In recent weeks, PayPal-owned Honey, which claims to find you the best coupon codes for a deal, has been at the center of controversy. The tool allegedly earned affiliates money by changing the attributes of product links that creators posted in their videos. At its heart, the problem was how affiliate links work and how the money goes to whoever has the last link when the user makes the purchase.
Former Vercel employee Steven Tey believes that the open source URL shortening and link tracking service Dub.co can solve this problem by removing the need to use coupon codes and embedding them in the link.
The company creates an attribution and affiliate product that creators can use to build their own links. And users will get discount only if they use this particular link.
“We want to make attribution much more transparent to creators as well as businesses to avoid situations like the Honey scandal, where anyone can steal attribution,” Tey said on a call with TechCrunch.
Tey started Dub.co while working at Vercel as an open source URL shortener. Added tracking links along the way. He built this project to better understand the products that Vercel was shipping. Over time, Dub.co became a full-fledged SaaS service. Tey left Vercel at the end of 2023 and started the company around the same time.
“There was a big problem with performance tracking to understand where our revenue was coming from. At Vercel, at the time, we didn’t know how our developer advocacy worked, such as creating articles and guides that translated into revenue. So that planted the seeds for Dub,” Tey said.
He added that after launching Dub.co, he realized the partner space was outdated and cluttered with few tools for customization. That’s when he realized there’s more to link tracking than URL shortening services.
While the company’s main source of revenue is businesses and businesses, it also offers a free program for users to shorten their links and track them. Specifically, the startup is working with the Malaysian government to use the open source side of the project to create a link shortening and tracking program for the authorities. In addition, companies like Twilio use the hosted SaaS version of Dub.co and customize it according to their needs to track their links, campaigns and events. In addition, YouTube channels such as Huberman Labs use Dub’s solution for affiliate tracking.
Dub.co launched a new product called Conversions this week, which can track real-time marketing clicks that turn into sign-ups or sales. The startup said this will help companies track detailed metrics like customer acquisition costs, retention rates and lifetime value to better understand marketing returns. Dub.co can also integrate with tools like Shopify and Stripe for better conversion tracking.
Tey noted that while Dub.co offers AI features, it doesn’t want them to take over core products. Currently, users can use AI to create custom reports or get title and description suggestions for different links. The startup also uses AI to automatically tag links in existing categories.
Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital, said Dub.co has an advantage over the competition with its open source nature, better user experience and design.
The company has raised $2 million from investors including OSS Capital. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch. Balaji Srinivasan; design service Framer’s founders Jorn van Dijk and Koen Bok. Former Facebook designer Soleio, who was an early supporter of Vercel, Perplexity and Figma. and Cal.com CEO Peer Richardson.
“Links are the foundation of the web — that combined with performance and the addressable market is huge, tens of billions at least,” Jacks told TechCrunch via email.
“By turning short links into performance engines, Dub can help marketers answer the age-old question, ‘What’s the ROI on your marketing spend?’ — backed by real-world conversion data.”
