In this episode, Vladan speaks with Mitch Voskuilen — CEO and co-founder of Billy Grace, a fast-growing AI-powered marketing platform. Nobel recently partnered with Billy Grace to help expand its commercial team. Topics include how Billy Grace was founded in 2020, why marketers deserve more time for creativity, scaling through agency partnerships, and why now is the perfect time to join Billy Grace.

Vladan: Hello and welcome. We recently started our partnership with Billy Grace — they’ve asked us to help expand their commercial team. That’s why we’ve invited Mitch Voskuilen today to tell us more about Billy Grace and why it’s such an exciting place to work. Mitch, welcome.

Mitch: Thank you.

Vladan: Could you introduce yourself?

Mitch: Absolutely. My name is Mitch, one of the co-founders of Billy Grace. There are three of us who started the company together. My background is in digital marketing, where I’ve spent the past fifteen years. I started as a marketing specialist, moved into marketing management, spent eight years building a recruitment platform — so I’m quite familiar with the recruitment industry — then launched a marketing agency, and eventually developed Billy Grace.

Over the last decade, we witnessed a major shift in digital marketing. When I started my career, marketing was all about creativity — developing campaigns and memorable advertising. Over time, marketers increasingly became consumed by data. While data is important, I believe marketers create the most value through creativity.

That led us to ask a simple question: could we build an AI that automates the repetitive work marketers do every day, giving them more time to focus on creativity? We started building Billy Grace in 2020, officially launched the platform in 2022, and have been scaling rapidly ever since.

A little more about me: I live in Leiden, I love tennis and pretty much every sport involving a ball. I played tennis at a high level when I was younger before switching to recreational play. I also have a competitive sports mentality, which I believe defines both me and our company.

Vladan: That’s a great story. So you essentially experienced these challenges yourself while working in online marketing, and Billy Grace was born from solving those frustrations.

Mitch: Exactly. If I asked you to name a commercial you still remember from the past ten years, you probably wouldn’t talk about the campaign’s data. You’d remember it because it was funny, creative, or made an impact.

Vladan: The first one that comes to mind for me is the famous Dutch campaign “Even Apeldoorn bellen.”

Mitch: Exactly. Campaigns like that stick because they make you laugh or leave an impression. That’s how brands are built.

That’s also how I started my career: thinking creatively about how to communicate a message and connect with an audience. But over the past decade, marketers have been overwhelmed by data. Their focus shifted almost entirely to optimizing budgets and performance metrics, leaving little time to think about the actual marketing message.

As more and more marketing channels emerged, marketers became buried in dashboards and analytics.

Our vision is simple: marketers shouldn’t have to become data scientists. Data science should be handled by technology.

That’s why, back in 2020, we started building an AI capable of collecting all that data and making intelligent decisions, allowing marketers to return to what they do best: being creative.

Before ChatGPT, that sounded like a pretty unusual idea. After ChatGPT, the story suddenly became much easier to explain. Eventually, together with several experienced entrepreneurs — including former founders of HS — we launched the platform in 2022 and began scaling.

Vladan: So you’re really bringing back the Mad Men side of marketing.

Mitch: Exactly. Bringing creativity back into marketing is our mission.

We achieve that through an AI-driven marketing platform.

Initially, we focused on automation and AI. But another challenge quickly became clear. Companies invest enormous budgets in platforms like Google, Facebook and TikTok. Those platforms then report on their own performance, essentially grading their own homework.

Marketers are expected to combine all those different reports and somehow determine where their marketing budget is truly generating value. That has become incredibly complicated, and frankly, not always very accurate.

We wanted to solve that problem too.

Billy Grace provides an independent source of truth for marketing teams by measuring where every marketing euro actually performs — regardless of what the advertising platforms claim.

That’s what we call the marketing measurement side of our platform.

We combine both worlds — measuring marketing performance and automating marketing decisions — in one platform.

That’s Billy Grace.

Vladan: So you’re solving two of the biggest challenges marketers face today.

Mitch: I’d definitely say so.

From Building to Scaling

Vladan: Let’s go back to the beginning. How has the journey evolved since 2020?

Mitch: We started building the AI automation layer in 2020.

In January 2022, we officially founded the company after securing investment that allowed us to further develop the platform. That’s also when we added the marketing measurement capabilities.

I’d say we truly entered the market commercially around June 2023, when we launched our active go-to-market strategy.

So we’ve really been selling and scaling commercially for just over two years.

Vladan: Where does Billy Grace stand today?

