The Martech Weekly (TMW) and Alium have formed a strategic partnership to disrupt traditional market intelligence research methods and transform the Martech decision-making landscape

The Martech Weekly (TMW), a Melbourne-based global leader in Martech news, has today officially announced its partnership with Alium, a New York-headquartered buyer intelligence platform that shares what end-users are really saying about enterprise tech.

Globally, marketers have spent up big on shiny new Martech, navigating the minefield of 14,000-plus solutions. Indeed, many marketers have rushed into ill-advised and expensive purchases, fearing their business was at imminent risk of being outcompeted by earlier-adopting competitors.

How we got here

Marketers are experts in marketing, not technology. Even if they have above-average tech literacy, C-suite decision-makers are usually not entirely confident about being able to identify the appropriate solutions for their organisation’s needs.

Sensibly, CMOs and executives typically seek expert advice before making a significant Martech investment.

But that ‘expert advice’ is frequently of questionable provenance and reliability.

The data around the worryingly low utilisation of Martech suggests that something is going wrong somewhere along the line.

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This is where prominent tech-industry players Alium and TMW have spotted a gap in the market. Their new joint venture will provide reassuringly transparent market intelligence. Market intelligence that prioritises providing honest customer reviews to those charged with making high-stakes purchasing decisions.

Introducing the new generation of market intelligence disruptors

Juan Mendoza is an Australian entrepreneur based in Melbourne. He worked for The Lumery, Conversionry and Fusion MusicTech before starting a marketing and technology newsletter at the height of the Covid lockdowns. Four years on, The Martech Weekly (TMW) is a fast-growing company whose content is avidly consumed by senior figures at some of the world’s largest media, technology, consulting, advertising and research companies. (Think Google, Facebook, The New York Times and many major global consulting brands.) TMW has an increasingly global presence, with customers and subscribers in over 65 countries.

Jonathan Sherry is a seasoned entrepreneur based in New York. In 2008, he co-founded CB Insights. Over the course of his 11+ years as its COO, he built and led the company to become the venture capital industry’s preeminent source of research and intelligence. In 2022, Sherry launched Alium, a buyer intelligence platform providing unfiltered access to what buyers are saying about enterprise tech. Alium is backed by Greycroft and Primary Venture Partners.

The introductory email that sparked a promising enterprise

Both Mendoza and Sherry believe the market-intelligence behemoths are torn between conflicting financial incentives.

Mendoza explains the venture was born out of a long-simmering frustration with the status quo. “What have CMOs who want a worthwhile insight into the capacities and performance of a marketing technology typically done?” he asks.

“Maybe they pay a consultant $50,000 to take responsibility for the decision. Perhaps they just buy from a brand in the upper right quadrant, believing they’ll never get fired for doing that. Whatever is happening, it’s not working. Until relatively recently, businesses were spending ever more on Martech but then failing to make much use of it. Inevitably, companies have now reacted by reducing their spend on Martech. That’s understandable, but short-sighted.”

After Mendoza published an essay highlighting, yet again, the unsatisfactoriness of the current arrangements, Sherry emailed him out of the blue. First, an online friendship and then a business plan was born.

“Like Juan, I’ve long had issues with the established players,” Sherry adds. “They clip the ticket at various points, taking money from both tech buyers and sellers. This leads to conflicting incentives, which degrades the quality of the analysis they provide.”

What the future looks like

Mendoza and Sherry have concluded the $50 billion technology research industry is ripe for disruption. Both have runs on the board, so it would be risky for complacent incumbents to assume they have little to fear.

With negotiations now finalised, Mendoza and Sherry are excited to announce their new joint venture. Here’s some further information on how the TMW-Alium tie-up will function.

Alium, a new entrant into the buyer intelligence space, interviews experts with first-hand experience purchasing, implementing, and using marketing technology. Alium compiles this data to provide unparalleled insights into the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of various marketing technologies from the people whose opinions matter the most: practitioners.

TMW keeps busy marketing technology leaders ahead of the industry with their Wednesday Martech briefing and in-depth Sunday essays. Additionally, TMW identifies the most promising and innovative marketing technologies each year with the TMW 100, ranking the 100 most innovative marketing technologies globally from 1st to 100th place, decided by the marketing technology community and a panel of nine global experts.

From July 1, Alium and TMW will join forces to bring greater clarity to how marketing technology is being used, bought and sold. This will give marketing-industry executives an unprecedented, long-overdue understanding of which Martech tools are worth the outlay.

“We’ve settled on the slogan, ‘Transforming the Martech decision-making landscape’, ” Mendoza says.

“And that’s exactly what we’re about to do,” adds Sherry.

The Martech Weekly (TMW) is a media company that creates content consumed by leading marketing and technology executives in more than 65 countries. TMW also hosts the TMW 100, an industry-first awards program recognising the most innovative marketing tech companies from 1st to 100th place globally.

Alium optimises enterprise technology purchasing for buyers and sellers through actionable zero-party intelligence that is shared by both parties. Buyers leverage Alium to discover, select and evaluate vendors that meet their needs. Vendors use Alium to drive transparent, measurable ROI for their go-to-market teams. We help sales teams source and close more deals. We help customer success teams avoid churn and drive upsell. We help marketers optimise ad spend and unlock competitive intel. Alium is backed by Primary and Greycroft, and is built by the team that founded CB Insights.

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