Meet the team

Frank Addante
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

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

Follow Frank on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FrankAddante

Craig Roah
Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Craig co-founded Verapass Marketing, a leading interactive direct response marketing company in January of 2002. He led the company's general operations, sales, business development and product development initiatives. Within 3 years, he grew Verapass from a self-funded start-up to a multi-million dollar, profitable, leading direct marketing company. The success of Verapass ultimately led to its acquisition by ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK).

Before starting Verapass, Craig served as VP of Product Development and Support for L90, Inc, a leading Internet marketing company. adMonitor, L90's technology division, was the Internet advertising and ad-serving platform for over 3,000 Internet properties and publishers. Craig ran the entire adMonitor organization and was responsible for engineering, product management, customer support, campaign management staff and licensing teams. He grew the technology organization from 4 people to 75+ in a 3 year period and was integral to L90 going public in 2000. Craig also led the eventual sale of L90's adMonitor technology to DoubleClick in 2001.

Before joining L90, Craig served as Manager of the Commercial Contracts Division for one of the world's largest corporations, Boeing Aircraft Company. At Boeing, Craig was responsible for negotiating Aircraft modification contracts with U.S. and international airlines and carriers.

Craig holds a B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. That combo makes for fun at game time, doesn't it?

• Hobbies: golf, reading, running, the Dodgers
• Favorite Quotations: "The world needs ditch diggers, too, Danny." and “Where'd it go?” ... "Right in the lumberyard, Danny!"
• Favorite Movie: Caddyshack… obviously
• Favorite Dessert: Diddy Riese ice cream sandwich
• Favorite Drink: Pacificos on the beach in Mexico
• Kid's Names: Jackson, Tyler and Brooklyn

Duc Chau
Founder & Vice-President, Research and Development

Duc is the Founder of Flukiest.com, an online social networking community. Before starting Flukiest, Duc led the U.S. engineering team at StrongMail Systems where he was responsible for all releases of the StrongMail product to the public. Duc was the first employee hired at StrongMail. He was also responsible for software development, design and professional services in core areas of StrongMail's flagship products. Before joining StrongMail, Duc was the lead developer at Responsebase where he redesigned and engineered the company's next generation internal mailing system that was responsible for 90% of the company's revenue. Duc was the lead developer of the initial MySpace community, which currently has over 100 million members and was acquired by Fox Interactive Media for $580 million. As the initial developer, Duc still holds the very first active MySpace profile ever created. You probably recognize his default MySpace picture or at least your sixteen-year-old cousin does.

Before MySpace, Duc worked in various senior level engineering positions at public & private companies in the consumer, voice over IP, search and wireless sectors. At L90 Inc., Duc developed NetMon, an information system designed to monitor and aid the day-to-day advertising operations for adMonitor (L90's adserving product). NetMon was responsible for reporting and optimization of the hundreds of ad servers that made up the global adMonitor network. Duc holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from DeVry Institute of Technology, Southern California.

• Into: mid-century/vintage stuff, reading, documentaries, traveling
• Can't Live Without: sarcasm, pickles, salt, soy sauce, chuck taylors
• Favorite Restaurant: Killer Shrimp
• Nuggets: "Duc" in vietnamese means Germany where he was hatched, and he was on Wheel of Fortune

Julie Mattern
Founder & Chief Technologist

Julie began her career in the Internet advertising industry over 10 years ago at Yesmail.com where she was responsible for the development of the company's core product, leading to a $524 million sale to CMGI. Julie was the first developer of adMonitor (L90, Inc.) where she served as Director of Engineering. She oversaw all engineering directives with a specialization in adMonitor's user interface that was highly regarded as being the industry's best, for its ease of use and rich feature set.

After adMonitor was acquired by DoubleClick, Julie was recruited by Fastclick (now ValueClick Media) where she managed the development of the company's business data systems and built a comprehensive suite of reporting tools. Most recently, Julie was the Director of Operations Engineering at Adconion Media Group (formerly EuroClick), where she focused on developing technology to improve the organization's daily workflow processes to provide operational efficiencies.

Julie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science (with high honors, if you want to get technical) from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL.

• Hobbies: traveling, walking my dogs, gardening
• Favorite Food: Portillo's Italian Beef Sandwich
• Favorite Drink: a nice cold beer
• Favorite Places: southern Italy, London, anywhere tropical
• Pets: 2 dogs (Roxy & Bailey) and 2 cats (Sushi & Miso)

Marwan Soghaier
Vice-President, Creative & Brand

Marwan Soghaier is Vice President,Creative & Brand for the Rubicon Project. Marwan came from Amp'd Mobile®, where he successfully led the services product management team to deliver one of the first wireless 3G entertainment services targeted at the youth market. Amp'd achieved national market penetration in partnership with MTV, Verizon Wireless and Best Buy and was valued at $450 Million. But enough about Amp'd, how about more on Marwan…

Prior to Amp'd, Marwan ran his own consulting firm working with companies like Motorola, Fluidmaster, Softbank Technologies and Ticketmaster to build out market strategy and interactive product. Some of Marwan's hallmarks include market launch of one of the first-ever wireless applications for mobile professionals through partnership with Palm and AT&T as Director of Business Development at Cresenda Wireless in 1999, where he first dedicated his focus on technology. Hold your applause.

