New York, New York, United States
I'm building the advertising layer for the agent era. Brands have spent thirty years learning to persuade people; almost none of that works on a machine that compares options on price, specs, and structured trust signals. Attayn gives brands and ad networks a legitimate way to win the recommendation when the buyer is an agent, not a person. Why now: discovery is moving from search results people click to answers agents generate, and the paid-influence layer that funded the open web — search ads, performance marketing, the click itself — doesn't carry over. Whoever rebuilds that layer for the agent era owns the next decade of demand generation. Why me: I've spent ~20+ years on the revenue side of advertising and commerce and closed close to $200M in new business, usually in seats where the quota was a fraction of that. I was on the early team at Yieldmo, where I helped build national ad sales from zero. For the last several years I've advised the companies living this shift firsthand — AdMedia, MGID, AdPushup, Gist, and others — and kept watching the same thing break: their best playbooks all assume a human on the other end. As discovery moves to AI agents, influence stops being about creative and starts being about how a brand is represented, structured, and trusted inside the model. That's the gap Attayn closes. Off the clock: I can quote every 80s TV commercial ever aired ("Calgon, take me away…"), and I'll make at least one Rutger Hauer reference before we hang up. If you're an investor or operator thinking about agentic commerce and what replaces the click, I'd like to talk.
Attayn is where I've operated at the edge of advertising and commerce — first as an advisory studio working alongside ad networks, publishers, and commerce platforms (AdMedia, MGID, AdPushup, Scuti, Gist, and others), and now as the company building the advertising layer for the agent era. As buying shifts from people clicking links to AI agents generating answers, the paid-influence model that funded the open web stops working. Attayn gives brands and ad networks a legitimate way to win the agent's recommendation.
Ran publisher and supply partnerships for a search-advertising marketplace — recruiting and scaling the publisher base that monetized consumer search intent. Grew new venue by $14M in 2019 representing 42% of all new revenue generated. Had a front-row view of paid-search economics in the years just before AI answers began eating the click — the exact shift Attayn now builds for.
Drove new-business sales for a cross-border e-commerce platform that helps retailers sell internationally — localization, pricing, duties, and fulfillment. Built the original go-to-market strategy and wrote the core positioning the company still leads with today. Joined during the growth years before its 2021 Nasdaq IPO. The commerce-side counterpart to my adtech work — how merchants actually win and convert demand, which is the other half of the agent-era problem.
Eighth employee at what began as a mobile-first ad-tech company and grew into one of the largest independent media exchanges. Built national ad sales from zero to ~$35M ARR across 100+ advertiser accounts