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.