Marwan spent the first 7 years of his career in the glamorous traditional financial services environment of Risk Management consulting, developing and advising an international client base on commercial risk strategies and building new system solutions to address their operational needs.

Marwan's passion has always been to translate market-directed, market-validated needs into focused next generation product and services market strategies. Marwan holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Marketing from the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, NM.

Marwan was born in Germany (like Duc), but grew up in Santa Fe, NM (unlike Duc) where he frequently visits his friends and family. He currently lives in West Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, Isabella.

• Loves: Fine dining, Gadgets, Travel, KickBoxing, Ironman competitions, Movie Buff
• Fave quote: “There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?” (Which was second to Craig's Caddy Shack quotation that he wanted to use)

Raleigh Harbour
Vice-President, Strategic Alliances

Raleigh brings a decade of business development, strategy and transaction expertise to the Rubicon Project team. Prior to joining Rubicon, Raleigh was Director of Strategic Alliances for StrongMail Systems, where he managed all technology and service provider partnerships. In this role, Raleigh initiated relationships with companies covering a wide variety of online sectors, including viral marketing, web analytics, business intelligence and mobile messaging.

Prior to joining StrongMail, Raleigh served as Director of Corporate Development for eTelecare Global Solutions, an offshore outsourcing firm headquartered in Asia. In this role, Raleigh led partnership and strategic investment opportunities to expand eTelecare's delivery platform, service offering and industry vertical expertise. Raleigh began his career in the merger & acquisition groups of JPMorgan Chase and Lazard Frères, executing transactions for companies in the technology and business services sectors.

Raleigh holds a B.A. in Commerce from the University of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson would be proud), and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago (so would John D. Rockefeller).

• Hobbies: Beach volleyball, basketball, wine, jazz
• Favorite Quotation: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
• Favorite Movie: Heat (Deniro, Pacino…can it get any better?)

JT Batson
Director, Publisher Communities

JT joins the Rubicon Project as the Director of Publisher Communities. Prior to joining us, JT was responsible for the new international marketing efforts at the Mozilla Corporation. During his time there, Firefox's user base grew to more than 120 million, with more than half of the users outside the US. He also oversaw the retention marketing programs that included the launching of Mozilla's first user support for Firefox.

Before joining Mozilla, JT was one of the early employees at AdBrite, where he was responsible for the PR, marketing and sales development for the fast growing Sequoia backed start-up.

From Augusta, Georgia (yes, he has been to the tournament and no, he has never played the course), JT was a political science major at Stanford, where he won the J. E. Wallace Sterling Award and later served as the Director of External Relations for the Stanford Men's Basketball team.

• Movie: Coming to America
• Food: good BBQ (can't be fancy) or duck
• Quote: anything by George Carlin
• Hobbies: sports (college and the Braves), politics, golf, refereeing soccer

Kara Weber
Vice President, Marketing

Kara's background incorporates both digital and traditional media; along with her marketing experience she brings extensive experience in start-up capitalization and strategic development to the Rubicon Project. This is her fifth startup; she's finally accepting her addiction to the chaos and high-speed chases integral to startup life.

She joins the team from Mogopop, a mobile media company, where she was co-founder and VP Marketing. Prior to Mogopop she oversaw marketing for Talking Panda, an iPod application developer. Kara was part of the founding team at Tripod.com, a personal-publishing company that produced one of the most popular sites on the Web during the 1990s. At Tripod she oversaw all aspects of communications and brand marketing, culminating with the company's acquisition by Lycos in early 1998. She was also Vice President of Marketing at Streetmail, a publisher of local news via subscription-based email newsletters; that company was acquired in 2001 by Waterfront Media.

She graduated from Williams College in the latter part of the 20th century, and continues to rely heavily on an international network of Ephs to solve problems and forge connections. While her hockey skates have a lot of dust on them, she promises to lace them up and re-live her glory days on the ice once she finds a rink in LA...

• In to: reading pulp thrillers, contemporary art and design
• Favorite Foods: Indian food, donuts with sprinkles, anything from the Union Square Café, and pizza.
• Hobbies – Writes a blog! (Or did, anyhow): d3.typepad.com
• Passionate About: Finding a cure for Huntington's Disease – www.hdsa.org and www.hdfoundation.org

Bob Bennett
Vice President, Product & Engineering

In the role of Senior Vice President of Product Development for Ticketmaster, Bob led the company's product development group and was responsible for the creation, management and marketing of Ticketmaster's wide range of client and consumer products, including overseeing the day-to-day product leadership of the company's web site Ticketmaster.com.

A 12 year Internet veteran, Bennett has also held senior e-commerce positions with eToys, the Web's top children's retailer at the time; Jackson National Life, a Top 20 life insurer; and Union Bank of California.

Bob graduated from UC Davis, where he played on the basketball and volleyball teams, completed a double major in History and Political science, but never actually went cow tipping. He's also one of the only people in the world who was born and raised in Los Angeles and is still living here.

• Things he likes: Hoops, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, poker, UNC Tarheels, Lakers, Dodgers, WWII books/movies (or anything really). Also, poker.
• Favorite Quotation: "Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand" – Cool Hand Luke
• Favorite Food: Casa Noble Anejo
• Movies: Band of Brothers. Star Wars. Rounders. Dumb & Dumber. Hoosiers.