From The Ground Up with Leo Kelly

Chris Brandenburg has been at the forefront of tech innovation, leading startups through the evolution of building, growing, and then transitioning from a private to a public company.

You’ll hear stories about how he and his business partner, Paul, tackled mobile technology before smartphones dominated the scene and how they approached app development and monetization when it was still uncharted territory.

Chris's take on leadership, including knowing when to step aside, offers some practical advice for anyone starting out or running a business. And, as a bonus, he shares some personal moments—like hosting big Thanksgiving dinners—that give a glimpse into his life outside the boardroom.

Now, as an angel investor and mentor, Chris is helping the next wave of entrepreneurs. He talks about how he’s guiding startups, not just by investing money but by rolling up his sleeves. You’ll also hear his thoughts on the growing role of AI in business, the importance of building a brand, and why giving back, like his work with the Maryland Food Bank, is so important to him.

Whether you're into tech, startups, or the future of AI, this episode has plenty to offer.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to From the Ground Up. From the Ground Up. is a conversation with entrepreneurs about their journey to success. How they overcame challenges, how they built companies exited, or how they're thinking about their future exit. Today we have a great conversation ahead of us with Chris Brandenburg. Chris has had a tremendous career, starting off in the defense world as a engineer, computer engineer. He moved on to advertising.com, which was eventually sold to AOL and then started his own company with his partner, Millennial Media. It's really a fascinating story as Chris really spans multiple different technologies, from the internet boom to the mobilization boom, and now as he acts as an angel investor in the AI boom. What I think is really interesting about this story is his days at Millennial Media and the lessons that you'll learn about startup, raising capital, building culture, driving a company, and then eventually, in this particular case, going public and hearing the story about the differences between being a private company entrepreneur and being a public company entrepreneur. Vastly different. It's a fascinating story, and what I love about the story is in the end, he goes on to do what I think entrepreneurs should be doing post exit. Spend his time helping other entrepreneurs, bringing the next generation up, both with capital advice and guidance. I just think it's a tremendous story. I think you're going to enjoy this. We're going to hear about a 350 person Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to hear about a 400 pound bench press. This thing's going to be all over the place. I hope you enjoy this. So, Chris, welcome to From the Ground Up. It's good to have you on the show. obviously, going through your bio, you've had a hell of a career, and you've really, you've really seen the tech industry grow up. I mean, literally from pre Internet, when email, everybody was just fascinated to watch it go whoosh. Right all the way to now where we are today. I mean, that's fascinating. What's that? Do you feel like the wise old sage on the hill? Well, I definitely feel old. I don't know about wise, but, yeah, it's interesting. You do get a bit of a perspective from going through these different histories. And if I look at some of these early startups that I talked to today, they may not know what AOL was when AOL bought ADCOM. And so it's definitely interesting. And you see the landscape changing so much, they don't necessarily get what it was like back then. Cloud storage and all those things were free and easy. We used to pay$1,000 a megabit at ADCOM when we first started, unbelievably, you know, it's just totally different environment. Right, right. Wow. Well, we're going to dig into, you know, what you're seeing in terms of industry and technology, but also generationally. Right. What is the folks in the industry and perspectives around that? But let's walk through a little bit of your background just to bring people up to speed. I mean, you've had a fascinating background. You started in a company that eventually got bought out by Raytheon. So more on that side of the world of technology, which is big here in Baltimore. We'll talk about Baltimore, the Baltimore technology world, but the Baltimore DC corridor, it just has a huge presence in cyber and defense, and that's the obvious place to get started coming out of UMBC, which is a great tech school. So as you're getting going, you take the route that kids that do tech in Baltimore take. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what UMBC was sort of built to do, is to feed people to aerotech and feed people to the NSA and Fort Meade and all of those sorts of places, because it's such a big. It's a big industry here, and I think. And a great school. I mean, they're doing great stuff. Getting these kids ready for this. grew up very similarly to you. I went to community college to start, and I was sort of used to that being the, you know, the college experience. And when I got to UMBC, it was so much. It was just vast, and there were so many different options, and the amount of different paths that you could go down from an engineering perspective were just unbelievable. then. So you go into that world, right? You start on the defense world like everybody else does, but then you make this flip, right? They're bought out by Raytheon company, and you go to the other side of the world to advertising and building out these infrastructures that would become not the internet itself, but the application