Rubicon Project

the Rubicon Project is a group of industry-experienced, aggressive and passionate renegades dedicated to bringing a new level of efficiency to the fragmented Internet advertising space. As of January 2008, the company has raised $21 million in funding.

The founders of the Rubicon Project shook up the online advertising industry in 1998 when they created L90/adMonitor, one of the most successful Internet advertising platforms that served over 3,000 of the web’s most recognized sites, reaching 65% of the Internet population before DoubleClick acquired it.

$27 Billion was spent advertising online in 2007, yet it’s still too hard for websites to sell their ad space online. While Internet advertising is an explosive market, it is an incredibly inefficient one with advertisers spending money with 300+ disparate advertising networks worldwide (e.g. Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, HispanoClick and Adtegrity). the Rubicon Project’s web-based, self-serve solution gives any size website the most complete access to the total available advertising market and its smart matching technology does all the work to perfectly match each ad impression with the optimal money-making opportunity. the Rubicon Project is the new online advertising standard that makes it effortless for websites to generate the mad cash they've always dreamed of. And, it’s free to join.

Frank Addante, a serial entrepreneur, has a successful entrepreneurial track record. the Rubicon Project is Frank's 6th company. Before the age of 30, Frank started 5 companies, resulting in 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure (we call that one “a learning experience”) and his last venture, StrongMail Systems. Frank was the Founding CEO of StrongMail Systems, the leading email delivery infrastructure provider for thousands of companies worldwide, including Fox Sports/MSN, Ticketmaster, Williams Sonoma, FTD, Netflix and MySpace.com. Addante lead StrongMail from inception, to an initial cash-flow positive business, to becoming the market leader in less than 4 years, raising over $30 million in venture capital from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital (investors behind Google, Yahoo, Oracle, Cisco and Apple). But we digress…

Wait, did we mention that Addante was formerly Chief Technology Officer and technology Founder of L90, Inc., a publicly-held Internet advertising company? Yep, Frank was actively involved in sales, marketing and corporate development efforts leading to a $112 million IPO led by SG Cowen. He invented adMonitor™, one of the Internet's most successful advertising platforms for the Global 2000. adMonitor delivered over 8 billion ad transactions per month for over 3,000 customers and reached 65% of the worldwide Internet population. L90 reached a market cap of $500 million and adMonitor was later acquired by DoubleClick™.

Shortly after L90’s IPO, Frank left and founded Zondigo, a wireless and voice software company partnered with Intel. As an early pioneer of the Internet, Addante developed Starting Point, a search engine portal that became the 7th most popular Internet site from 1995-1997 and was acquired by CMGI/YesMail.com.

If you’re into awards and that kind of jazz, Frank was an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, was nominated for Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year award and has been quoted in publications such as Forbes, MSNBC, RedHerring, InformationWeek and the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley Business Journals. He serves on various boards of innovative technology and marketing companies and received his education in electrical and computer engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

• Things he likes to do: basketball, karate, surfing, running on the beach
• Favorite Quotation: "Keep it Simple"
• Favorite Food: Indian food, pizza, Portillo's, Diddy Riese cookies
• Favorite Charities: Make-A-Wish Foundation, Habitat for Humanity

Visit Frank Addante's Blog: http://www.FounderBlog.com