Rokt’s 2022 Decade in Review
10 years ago Rokt began its journey in Australia, looking to unleash the possibilities of ecommerce by delivering a more relevant customer experience during the transaction moment. Since then we’ve expanded our offices, talent, and technology around the world to give businesses the ability to unlock new streams of incremental revenue. Even as we’ve grown, we’ve stayed true to who we are, always striving to be a hyper-growth community of curious explorers, ready to unlock the world of ecommerce with great products and great people.
We’re so proud of the things we’ve done and are looking forward to the things that lie ahead. To celebrate our 10 years, take a look at 10 things that make Rokt rock.
1. Teaming up with your favorite brands
Bruce Buchanan, Rokt’s Founder & CEO, was leading a low-cost Asian airline called Jetstar, which is where he saw the untapped potential of taking consumers on a more relevant consumer journey. At our inception, we knew we had a product that was built to solve the relevancy problem and through continual research and development, we’ve been able to activate Rokt’s machine learning technology with some of the world’s leading ecommerce companies.
Rokt began making sparks in the entertainment industry with key partnerships like Ticketek, Australia’s leading ticketing distributor, beginning in 2012. We continued this momentum in 2015 when we partnered with Ticketmaster and expanded into new verticals and industries.
Since then, Rokt has powered over 5B+ transactions globally for 2,500+ of the world’s leading companies including (but not limited to) Uber, Fanatics, Live Nation, AMC Theatres, PayPal, Hulu, Staples, Lands’ End, and HelloFresh.
2. Transforming into a tech unicorn
From the beginning, we knew we needed to spread the word about Rokt, our mission, and the products that have advanced along the way. The news of our immense growth has broken on several publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Australia, and AdAge.
It’s been truly incredible to see how Rokt has driven successes for top-tier businesses. This past year, we teamed up with both Uber and AMC, among many other incredible brands, to aid them in reaching their relevancy and revenue goals. As shared in AdAge, Uber is expected to reach $1B in revenue by 2024, with the help of Rokt technology. Since AMC launched Rokt Ecommerce, it’s reported significant incremental revenue transactions as it sought out to create a more relevant experience for moviegoers.
3. Building security and privacy focused products
As part of our journey, we’ve kept data security and privacy at the forefront of our business offerings. When companies join Rokt’s ecosystem, we ensure their customers’ data is kept safe. We serve as a trusted intermediary between brands – both ecommerce partners’ first-party data and client data from advertisers are encrypted in-transit and at rest, stored logically segregated in a secure cloud environment.
Rokt is ISO 27001 certified and maintains regular SOC 2 reporting. We comply with all privacy regulations in the international markets we operate in, including the GDPR and CCPA. Rokt enforces a strict set of campaign policies aligned with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Providing a high-quality experience for the end customer is important to us, hence we expect both our Rokt Ecommerce and Rokt Ads clients to meet our quality guidelines and campaign policies for everything displayed on their sites.
4. Expanding around the world
Our first office in Sydney in 2012 was only the beginning. Since, we’ve opened additional locations around the world in New York City, London, Singapore, and Tokyo. Each of our locations brings a different strength to Rokt as we grow our international presence. Rokt’stars speak over 24 different languages and we’re unleashing relevancy in ecommerce in over 14 different markets globally. From Soho in New York City to Surry Hills in Sydney, our offices are a hub for collaboration and camaraderie. You may even see us on a train or a taxi in your city.
5. Growing our teams
There were only 10 employees when we first opened the Rokt doors. We now have 400 Rokt’stars across our global offices. Even in light of recent layoffs amongst top tech companies, we’ve continued hiring as reported by Forbes. Currently, there are 76 open roles in 14 different departments. Are you ready to become a Rokt’star? Check out our open positions here.
6. Embracing people-first transparency
One of the things most important to Rokt is maintaining a people-first workplace. 2 years ago, we began publishing our salaries to encourage fairness and equity. We always want to create an open and honest approach to the way individuals are compensated. Our Chief People Officer, Sarah Wilson, has spoken about Rokt’s approach in top publications like Business of Fashion and HR Dive stating that, “a public ‘career ladders’ document details the skills necessary for every role within the company, as well as the salary and stocks/equity associated with each position. Not only does this promote full transparency, but it ensures equality too. Employees in the same role receive identical compensation regardless of their gender, race, or negotiation skills.”
7. Enjoying the Ride
At Rokt, we’re on a group-journey and we want our teams to enjoy the ride along the way. To do so, we host an annual Global Kickoff Event (GKO) that brings together our offices from across the world to learn about our wins and losses of the year and outline the big moments that lie ahead. In recent years, we’ve traveled together to Thailand, Hawaii, and in 2023, we’ll be packing up our skis and heading to Whistler, Canada.
Additionally, to keep the excitement going as we grow, we hold a yearly company-wide hackathon, Rokt’athon, that encourages blue-sky thinking and out of the box ideas. Teams across all different departments workshop their ideas over a 24-hour period, present them at GKO, and they are voted on by the company. Rokt will then invest in making the winning ideas to make them a reality. This gives teams across the company the ability to explore their interests even if it falls under a different specialty.
8. Winning industry awards
We’ve strived to make Rokt a great place to build a career and we have had the pleasure of being awarded for our growth and culture throughout the years. In 2018, we caught the attention of Deloitte where we were named one of their fastest growing companies of the year. This was followed by recognition from USA Today in 2019 and Built In NYC in both 2020 and 2021.
In 2022 alone we were awarded as one of Built In NYC’s Best Companies to Work For, Inc. 5000’s Annual list of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies, and Crain’s New York Fast 50.
9. Giving back to be a Force for Good
At Rokt, we’re always pushing ourselves to be a Force for Good, one of our corporate core values. This means we actively invest in our people, our communities, and our culture. Both at a company-wide level and individual level, we accept the challenge to do more. In recent years we have partnered with nonprofits like Vital Voices, Teach for Australia, and have implemented charity-based donations into our ecommerce product with award-winning fundraising company, Pledge.
At an employee-level, we encourage all of our employees to take time to invest in the communities they are a part of and want to serve. We’ve had Rokt’stars attend weeks at summer camps for kids, organize in-office food drives, and so much more. Internally, we have a number of groups centered around creating a better world, like our Green Team. Their mission is to have a restorative impact on the surrounding environment and our team by implementing education and awareness initiatives, developing and operating Rokt offices to conserve resources, reducing pollution, and enhancing personal well-being.
Rokt offers community service leave for Rokt’stars to use their time to volunteer and credits back 50% of leave taken to volunteer.
10. Investing in the future of ecommerce
We’re ready to keep unleashing the potential of ecommerce and we truly believe that the best is still yet to come. Rokt is committed to investing in itself, its product offerings, and its talent. As part of this commitment, Rokt invests more than 50 cents of every dollar earned into research and development to continue to solve new ways of driving relevancy in ecommerce. We’ve already invested US$157M in R&D to adapt and continue to scale our business so we can continue on the hyper-growth trajectory we started on.
There is so much to celebrate over the past 10 years, and we’re ready to move into our next 10 with tenacity and excitement to unleash the possibilities for businesses through a more connected world of ecommerce. Thank you to our Rokt’stars, clients, investors, and partners for their ongoing support and joining us on our journey – we couldn’t have done it without you!
Are you ready to become a Rokt’star? Check out our open roles here.