of the internet. Maybe talk about that a little bit. Yeah, well, so at UMBC, my focus was on networking and distributed systems. And when I went to work at Solipsys, that was kind of what we did. They built bird's eye view of a battlefield and be able to keep track of absolutely everything that was on that. And so massive network, massive network requirements. We had to be really smart about kind of keeping things small and tight and that sort of thing. And still to this day, that's the group of the most senior engineers that I've ever worked with. They were just amazing. Solipsys was a small company. I was the 27th employee there. And they had ideas of different products, and they wanted to be a product company, not just selling hours to the government. And so I spent a lot of time helping with that. And we did some commercial things around automotive dealerships and making, you know, taking some of the stuff that we did in the, you know, that that was applicable in the, you know, in the military world into some more commercial applications. But we were a part of the team that won a contract for DD 21, which was their. The next generation destroyer, and I had to drive up to exit. Exit four on the turnpike there. Yeah, there it goes. Morristown. Is that right? Is that four or three? No, exit 7A, but it's a great. It's not a 7A. No, definitely not 7A South, that's for sure. the day that we won that contract, it was like everybody was super excited. The project manager that, you know, was kind of working that project for Lockheed, they came over and they dropped one book that was, you know, a three and a half inch binder on there and dropped it. And I'm like, what's, what's this? And she goes, oh, well, that's the project plan. It's the first book of the project plan for the next 15 years of developing this product. And I'm like, oh, my God, I cannot do this for 15 more years. And it's just, there's no chance that that's going to live that long. I think there's a couple of pieces of that I think are interesting. The first is, by the way, what year is this? This was 98. I think I've always been fascinated by this. When you think about military technology, right? They are so far ahead of what we know all the time, right? So, yeah, I remember my uncle in the sixties talking about planes with stealth technology, right? And we didn't hear about that until the eighties, right? And here you are talking about this battlefield intelligence in the early nineties, right? And they're talking about that today with. With the drones and being able to track everything. I just always find how fascinating that the technology is ahead of what we understand. I think that's amazing. But I think what it also speaks to, which is really interesting, you come out of school, you're an engineer. You have an engineer mindset, by the way. He's got an engineer personality and sense of humor and sense of style, too, right? Sense of style. So you come out right. And that's the thing. You get in with a company like this, you last a long time. Maybe if you're an entrepreneur, you start a company that looks just like the one you're working for and then sell. But your entrepreneurialism, that, the day that book hit the table, it woke it up. You looked at it and said, am I the guy with 19 years that I love and respect? And the answer at that moment was no, I'm an entrepreneur. I got to move on. I got to do something unique and different. Right? Yeah. I don't know. Solipsis was a startup that was right during the.com boom. And so I sort of only have worked in startups. That's just been my experience the entire time. And I don't know that necessarily sort of unlocked this entrepreneurial. I just knew that wasn't an environment that I was going to want to be in for that long, because what I do like about entrepreneurship and what I do like about the early stage startup piece is, you get to make things happen in a really short period of time, and you can't build a destroyer in a really short period of time. In fact, they renamed, it was DD 21 because it was the 21st century destroyer. And I think now it's called DDX because they're not sure they're gonna be able to get it done in the 21st century, and it ended up destroying your career in the military intelligence world. No, I think this podcast may have done that. So you're coming out and you move to the commercial world, and you have a couple early successes and eventually get to advertising.com comma, which was bought by AOL, which, again, when I think about AI today, and we'll talk about that, and I always tell the story about when the Internet started because the early AI companies, everybody, some of the public companies like, well, this is guaranteed. Right? But so was AOL, and so Washington. So was Netscape. Right? And AOL bought Time Warner. It wasn't the other way around. So unbelievable. Yeah, exactly. And so you were there at that moment, though. You were there at the moment where this thing was. It was just exciting and explosive, and people were just trying to create this entire new way of commerce and communication. And you moved over to the commercial side right when that was happening. I mean, that must have been incredibly exciting. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely a wild ride, for sure. I wouldn't have expected it to be as rapid and things change as quickly as they did. But, yeah, it was definitely a radical departure from, you know, the military contracting world. And I loved it. I mean, I thought it was great. You know, ad.com was an awesome place. It was, um, you know, really, like everybody says, oh, we're a meritocracy. That was a real meritocracy in my mind, you know, and. And it's hard to capture that, but if you did a good job on something, you get something bigger. And if you did a good job on that thing that was bigger, then you get, you know, even more. And, you know, so you could, you know, you could be very diligent and really kind of grow your career inside of that place. And that's. That's kind of how it worked for me and, you know, several others as well, so. Yeah, it was. It was awesome. Yeah. Novel concept, right? Meritocracy. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. It works. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. Right. Yeah. Just feed it water and watch it grow. Michele, you've earned everything through meritocracy. Thank you for being with us. Yeah, thank you. I was keeping notes. I'm going to bring that up in my review. I appreciate that. And Michele is your niece, is that right? touché That was a good one. Yes. So then You switched over and you became a founder, and, I mean, a unique concept. Right. And a company that just exploded. Right. In Millennial Media. I mean, can you give me a little bit of history around that? It's an amazing story. It's amazing story in anywhere. But specifically, here's this Baltimore hometown story where we. You guys created. You and a couple other guys created this wonderful company. We were lucky and we were. We were doing a thing that. Here at Michele. Oh, right, right. I forgot. Yeah, we're. We do a shot now, right? Yeah, we do. And there it is. The "lucky" in every entrepreneurial story. We'll talk about your "luck" and how you made it happen, but go ahead If you think about the timing of this, this was early 2006, and so there was no iPhone. There wasn't, you know, the. You were talking flip phones. Flip phones. And blackberries and, you know, that's, that's, that's kind of the environment that we were in. And so, you know, we were trying to build this, this platform for application developers prior to there being any application developers, and no Androids, no iPhones, nothing like that. So we were building things and nobody will even know what this is, but BREW and WAP and WML and that sort of thing, which they were sort of rudimentary versions of what you see now. But mobile was very difficult. And it was difficult not only because the usage patterns are different, because people are, you know, like you, you probably use your phone, you're running, you know, from, from gate A to gate B or whatever in, and you pop your phone up, you check the weather, you you see the sports scores, that sort of thing, and then you're on the plane and you shut it down. And so that environment is very, very different than, the online environment where people are streaming things. People are, they're spending, 4 hours a day kind of with that screen, and you have all these opportunities. And so mobile was just a very different world. So we wanted to make it easy for people to be able to build apps, to be able to be able to use this mobile-centric data, like location, like device capabilities, that sort of thing, package it all together and then be able to help them do things like monetize it. So back in those days, there was a BREW store for Verizon, and that was part of what Paul kind of ran at Verizon. Paul being Paul Palmieri. Right. Yeah. So Paul was a co- founder with me at Millennial. And, you know, so he, he ran that and everything was paid for. wanted a ringtone, dollar 99, you know, and you wanted, you know, you wanted a, you know, an app that would, you know, keep track of, you know, your steps or something like that. I don't even know if that existed back then. But, you know, that was, that was gonna be$4 a month Paul, I think at Verizon was trying to figure out, okay, how do we do that differently? Because we need more adoption. When we launched Millennial and started to build some of those things out, build out those APIs, build out those platforms, and then work with other. Work with advertisers work with app developers and try to marry those two up so that they can go and make these great apps, but not necessarily have to rely on a carrier being able to entice people to spend$4 a month on that sort of thing. So it's kind of like the TV model. TV was free because of advertisements. TV, obviously, you still pay for cable these days, but that wasn't the starting model. That was kind of what we, what we saw was missing. And so we started off to go and build something to do that. Now, there are a lot of corollaries between what we built at advertising.com. and some of the pieces at Millennial, but I think Millennial was more of an ecosystem than we really had at ad.com. because you didn't need to build all that stuff. There were browsers that had plenty of capabilities. There were just standards that were more widely adopted than that existed in the mobile space. And so you were unique in this, in this, in this niche on mobile doing this, this model. Right? This advertising-based app model. Yeah, I would say we were early, you know, early, but not necessarily unique. There was a competitor called Third Screen Media that, you know, they were really the only game in town. Like, there were no, no other, no other established player at that time. We sort of looked at them as our biggest competitor for the first two years, and they kind of, I wouldn't say necessarily rested on that success, but they didn't innovate in the way that we innovated. And so we spent a lot of time, being aware of what was going to come out of Cupertino and understand what was going to be available to us from an application development standpoint, from Apple's frameworks and getting really deeply embedded in that space. And so if we didn't innovate, I'm sure Third Screen would have been the one that went public. And so we kind of tried to hustle our way past them because we're so much smaller. Yeah, it's