad performance.

Optimize winning ads with AI

What they're saying

Backbone
"Manually searching through ad libraries was eating up hours of our time. Icon's intelligent filters instantly surface winning ads from successful brands."
Maneet Khaira

Maneet Khaira

CEO, Backbone

Products

Admaker(for Marketers, Creative Strategists, Editors, Producers)

Get ready-to-run ads (uses AI to A/B test variants, layer videos from your Creative Library, do captions, & generate voiceovers).

Admaker
Adspy
(replaces AdSpy, Foreplay)

Detect winning ads, convert them to templates with AI, & use said template to get ready-to-run ads in Admaker.

Adspy
Creative Library
(replaces Google Drive, Frame, Air, Recharm)

Store, tag, create, & split videos with AI.

Creative Library
UGC Marketplace
(replaces Billo)

Get videos (AI or real) for your Creative Library.

UGC Marketplace
Creative Analytics
(replaces Motion)

See which ads are winning & get “suggested”, ready-to-run ads in Admaker.

Creative Analytics

Story

Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
Hi there, I'm Kennan!
Growing up, my dream was to be a pro gamer: this felt within reach in high school once I ranked top 200 North America in League of Legends (out of 100M+ players globally).
Despite this, I needed to support myself so I went to college and started learning to code. Coding came naturally (especially with 100 hour weeks) and I was soon skipping class to work at places like Hulu and Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency). Realizing that being paid to work full-time (vs. paying to go to school) sounded quite nice, I dropped out after 1 year and joined Pinterest.
After Pinterest, I started a company called Skio which does subscription management software for brands on Shopify. In just 3 years, we've partnered with 1000+ brands (Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, KraveBeauty, Boba Tea Protein), reached $10M+ ARR (+profitable), and built an amazing team of 50.
With advancements in generative AI (video specifically), I saw an opportunity to help brands & creators bring their stories to life exponentially faster and make marketing much better (hence Icon).
I love learning how we can help better. Feel free to reach out anytime at kennan@icon.me.
Founders Fund

Founders Fund

Icon Investor
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is a venture capital firm. Its partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, Flexport, Airbnb and Stripe.
Ron Shah

Ron Shah

Icon Investor
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
Ron Shah
CEO, Co-founder at Obvi, Co-host at Chew On This, Managing Partner at Gaas for SaaS.
Roman Khan

Roman Khan

Icon Investor
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
Roman Khan
President, Founder at Peak21, CMO at Raycon, CMO at Know Beauty, CMO, Co-founder at Linjer, CMO at Nutrition Kitchen.
Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
Yunyu Lin

Yunyu Lin

Founding Board Member
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Yunyu Lin
Head of AI at Ramp.
Previously: CEO, Co-founder at Cohere (acquired by Ramp), Nuro, Facebook, Y Combinator S20, Duke (dropout).
Kevin Jin

Kevin Jin

Engineering
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Kevin Jin
Previously: CTO at Kalder, Compound Labs, Robinhood, Rippling, Impira, Flexport, Google, Tesla, TSM, Vanderbilt.

Why us

Track record of things that can't be faked

Icon is the best team helping brands create winning ads with AI.

Our CEO/Founder (who is writing this, sorry for writing in 3rd person) brings experience from Skio, Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), & Y Combinator S20 (solo founder).

At Skio (subscription management software for brands on Shopify), he was CEO/Founder of the company from 2021 to 2024 helping grow revenue from $0 to $10M+ ARR in 3 years (w/ 90% margins) and a team of 50 (on $8.4M raised). Skio is profitable and still growing >100% YoY.

Our tech investors include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Kevin Hartz (A*, Eventbrite), Max Altman (Saga), Alex Botez (Chess), as well as founders & executives of OpenAI, Ramp, Flexport, Pika, Karat, & Cognition.

Our D2C investors include Ron Shah & Ash Melvani (Obvi), Roman Khan, Nick Shackelford, Jimmy Kim (Sendlane), Kevin Lee (Immi), Justin Mares (Kettle & Fire), Steph Liu (Levitate), Sara Du (Alloy), Jason Wong, as well as founders of Eight Sleep, Yotpo, Siena AI, Replo, Novel, Parker, GR0, DCL Logistics, Aftersell, Platter, Openborder, Prescient AI, Daasity, & more.

Our team has also worked with 1000+ brands like Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, Bulletproof, 100 Thieves, Vega, KOS, KITSCH, True Botanicals, mindbodygreen, Transparent Labs, GHOST, Wild One, OpenStore, The Nue Co., Immi, DRMTLGY, Boba Tea Protein, KraveBeauty, Glamnetic, Doe Lashes, Magic Mind, Remedy Organics, & Siete Foods.

Focused on helping brands create winning ads

Icon is focused on helping brands create winning ads vs. also juggling the underlying AI tech.

We believe our approach is fundamentally better because we're free to choose the best technology partner for a specific job.

To illustrate this, maybe one AI-video partner specializes in face closeups while another partner specializes in body movements (where face doesn't matter as much).

If we built all underlying technology in-house, it would create a fundamental conflict of interest where we can't offer a competitor's tool (that might be better) without losing revenue.

Products
Icon

Other options

Creative Library (replaces Google Drive, Frame, Air, Recharm)
Store, tag, create, & split videos with AI.
check
x
UGC Marketplace (replaces Billo)
Get videos (AI or real) for your Creative Library.
check
x
Admaker (for Marketers, Creative Strategists, Editors, Producers)
Get ready-to-run ads (uses AI for hook A/B testing, B-roll video layering, captions, & voiceovers).
check
x
Adspy (replaces AdSpy, Foreplay)
Automatically find winning ads from top brands (on Meta & TikTok), convert them to templates with AI, & use said templates to get ready-to-run ads in Admaker.
check
x
Creative Analytics (replaces Motion)
See which ads are winning & get "suggested", ready-to-run ads in Admaker.
check
x

Ready to create winning ads with AI?