April 29th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Frank Addante on Showoff Selection Panel (0)

Rubicon Project was voted ‘Best in Show’ at Twiistup 3 by our attendees. Naturally we felt that the Founder of the winning company should help us determine the next group of Showoffs. Hence our 3rd member of the Showoff Selection Panel, Frank Addante, Founder/CEO of the Rubicon Project. We’re psyched to have Frank and all of his startup experience on board with us for Twiistup 4.

Frank 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, and MySpace.com. Addante led StrongMail from inception, to an initial cash-flow positive business, to market leader in less than 4 years, raising over $30 million in venture capital from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital.

Did we mention that Addante was formerly Chief Technology Officer and technology Founder of L90, Inc., a publicly-held Internet advertising company? 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, nominated for Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year and has been quoted in publications such as Forbes, Fortune, New York Times, BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal. 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.

Related:
Krisztina “Z” Holly on Showoff Selection Panel
Pete Cashmore of Mashable on Showoff Selection Panel