age old story, right? So the, the hunter, the bigger hunter gets the easy stuff. Right? There's, the smaller guy learns a different way to hunt. Right? Yeah, because they're hungry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You guys were hungry, and you, you were. I mean, that story just resonates. Right? Time and time again. There's a famous video of Mark Zuckerberg talking about that, right. About how when they were, when they were growing so fast, how the big companies just kept ignoring their and saying, that's just for colleges, right? And he says, that's just some weird social thing, and that's a passing fad. And by the time they realized what he had tapped into, it was too late. Microsoft wasn't going to have a Facebook. And it sounds, you know, to a certain degree, what you guys were doing. There's the person who kept looking and saying, no, we've got this business locked down. And you guys were just coming in and innovating, you know, surprising them in the end. Yeah, yeah. And there were really kind of two companies. You know, I would say that we approached the market segments differently, but Admob was a company out of. Out of. Off the west coast that did something similar, but theirs was very self serve. And so, you know, you would. You would log into their website, you create an account, you, you know, you can make your own ads. They were. They were not brand. Not brand focused. Ours was much more brand focused. So we were, you know, we were in New York a lot more frequently than we were in southern California or Silicon Valley, because that's where our advertisers were, that's where the brands were, that sort of thing. So what was the moment? So Millennial Media is growing. You've innovated, the technology's taken off. You're getting acceptance with your technology. What was the moment where you, or you and Paul look at each other and say, oh, Jesus, like this. This thing's for real. This is taking off, and it's moving fast, and we better get a hold of these reins and steer it. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So Paul and I have had, you know, some of these kinds of conversations in the past, especially in the early days, you know. You know, Paul would. Paul would be nervous about something where I'd be off building, like, a solution to it, and we would just sort of ebb and flow like that, and I'd be like, oh, God, I built this thing, but I don't know if anybody's going to use it. And Paul would go out and try to find somebody to use it. And eventually we brought in Steve Root, who was our COO, and he helped to sort of operationalize a lot of what we were doing and building out a sales team and all of those sorts of things that. Similar questions where it's like, well, when did you know that this was going to work? When did you know that this was going to be big? I mean, I think we were going into taking this thing public, and I was like, oh, man, I don't know. It's $300 million in revenue plus. It always made me nervous because one of the things that sort of struck me, being a founder and running the company, was that in the early days, it was Paul and I, we were big boys, and we could do okay. If this doesn't work, we'll go off and find something else. You know, eventually, you get kids coming to the company out of college, and, you know, they're paying their rent. People are, you know, they're feeding their family based on, are you good at this? And so, you know, that always. That was sort of always on my mind and always sort of having to. Having to do the best job that I could, as much work as I could to make sure that this was successful was always driven by, you know, that. By our team and that sort of thing. I love it. I love it. A people based motivation. And. But that's a common thread we hear from our successful entrepreneurs. Right. It's catching that driver that makes you push every day, every day to make it bigger. And what we also hear is exactly what you just described. You're sitting there, you're ready to go public, and you're like, wow, I guess so. But you were still innovative. And what was the company culture back then? How would you describe Millennial? Because, you know, in those days, we had gotten past the foosball tables and stuff, and it had changed a little by then. But. But still, it's tech. It's a lot of developers and engineers. I mean, how did. How did you manage culture in that environment? You know, we. We still had some of that stuff. Like, we had a lot of, you know, in engineering and media, you have a lot of people that, like, you know, are musically inclined. And so we had, like, a little, you know, jam room and all that sort of thing. So we did some of that stuff. And, you know, we, you know, Paul is a really, really creative guy, and so, like, creating culture and, you know, making people, you know, making people feel like, This is something that we're all in together, and we're a big family. Like, you hear that a lot. I think Paul did a great job of making that a reality like we used to. We'd have Thanksgiving dinner, you know, and at a point, there were 350 people at Thanksgiving dinner, you know, I love that. Yeah. And it was, you know, and we had the potatoes. Right, right, yeah. Right, exactly. Or the inevitable."What's that supposed to mean?" Just my Thanksgiving? Got it. Okay. But anyway, yeah, I mean, like, that was I work with a lot of the, you know, the folks that sort of came out of those early days at Millennial and, you know, they're doing their own startups or they're participating in other startups that are around, you know, and they all say, like, it, it was the most fun that I've ever had and, you know, trying to capture that again, you know, which is we had a lot of success and we were just in the