Frank Addante

Life and Work

Frank Addante (born 1976) is a serial entrepreneur, early Internet pioneer and well-known blogger. Addante has a successful entrepreneurial track record, having started 5 companies, resulting in one IPO and two acquisitions.

Entrepreneurial career

Addante founded [http://www.rubiconproject.com the Rubicon Project] in early 2007. As the founding CEO, he set a mission for the company to automate the massive, yet highly inefficient online advertising market.

Prior to the Rubicon Project Addante served as the Founding CEO of [http://www.strongmail.com StrongMail Systems] , the leading email and digital messaging infrastructure provider for thousands of companies worldwide, including Fox Sports/MSN, Ticketmaster, Williams Sonoma, FTD, Real Networks, Netflix, AAA and Stanford University.

StrongMail Systems was incubated by Addante and Associates, LLC, a technology incubator company created by Addante in 2001 during the dot-com fallout, a time when many were reluctant to start new companies. Addante incubated and then 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).

Addante was formerly Chief Technology Officer and technology Founder of L90, Inc., a publicly-held Internet advertising company. Addante was actively involved in sales, marketing and corporate development efforts leading to a $112 million IPO led by SG Cowen. Addante invented adMonitor, one of the Internet's top Internet advertising applications for the Global 2000. adMonitor delivered over 8 billion ad transactions per month for over 3,000 customers, reached 65% of the worldwide Internet population and produced over $75M in revenues. adMonitor was acquired by DoubleClick in October, 2001.

Shortly after L90’s IPO, Addante left the company and was the Founding CEO of Zondigo, a wireless and voice software company partnered with Intel. Addante successfully raised a second round of financing for Zondigo in 2001 and shortly thereafter, he returned the money to the company's investors, realizing that the wireless market opportunity was quickly declining at the time. Zondigo was later acquired by Voxicom. 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.

In addition to starting his own companies, Addante helped Ticketmaster gain entry into the $10 Billion ticketing resale market by leading the creation and development of a very high profile ticketing auction platform called [http://www.ticketmaster.com/ticketexchangehome/?tm_link=tm_exchange_header TicketExchange] . TicketExchange now services millions of consumers at Ticketmaster.com.

Addante received his education in electrical and computer engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and serves on various boards of innovative technology and marketing companies including [http://www.strongmail.com StrongMail Systems] , [http://www.mobilestorm.com mobileStorm] , [http://www.answeru.com AnswerU] , [http://www.neovisionlabs.com Neovision] , [http://www.webtigo.com Webtigo] , [http://www.flukiest.com Flukiest.com] , [http://www.whizler.com Whizler.com] and [http://www.rubiconproject.com the Rubicon Project] .

A Chicago native, Frank lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Rita, and spends his free time mentoring young entrepreneurs, surfing, practicing martial arts and running.

Companies

* Starting Point Directory - Internet search engine and directory
* [http://www.founderblog.com/2006/05/startup-20-internet-is-coming-how-will_08.html ReaXions] - Web development & marketing technology company
* [http://www.founderblog.com/2006/05/startup-30-internet-advertising-is.html L90, Inc.] - Publicly-held Internet advertising company ( [http://www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/Registrant.asp?CIK=1095158 LNTY] )
* [http://www.founderblog.com/2006/05/startup-40-wireless-is-next-big-thing.html Zondigo, Inc.] - Wireless and voice application software company
* [http://www.strongmail.com StrongMail Systems, Inc.] - Email and digital messaging infrastructure software company

Awards & Media

Addante 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 [http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2006/01/31/emc-ntag-startups-cx_tt_0201straightup.html Forbes] , [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5032712/ MSNBC] , [http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=10745&hed=The+new+VC+resume RedHerring] , [http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/wireless/features/zondigo/ InformationWeek] and the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley Business Journals.

* Named a Finalist for [http://www.strongmail.com/company/news-and-events/press_052406.php Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year]

* Nominated for [http://www.inc.com/entrepreneur/2006/profile/index.php?addante151 Inc. Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year]

Patents

A prolific inventor, Addante has also filed a number of patents:
* [http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?LANG=ENG&DBSELECT=PCT&SERVER_TYPE=19&SORT=1201651-KEY&TYPE_FIELD=256&IDB=0&IDOC=968065&C=0&ELEMENT_SET=BASICHTML-ENG&RESULT=4&TOTAL=4&START=1&DISP=25&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,PA,ABSUM-ENG&SEARCH_IA=US2001000617&QUERY=Addante Method and Apparatus for Selecting And Delivering Internet Based Advertising]
* [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220020004733%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20020004733&RS=DN/20020004733 Method and apparatus for transaction tracking over a computer network]
* [http://www.freshpatents.com/Email-delivery-system-using-metadata-on-emails-to-manage-virtual-storage-dt20051201ptan20050267941.php Email delivery system using metadata on emails to manage virtual storage]
* [http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?LANG=ENG&DBSELECT=PCT&SERVER_TYPE=19&SORT=1201651-KEY&TYPE_FIELD=256&IDB=0&IDOC=1096096&C=0&ELEMENT_SET=BASICHTML-ENG&RESULT=2&TOTAL=4&START=1&DISP=25&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,PA,ABSUM-ENG&SEARCH_IA=US2004004305&QUERY=Addante Email Using Queues In Non-Persistent Memory]

References

[http://www.founderblog.com/svbj_frank_addante.pdf Silicon Valley Business Journal] profile on Frank Addante (PDF)

[http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/11/07/smallb1.html Silicon Valley Business Journal] profile on Frank Addante (HTML)

[http://www.founderblog.com/video/EOY.mov Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Gala, 2006] video interview

External links

Frank Addante's [http://www.FounderBlog.com FounderBlog.com] - http://www.FounderBlog.com
* [http://www.socaltech.com/interview:_frank_addante,_strongmail_systems/s-0000383.html 2004 Interview with Frank Addante on starting StrongMail]
* [http://meetinnovators.com/2007/10/08/frank-addante-from-the-rubicon-project/ 2007 Interview with Frank Addante on his business life and starting the Rubicon Project]