Mitch: That’s a broad question!

Today, we’re a team of around forty people and we’re actively hiring because we’re growing rapidly.

Over the past twelve months we’ve grown fivefold as a business. About 85% of our revenue still comes from the Benelux, but we also have customers in the Nordics, Germany, the UK and the United States.

Our primary growth engine is agencies. That’s really at the heart of our commercial strategy.

Our ambition is to become the European market leader and eventually expand even further.

Vladan: And how about the numbers?

Mitch: We don’t publicly disclose revenue because we’re investor-backed.

What I can say is that we grew five times over the past year, seven times the year before that, and eight times the year before that.

That gives you a good idea of the pace we’re growing at.

Agency partnerships play a major role in that success.

The Benelux has an incredibly strong agency ecosystem. Many major brands outsource their marketing to agencies, making them highly scalable partners for us.

Our platform is intuitive, but also sophisticated. There’s a tremendous amount of data behind it, and users need to understand how the AI works.

That’s why we invest heavily in educating agencies. They’ve spent years working with platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat. Billy Grace introduces a completely new way of working.

“Our vision is that marketers shouldn’t have to become data scientists. We’re bringing creativity back to marketing.”

Selling Through Agencies: Relationship-Driven Sales

Vladan: Unlike many SaaS or AI companies, you primarily sell through agencies rather than directly to end customers. What’s it like working in that environment?

Mitch: Marketing is one of the fastest-changing industries in the world. If you want to see where innovation happens, marketing is a great place to look.

We’re also operating at the forefront of AI innovation, which makes it an incredibly dynamic environment.

Selling through agencies is interesting because it’s highly relationship-driven.

Our licenses don’t start at €50 per month — they start around €500 per month. That means this isn’t transactional sales.

You’re building long-term partnerships.

Our salespeople work closely with agencies, teaching them how to use Billy Grace and helping them successfully introduce it to their own clients.

That requires deep product knowledge and genuine relationships with specialists.

Vladan: So your salespeople regularly visit agencies in person?

Mitch: Absolutely.

Ironically, in a world increasingly driven by AI, human interaction becomes even more valuable.

Our sales team consists of Partner Managers. Their role is to help agencies understand both how to sell Billy Grace and how to get the most from the platform.

That happens face-to-face as well as online. We believe in maintaining a healthy balance.

Why Join Billy Grace?

Vladan: If someone is already working in marketing, why should they consider joining Billy Grace?

Mitch: Marketing is undergoing an enormous transformation.

Marketers now have a choice.

They can continue focusing primarily on data, or they can return to creativity — creating campaigns, telling stories and building brands.

Billy Grace empowers that second path.

We combine complex data so marketers can focus on what they do best.

If you want to shape the future of marketing and help transform an industry, Billy Grace is an exciting place to be.

You do have to enjoy challenging the status quo and disrupting established markets.

That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Vladan: That sounds incredibly exciting. Where do you see Billy Grace in the future?

Mitch: Becoming the European market leader is our biggest ambition.

We’ve built a strong position in the Benelux, but international expansion across Europe is our next major focus.

At one point we also considered expanding beyond Europe, but increasing regulations mean Europe will remain our priority for now.

There are around 25 million marketers worldwide.

Today, we help only a tiny fraction of them.

That means there’s still an enormous opportunity ahead of us.

We’ll continue developing AI capabilities that empower marketers and help them focus on creativity.

Ultimately, that’s how we’ll become Europe’s leading marketing platform.

Vladan: So it’s really about fulfilling that mission.

Mitch: Exactly. That’s what drives us.

“It feels like we’re at the beginning of the hockey stick curve. The product has proven itself — now it’s time to accelerate growth.”

Vladan: Why is now the right time to join Billy Grace?

Mitch: Every stage of a company’s journey has something exciting about it.

In the early days, everything is about building and pivoting. That’s fun in its own way.

Today, we’re entering a new phase: professionalisation.

It feels like we’re standing at the beginning of the hockey stick.

The product has proven itself.

Our go-to-market strategy has proven itself.

Our business model has proven itself.

The platform has proven itself.

Now it’s time to accelerate.

That’s what makes this stage so exciting.

We’re no longer experimenting every single day.

We know exactly how to scale.

The biggest growth is still ahead of us.

Vladan: Perfect. Mitch, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing the Billy Grace story. I’m sure the future looks incredibly bright, and we’re proud to be part of that journey.

Mitch: Thank you. I appreciate it.