right place at the right time. And, you know, like I said, started in 2006, iPhone came out in 2007, and, you know, the world completely changed. And, you know, we took the company public in 2012. And, you know, that whole ride up to that point was, you know, just unique and amazing and a great deal of fun. Like, we had an awesome team and that was part of what made it, what made it such a fun ride. So this is where I have fun, every podcast pushing back on the term luck, right? So as I think about Millennial going right up and we'll talk about post IPO, but going up to the IPO, right, which is, it's almost like a pinnacle moment, right? You're ipo'ing, you're looking at your company stock, and you guys had, you know, the launch of the IPO was successful, stock went up, and it's easier to look at that and say, wow, you know, it just fell into place. But sure, in every one of our stories, there's these moments and you say, wow, the iPhone came out and everything kind of took off. So there's luck. Well, is it? You started the company. You are looking forward at developing these applications. That moment you recognized you built the business around the moment you created a magnificent culture which allowed you to hire great people, have those people work at an incredible level, and then you made the right, you know, you made the decisions that built the company. I mean, that's, you know, it's what I always say about luck, right? Recognize an opportunity, strategize around it, and work hard to get there. And, I mean, that's just an incredible story that you got to that point. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you very much. Like I said, it was, it was, it was fun. Like, that's one of those, you know, one of those jobs where you just don't, you know, you don't, you don't. You wake up on Monday morning, you're sight, you know, I'm sure you've got that around here. You know, I mean, we pride ourselves on that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and I think, you know, I think that that creates an environment where you can have success. And you're right. Like, you know, in some ways, you make your. You know, you make your luck by working hard. I don't know if that was that Edison? "The more. The harder I work, The more luck I have," or something like that. And so there's definitely truth to that. No, that was me. I said, the longer I'm married to my wife, the more luck I feel. Yeah, that totally makes sense to me. Knowing Marcy, that makes 100% sense to me. I second that. So then you go from the world of a private company entrepreneur, and, you know, the freedom that's involved with that and the creativity that's involved in that. And now you're a public company, right? You're reporting quarterly. Let's say your stock position is now public, right. Your salary is public. There's people, you know, that, you know, that you knew three weeks ago at the. At the ball field, right? I knew Paul from the lacrosse fields with our sons. Sure. To now everybody's like, "that's him.""He's got a lot of money." Right. And then you have to answer to the press. You have to answer to Wall Street. You know, you got. What are analysts saying? That's a gigantic shift, a. Where you're ready for that. I know. You know, it's kind of like, you know, I always used to say when I had my first child, I knew exactly how much I was going to love my kid and how I was going to. How that feeling was going to be until I held her. Right, right. The. Hers, my twins. But I was going to say which one? Yeah, one came first. Okay, so the question is, were you really ready? And then what was that change like? Did you like it or did you not? Well, I can tell you it's a lot more fun taking a company public than running a public company. Steaks taste better. Yeah, well, yeah, that's for sure. But it is hard. And I think that we thought we were ready and we heard the cautionary tale of being a small cap company out in the wild like that, but we weren't. I don't think we were ready, and I think you don't until you go through it, I don't think that you really, truly understand the pressure that the public markets can put on a company like Paul, when he makes up his mind, he's pretty headstrong about things, and that's part of what makes him a successful guy. But we would get whipsawed by an analyst or something like that, and they ask a question. And we're going to make business decisions and change what we do based off of some of those things. And they weren't like, they don't know that business as well as the entrepreneurs do. And so I think we, and it's hard, like, I mean, if Paul's going to, Paul's going to be pushed like that, I think anybody, it's going to be really difficult not to do that. And so, like, in hindsight, what, what I think would have been helpful is we kind of had a roadmap for what we wanted to do post IPO, but I don't think it was fleshed out enough. And I think we probably should have added somebody who had gone through that to the board and had that person, if we're going to veer off of our plan, we should have a really good, sound business reason for it. Not, we've got a quarterly call in three weeks. That's not the right way to do that. And, you know, we just got, I think we wanted to, we wanted to continue to grow and win. And at that point, you know, Facebook had gotten into mobile advertising. They weren't in that at all. And so the, you know, the environment changed and, you know, and I think it was, you know, it was one of these, you know, it was one of these things where, like, you think you're prepared for it, but, you know, you're not, you're not really prepared for it, you know, until, you know, to see it, until, until you hold your daughter. Right, right. Cautionary tale, everybody. If you're