About Frank Addante
Frank Addante has a successful entrepreneurial track record, having started 5 companies, resulting in one IPO and two acquisitions. Mr. Addante most recently incubated and served as the Founding CEO of 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 $20 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. Mr. 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.com.
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 TicketExchange. TicketExchange now services millions of consumers at Ticketmaster.com.
Mr. 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 Forbes, MSNBC, RedHerring, InformationWeek and the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley Business Journals.
Addante 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.
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.
Visit Frank Addante's Blog: http://www.founderblog.com
Read more about Frank Addante in the Silicon Valley Business Journal
Contact Frank
Background & Experience:
INDUSTRY FOCUS:
Internet Advertising
Consumer Internet Websites
Enterprise Software (Applications & Infrastructure)
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:
User Interface Design (Ease of Use)
High Scale & Redundant Architectures
Rapid Development
Open Source Architectures
Outsourcing Strategy and Execution
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT:
Venture Capital Financing
Corporate Strategy
Marketing Strategy
Business Plan Development
EXPERIENCE
|
COMPANY |
DESC. |
RESPONSIBILITIES |
KEY CUSTOMERS |
HIGHLIGHTS |
EXIT |
|
Starting Point Owner & Webmaster / CTO |
Internet Search Engine |
Company & product vision, development and marketing strategy |
AT&T, Infospace, Weather.com, Quote.com, YesMail.com, Amazon.com |
7th Most Popular Internet Site (Microsoft was #8 at the time) |
Acquired by CMGI / YesMail.com |
|
ReaXions, Inc. Founder & CEO |
Advertising Technology & E-Commerce Website Development Company |
General management, operations, marketing, sales and customer service |
Visa / Olympics |
Developed first Internet video streaming website for Visa / Olympics |
Merged to become L90 |
|
L90, Inc. Technology Founder, CTO and Chairman, Advisory Board |
Internet Advertising Network and Marketing Technology |
Company & product vision, product development, customer service and operations |
Microsoft, Charles Schwab, eBay, Amazon, General Motors, Kraft, CBS, United States Army, Intel, Dell, Warner Brothers, Sony, Netscape, Akamai, Mercedes, Bank of America, Oracle, Kellog's, BMG, Adidas |
- $75M+ revenue - 3,000+ customers - 8 billion transactions/month - Reached 65% of worldwide Internet population - 800+ servers, 3 geographically distributed data centers |
$112M IPO led by S.G. Cowen, later acquired by DoubleClick and Focus Interactive (AskJeeves) |
|
Zondigo, Inc. Founding CEO |
Wireless and Voice Development Software |
General management, capital raising |
Intel |
Intel partnership, Craig Barret (CEO) presented Zondigo as
the “future of wireless” |
Acquired by Voxicom |
|
Ticketmaster Consultant |
TicketExchange – Auction Site |
General management, product design & vision, financial management, architecture and development |
Ticketmaster |
Featured in Wall Street Journal, front page, business
section |
Launched in 2002 |
|
StrongMail Systems, Inc. Founding CEO |
Email and Digital Messaging Infrastructure Software |
Company vision, general management, capital raising,
recruited/trained management team |
Fox Sports/MSN, Real Networks, Proctor & Gamble, Intuit, Williams Sonoma, AAA, Netflix, FTD, WebEx, Motley Fool |
Multi-million dollar sales, thousands of companies using
StrongMail technology, $20M venture capital funding (led by Sequoia Capital,
investors behind Google, Yahoo! Apple, Cisco, Oracle, etc.) |
TBD |