Justin Sonnenreich

Category: Companies & Partners

  • The Ecosystem Behind MarkitAds: Launch Chapel Hill and 1789

    When agency websites say “award-winning,” ask which award. Here’s our honest version: MarkitAds grew up inside the UNC Chapel Hill entrepreneurship ecosystem — Launch Chapel Hill, the venture accelerator, and 1789 / Innovate Carolina, the university’s founder community.

    What that actually gave us: structured mentorship from operators who’d done it before; deadline pressure with demo days attached; a bench of advisors (including from the University of Wisconsin network) who still answer my calls; and the campus-insider view of how universities think — which became a real asset when UNC itself became a client.

    For student founders: your university’s accelerator is the cheapest leverage you’ll ever get. Take every office hour. It’s a large part of why a bedroom company survived to become a real one.

  • Building a Team of Twelve Before 25

    MarkitAds is roughly twelve people: engineering under CTO Troy Smith, growth under our VP of Growth, revenue operations, content, and the campus activation staff — the ambassadors, associates and activation leads who make the field work actually happen.

    What I’ve learned managing a company where I’m often the youngest person with the final say: 1) Write everything down — authority you have to re-explain is authority you don’t have; the playbook is the boss so I don’t have to be. 2) Hire operators, then give them territories (this applies to executives exactly as it does to campus operators). 3) Pay on results wherever results are measurable; it removes 80% of the awkward conversations. 4) The founder’s job migrates from doing, to selling, to making the record sell — which is what this whole site is for.

    Advisors from the Launch Chapel Hill / UNC ecosystem and from the University of Wisconsin network round out the bench. More on the ecosystem behind us.