Justin Sonnenreich

Tag: MarkitAds

  • 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.

  • I Started MarkitAds at 16. Here’s the Honest Version.

    Founder origin stories get polished until they’re useless. Here’s mine with the varnish off.

    The unglamorous truth

    I started MarkitAds at 16, in Bethesda, Maryland, because Boosted Notify had taught me something surprising: businesses will pay a teenager real money if the teenager solves a real problem and answers email faster than the adults. That’s it. That’s the secret. I was not a prodigy; I was available, specific, and relentless about follow-up.

    The early agency did whatever legitimate work was adjacent to attention: press outreach, social growth, lead generation. Some months were great; some clients taught me expensive lessons about scope creep and about promising outcomes I couldn’t control. The thing that compounded wasn’t a niche — it was documentation. Every engagement became a checklist; every checklist made the next engagement faster. Years later I’d learn Dennis Yu teaches exactly this as doctrine: repeatable excellence beats heroics.

    Where it stands

    Today MarkitAds is a team of roughly twelve running two lines: PR and lead generation (client placements have included USA Today, The Washington Post, Fox 5, Mashable and Men’s Journal), and the campus activation network — the business I believe is the real company. In between: Mission: Mentor, 10,000 students, an acquisition by Crimson, a degree path at UNC Chapel Hill and a semester in Tokyo.

    The claims on this page are sourced on my LinkedIn and Crunchbase profiles, and this site holds itself to the verification standard: if I can’t source it, I don’t say it. What I’ll say without a source, because it’s an opinion: starting at 16 wasn’t brave. Staying honest about what actually worked is the hard part.

    Sources & mentions