that entrepreneur and you're getting to that point, call Chris. Right. Put him at the bottom of your list. I'm sure you can do better than that. But, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's tough. It's tough. I mean, you know, a small cap company, a big fund, can swing your stock price massively based on their selling patterns. And it's, it was definitely a learning experience, that's for sure. Yeah. It's the challenge of modern day finance. Right. If we think about the origin of the stock market, it's to provide capital to businesses so that they can grow the business. And these are companies who are supposed to be thinking long term strategically. And the system has created short term tactical moves become the priority over long term strategy. Because you gotta live through the moment. Right, exactly. Sometimes it's very counterproductive to what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. And I see a lot less companies doing that these days, and that's the growth of like, you see these massive PE funds and that's where people are going now. And it's because of that. And so, yeah, it's definitely, at times, it definitely feels more like a casino than a source of capital. Well, you just hit some data points dead on, you know, dead on the nail. Right. So. So there are a lot less publicly traded companies than there used to be that the IPO sizes are massive coming out. Right. Whereas it used to be what you. What you were trying to do in the IPO market in 99 and 2000 and again in 6, 7, 8 through, you know, the early part of 2010s was catch that small company as they were coming public and then ride that stock wave. That's gone. Right, right. That's gone. Especially in the tech world. Right. In the tech world, everybody wants to stay private and then come out with a massive IPO. Right. Google and Facebook and they all did that. And that seems to be more of the model these days, which is fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and I think there's a part of people, people are doing these things and, you know, they want to. They want to solve problems and they want to fix things, but they also are looking to build wealth for themselves and for their families. PE, while it can have its own set of challenges that provides that liquidity to some extent where you can still be in there and running the company, but take something off that gives you a little bit more of a safety net. Well, there's plenty of PE money out there. Yeah, that's for sure. There's plenty of PE money. So then you've IPO'd, pressure's on, stock takes off, wealth builds, and you made that. You were faced with that big decision that everyone who IPOs has to make, and that is, do I diversify? I took it public because I think it's going to be worth ten times what it's what it is today. That's natural. Right, for every founder. And then on, you know, you're looking at your. Your partners and saying, this is going to be ten x, and then you turn your head the other way and you see your family. Yeah. And you. You see the wealth that you built and so you have a decision, am I going to diversify? Am I going to. Am I going to roll the dice and play this thing all the way through? I mean, how did you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think that I, you know, I definitely. I definitely. We definitely had, you know, plan, you know, the established plans for selling and everybody sort of in the senior leadership team had those, you know, plans, I think, you know, so we went public in 2012. I left in 2013, you know, because, in part I was running that hard for such a long time that I was just exhausted. Right. And I. And I didn't. I didn't think that I was as. I didn't think I was able to operate and work on the, you know, on the. On the products at a level that the company needed and deserved. And so we started to make plans to, you know, to, you know, bring in different people and bring in other talent, and, you know, we did a number of acquisitions to try and help bolster that sort of thing and bring in some different tech that's an incredibly aware position to be in. Right. Yeah. I mean, I. But. But you. I kind of felt it, you know, in my bones. And, you know, what I would do is I would meet with other, you know, one of the things that was important to me was understanding, you know, other people in our space and, you know, talking to our customers and just being out there instead of being behind a keyboard and just coding all day. And I did very little of that at the end, but I'd meet with other CTOs who were in partner companies, and they were energetic in a way that I wasn't able to be anymore, and I would say almost inquisitive. And you have to have that. What I know made Millennial successful was our ability to innovate and drive forward. Right. We talked about, you don't want to become the other guy. Yeah. You don't want to be Third Screen. And so if I wasn't able to do that at a level that the company needed, I wasn't the right guy. And so we, Paul and I kind of worked through some things, and I exited at that point, but then I didn't have any control over the company. And so at that point, sort of understanding that I needed to diversify made more sense because I've given up control of this thing. And so maybe it's going to ten x, but it's not going to be because of something I'm doing. And so it made sense to sort of diversify on that alone. And I think, in hindsight, being a small cap company in a massive world of investment in the stock market, I think, you know, it. It was the right choice. You know, I think it was the right choice to diversify. By the way, Michele, cancel the. Cancel the podcast with Third Screen. Those guys, now, they weren't innovators, no offense, to you guys? Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I mean, that. I'm sure that I don't, I don't even know what happened to that company. Like, they, you know, I don't. I don't, you know, they had a couple of big carrier, but, yeah, I've said, what happened to them? Yeah, that's right. That's right. What happened to them? Yeah, I mean, that's, that says it right there. So Millennial Media got a gut punch, right? And, man, you built this magnificent company. It ends up selling to AOL. But in the meantime. Verizon. Yeah, Verizon. Sorry. And, yeah, I was thinking ad.com So then, well, actually, so Verizon bought AOL, and then Verizon also bought Yahoo! and everybody else. Right. And then all of those media companies became a, you know, Oath and what have you. Well, did you sell to AOL or was it already Verizon by then? I think it. Well, it was, AOL was, was owned by Verizon, but the acquisition, acquisition was probably under the AOL umbrella. And actually, I think when, when it was all said and done, it was, it was Yahoo! at that point, you know, Yahoo was the keeping track of this. Yeah. All right, this is, this. All right, everybody, this is where we're going to put up the Venn diagram, right? Exactly. Yeah. There's a Flowchart somewhere. But, but, you know, Yahoo! was the best, you know, was sort of the best commercial brand. And so that's, that's what it all got rolled up. Yeah. And this is, this is an interesting story in why you diversify or why you, you have to be pragmatic, right, about your business and your business model. Because, man, the entire landscape of your business changed rapidly. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know. You don't want to? No. I mean, you know, so we did, we did have, you know, a massive player come into the space in Facebook. And, you know, and Facebook, you know, in that environment, is almost impossible to keep, compete against because they own all the inventory and they sell the ads, so they pay nothing for the ad. And so we paid, you know, anywhere from 50 to you, you know, to 70% of, you know, out on what we were able to bring in. And so you can't, you know, you can't compete necessarily. And their Facebook, they've got the, you know, they've got the brand name and that sort of thing. And so, and then at a point, Apple bought, you know, you know, bought an ad platform and plugged it in and, you know, had their own version and, you know, they had all the keys to the kingdom because they could, you know, they had all of the data, they had all of the, you know, perfect, unique user identification, the whole ecosystem. Exactly. And so all of that changed, and we're still growing the business and being successful, but the rate of growth probably, or our percentage of what we were earning was probably reduced at that point. That was the big game changer. By the way, Michele, when we go back and edit this podcast, let's change out the Mark Zuckerberg reference. Oh, right, yeah. Okay. Is there a chance, I don't know, he's the CEO of Exxon or something. Right. Okay. That's perfect. That's perfect. But the net of all this, and I'm fascinated by what you're doing now. And interesting that you're taking all this knowledge, building a company, being entrepreneurial, seeing the success, seeing the challenges, the marketplace, IPO, private equity, you've done, you've gone through all of that. And as you came away from this, you take a breath, you buy a farm and cut a lot of grass, and then it's in you, the creativity you want to develop. You want to be an entrepreneur. And so, interesting, you and Paul, right, in a different way, have gone down this path. And you guys are both. You were great executives, you're great leaders, and you both have the same drive. I've watched in a different way of wanting not just to develop entrepreneurs, but to coach entrepreneurs and help them build. And so now you have this new Kilkia Charles investment arm, and, you know, but you're doing it a little different, which I think is fascinating. Right. You're not just putting money in and making demands, and you're not sprinkling it out over every great idea you hear. Right. So, yeah, it's not a. Not a. Not a spray and pray. No. Which is, you know, we're always, we're always a little concerned about that as a business model. Sure. So talk to me about what you're doing now. I think it's fascinating because that whole Millennial Media story success challenge, right. The stock coming under fire and then the sale, you kind of walk through that whole process, and now you're helping others and trying to make money along the way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. I guess I felt like that's the next step, right? Like I did this, and now I've got a, you know, I'm part of this community. I want to, you. I want to participate with people that are behind us. And are trying to build up their companies. And so, yeah, started angel investing. I was on the board of Tedco for a handful of years, and so I saw that side of things. Tedco is, oh, sorry, Tedco is the. Right, exactly. So Tedco is the state of Maryland's early stage investment company. And so it's a quasi governmental organization that invests in the startup ecosystem, and that's kind of media and all various types of tech, as well as medical and what have you, and it's part of, I think it's part of commerce now. So it's economic development. But what they did was they ran these programs and they worked with very early stage companies and gave them seed capital, or maybe even earlier than seed capital to help them develop their businesses. And they've had some successes in there. Their model is. So you took that experience and then said, let me do my own. Their model was more of the traditional model where it's like you