Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham (Part 1)

Chris Cunningham is the CEO and co-founder of appssavvy, an activity advertising technology company. He also serves as co-chair of the IAB Social Media Committee and in 2010 and 2011 was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Chris graduated from the University of North Carolina Greensboro with BA in economics and marketing and is based in New York City.

Sramana: Chris, let’s start where your story begins. Where do you come from? What path did you travel during the early years of your life?

Chris Cunningham: I was born in Helsinki, Finland. My father is American and my mother’s side is Scandinavian. I spent my childhood days in Boston and my university days in North Carolina, after which I had a short stint in Chicago before moving to New York in 1999, just when online media was starting to heat up. My career path for the most part has been entrepreneurial. My first few positions in New York City were focused on digital media, digital advertising, and trying to understand platforms and environments that can deliver digital advertising to people.

Sramana: Where did you get that experience? Did you work at agencies?

Chris Cunningham: Overall, I have always had a very strong sales DNA. I have always tried to understand how to make something out of very little. I relish large forums, speaking, and closing deals. My first job was as a rep for MusicVision. It was an aggregate of music properties in 1999 and 2000. The next position I held was at one of the original social communities for teens called Bolt.com. It was founded in 1996, and I spent five years there as the global head of sales.

From there I went to Webs.com. There model was to allow users to create websites by using simple tools. There I spearheaded the development of custom-branded widgets in 2007. My first three positions saw me working for publishers focused on driving brand revenue into new, emerging markets.

Sramana: What happened in 2007?

Chris Cunningham: Until that point I had always worked for other leaders and CEOs. I had great experiences, but I felt there were some things I could do a little better. At the same time Facebook opened its platform to application developers, which was a very exciting time. I left my job to pursue a vision of creating a platform that would enable publishers to realize a better advertising delivery and reception mechanism beyond what advertising had been the past decade. I started appssavvy on a cocktail napkin during a flight between San Francisco and New York to facilitate business development between Madison Avenue and West Coast developers. That led to a business plan to create the world’s best business platform to drive revenue with a new and emerging environment.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Monetizing Premium Social App Ad Inventory and Scaling a Capital-Efficient Business: appssavvy CEO Chris Cunningham
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