Frank Addante: Creating a Culture of Innovation

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>> Vince Thompson: Hi, welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Frank Adante is a 5 times start-up founder who has guided one of his companies to IPL and 2 others to sales. Now, he is working full time to put some serious cash into your pocket. How? He is the CEO and cofounder of the Rubicon Project, a company helping web publishers big and small better monetize their online assets through advertising. Frank, tell us about Rubicon Project, what it is that you do?

>> Frank Adante: We're an internet advertising technology company. We created this category called ad network optimization. The short version of what we do is we help websites make more money from their unsold ad space while eliminating all the work that they have to do in managing ad networks. Today's internet has changed. Up to 80 percent of any website's ad inventory can go unsold by their websites directly, and that unsold ad space goes to anywhere from 3 to 400 ad networks that are out there establishing relationships of advertisers. We take out all that confusion and we help these guys make more money.

>> Vince Thompson: So that's your greater mission, is making it easier for advertisers to spend their money online?

>> Frank Adante: Our mission statement is to keep the internet free and fuel its growth by making advertising an effortless source of income for publishers. So, imagine an internet where publishers couldn't make money from adverting. Alright, bloggers couldn't leave their jobs, sites like MySpace may not exist because they wouldn't have a revenue stream. So what would happen to that internet? Would we see less services? Would we see less information? Would we have to pay for services on the internet? So that's sort of the, you know, the more global mission of the company.

>> Vince Thompson: So, you're a 31-year-old guy, dropped out of college, success with 5 companies, very, very interesting story. What is it--how did you get the entrepreneurial spirit in your blood?

>> Frank Adante: When I was in college, I figure it was just--you have the drive to innovate, the drive to do something new. I never really considered my self an entrepreneur until recently. What I enjoy most is working with the team and I feel like anything that this team does, we can accomplish and be successful with. Community is something that's really important to our culture, so we do community service day regularly. And this team works with the same level of tenacity and focus and ambition that they do in doing these community service events that they do with the company. So it's--I think it's really the team part of it that drives me.

>> Vince Thompson: How do you create a culture of innovation?

>> Frank Adante: First you have to commit to it, right? You make it a priority. We have, you know, 11 values that we govern our company by. The first one is innovation. It's injected into the veins of everyone in the company. The second is to make sure that you have enough capital to invest in innovation. Technology is expensive, so again that's one of the reasons that we went out and raised 22 million dollars. In terms of culture, the only way to truly innovate is to make mistakes.

>> Vince Thompson: Great business, growing a hundred percent a month, what scares you?

>> Frank Adante: As you grow and as you have more wins, it makes it more difficult to celebrate some of the smaller ones, so we've almost become a little bit immune to some of the success and we can't continue to grow at a hundred percent every month, right? That's unrealistic. As we bring new people into the company that haven't been here for the 3 months, the 6 months who can't enjoy closing a big deal as an example, you know, their first month of being here and they have to start with a smaller deal and then a medium-sized deal. Will the team appreciate and celebrate that little win?

>> Vince Thompson: Is there anything that you see as bad that needs to be removed from a business right away, needs to be killed, or is there anything that you--and at the same time, is there something that you see that this is absolutely a good consistent theme that needs to be part of every business?

>> Frank Adante: Things to focus on? Great people, right. Not necessary great resumes but great people. People that wanna win, people that take pride in their work, people that work well with other people, I think those people will create an incredibly successful organization and I think focusing more on that, encouraging more of that, promoting more of that and trying to teach more of that in the way of team development, I think that's an area that people can focus.

>> Vince Thompson: Is the future of advertising automated? Will the sales guy survive in the future?

>> Frank Adante: I think a large portion of this industry needs to be automated. Can it be completely automated? No. Advertising is also emotional, right? I mean, imagine the times where you sit on the sofa with your family, I don't know if you have kids, you see a commercial and it makes you cry, it makes you smile, right? That piece of the business can never be automated.

>> Vince Thompson: Frank Adante, CEO and cofounder of Rubicon Project. Thanks so much for being on Dog and Pony. As always, if you have questions, comments or ideas for guest, please shoot us an email. You can do so at info at dogandpony.com. I'm Vince Thompson, thanks for watching.

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