Justin Sonnenreich

Tag: exit

  • Selling Sneaker Intel at 16: The Boosted Notify Story (and the 2019 Exit)

    My first company existed because sneaker drops are rigged in favor of people who understand systems. At 15 I was studying release mechanics, bot detection and raffle math the way other kids studied box scores. At 16 that became Boosted Notify: a consulting service helping clients purchase limited, high-end sneakers, over 80 clients a month at peak.

    In 2019 the business was acquired by the COOKLAB Group, an operator in the sneaker-tooling ecosystem. (Founder’s account; sourced on my LinkedIn; acquirer confirmation will be linked when live.)

    Three things stuck. Markets where demand outstrips supply reward whoever understands the allocation mechanism, that’s most of marketing. Recurring service revenue from a problem people actually have beats one-time flips. And when your edge becomes a product category (bots, monitors), sell to someone who wants to own the category. The pattern repeated with Mission: Mentor, and it’s why MarkitAds prices per verified result: I like businesses where the value is checkable.

    Sources & mentions

  • Mission: Mentor, What 10,000 Students Taught Me About Campus Distribution

    In 2021, while running MarkitAds, I co-founded Mission: Mentor, a nonprofit edtech with one idea: college guidance shouldn’t be a luxury good. Private counselors charge thousands of dollars for what is, mostly, structured information and accountability. We built a free virtual college counselor to deliver both.

    What we built

    A volunteer team that grew past 30 people. A platform that walked students through applications, essays, scholarships and financial aid. And reach: more than 10,000 students used it before the company was acquired by Crimson in September 2022. (Stated as my founder’s account; sourced on my LinkedIn; acquirer confirmation will be linked here when live.)

    How it actually grew

    We had no ad budget worth mentioning. Growth came from watching how information actually moves through a school: one counselor recommends it to a class; one senior posts it in a group chat; one club president puts it in a newsletter. Campus distribution is a graph of a few hundred high-trust nodes, RAs, club presidents, team captains, TAs, and if you win them, you win the campus for free. If you don’t, no budget saves you.

    That map is the intellectual foundation of MarkitAds’ campus network today: operators are chosen for their position in that graph, not for their follower counts. Mission: Mentor was the research project; the activation business is the productization. And the mission stuck with me too, a meaningful share of the students we serve now get their first paid work experience running our activations. Full story.

    Sources & mentions