Yieldbot is Born to Run

 Two years ago after Omniture purchased Offermatica and I
started Relevance AMPlified (RAMP)  I stated three core principles of what I was doing next:

1.   
Intent & affinity are the root segmentation strategies

2.   
Achieve success w/ the most advanced technology

3.   
Testing, targeting & optimization is our DNA

These ideals are also evident in
everything that Yieldbot is and will become. Now after a year of work it is time to share
Yieldbot with the world.

Yieldbot really started to come together last April when I decided
to pivot from building ad side technology to having it be publisher technology. Simply put, there is so little publisher technology and such a crushing need for it. I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to create but I knew I needed help
from people smarter than me. Also, I knew that even though we were building a
display technology the problems that needed to be solved were not ones that legacy “display” people would be right for.

Fortunately Scott Rafer introduced me to Donna Romer and her
background in pattern recognition and semantic search was (no pun intended) a
perfect match. Donna and I spent almost everyday from May to September last
year whiteboarding exactly what we needed to build. This groundwork was crucial. With all the start-up advice around the web you don't hear about this approach but we couldn't have built such a great product without clearly mapping the vision first.

Looking for an engineer to actually build it in New York
proved difficult. I was already picking David Cancel’s brain on the project and
he connected me with an amazing engineer in the Boston area that was another
perfect fit. In early November Richard Shea started building Yieldbot. Richard
is my favorite type of engineer  –
one that uses code in a way as creative as any art. We’re going to keep running
engineering from Boston and with the bounty of analytics, CDN and other
relevant engineering talent up there I think it’s a great decision.

The most enjoyable part of this has been the literally hundreds
of people I’ve met and talked with over the past couple of years as this idea
has taken shape. Publishers, Advertisers, Engineers, Founders, Angels, VC. I’ve chatted up Yieldbot everywhere from the nicest executive offices of the world’s top media
companies to the hood of a beat up old Subaru. At the end of the day technology is essential
but people and relationships are what makes things happen.

So, my “Crusade for Relevance” in the digital medium continues with a new chapter. As always I’ll
continue to blog my thoughts on it here. If you want to follow Yieldbot he’s on
twitter @yieldbot and if you are interested as a publisher visit our site here. Rave on!