come in, you give us a pitch, we decide whether or not it's a good pitch. We write you a check, and then quarterly, you send us some information, and maybe we read it, maybe we don't. I don't know. And I really early on determined that I am not a good, you know, prognosticator of what's going to be successful or what's not. And so I wasn't going to be able to do$125,000 checks. I was going to, you know, I wanted to have a bigger bet, but on a much smaller number of folks and just be really, really diligent about, like, who I was investing in. And so bigger, you know, sort of bigger dollar amounts. But, you know, the, but you have to, you know, you have to drag me along with you. Right? So that's the downside of it. And so I would work closely with the CEO's and the founders that I worked with. And basically my role at that point was sort of like the old man in the room kind of thing, saying, oh, when I was your age, I screwed that up, and this is what I do instead. And that was kind of my role. But time for my disclosure. No, no, Chris, you're not old. were a lot of the reasons why I think millennial was successful is because I saw a lot of the mistakes that we made at ad.com. and we didn't make them again. And I watched other, other competitors in our space making those changes. So we were able to, you know, sidestep some of those things. And that was kind of the, that was kind of the goal with, you know, with this investment vehicle is to say, okay, let me. Let me help you. You know, let me help you to sort of grow this business, focus on what's important. You know, you have so many people that are like, oh, we want to set everything up, just writing QuickBooks to get this so that when the money comes in, it'll all be, get the money in. That's the part to focus on. So it's just those kinds of things. How to deal with equity at an early stage, how to talk to the next round of funding and get there. Or we've had a couple of companies wherever, you know, they have grown and morphed and changed and, like, the cap table is, you know, is in disarray, and so helping people clean those up. So, you know, a lot of those kinds of things. Yeah, I mean, I think it answers a few different things. Right. It's, it's your, it's. It's part of the culture, right, that you developed at Millennial Media, being coaches, being family-oriented, running up your hands. You're not a particularly passive individual from a personality standpoint. What? And, yes, you're like me. You're a little older, by the way, as witness, Chris told me the story as he walked in that he told his daughter he was going to be on a podcast, and she was all excited. And then she saw, like, this old guy host, and then looks at Chris and says, you're wearing a jacket. You're not wearing your radio head t-shirt. What are you doing exactly? After she listens, she'll be, I imagine you're gonna have a big swing in the age going down with all of her friends tuning in. We're not relying on yours or mine. So what are the exciting investments that you've got going? You're just diving in deep on these investments. Two questions. Are you having fun doing it, and what are your most exciting investments right now? Yeah, so it's definitely still fun. What has kind of happened of late is a couple of these investments. There have certainly been some that have fizzled out, and so those happen. And, like, it's a startup, but a couple have gone through acquisitions, and that's been a lot of fun and exciting. And so the portfolio has sort of dropped off a little bit as a result of that. But probably the one company that I spend the most time with is, they're called WBX. Commerce now, but theyre focused on e commerce growth. I go there two days a week and get to meet with the team, help them in terms of just developing what their products need to look like and how to work with, you know, with the different advertisers and what have you. And so I don't have something that's, that's structured like that. It's, it's normally a lot more like, oh, we've got this, this meeting with this person. Can we meet up beforehand and talk to, you know, talk through strategy and that sort of thing? But, you know, I'm there. I'm there, like I said, two days a week. And, you know, I'm trying to, trying to do my best to help them, help them kind of move it along, and they're, you know, it's going well. We've changed from a fulfillment company where, you know, we're packing boxes for you and we're, you know, shipping your product to really more focused on analyzing your data, analyzing where growth is coming from, capitalizing on that, and really making sure that your investment in either branding or advertising is being used to its maximum potential. And it's gone pretty well for them, especially this last two years or so. One of my final topics, the world today, you just said it. We went from shipping boxes, analyzing data and effectiveness. You're getting into AI, right? And AI is what everybody's talking about. It's the latest technology. You're going to be seeing a lot of it. Your old partner, Paul started Grit Capital, which is a very interesting venture firm that's all around the application of AI, which I think is fascinating. So what are you seeing? What are the threats and the surprises that are coming, good and bad? And then Part B of the question is the people that are leading that charge, because in technology, the youth lead the charge, right? And, you know, I don't necessarily believe this, you know, because I think every old generation says, the young generation doesn't know what the hell they're doing. They won't work as hard as we did, which I think is nonsense, right? This generation has incredible qualities, but it's different. The tech's different, the people are different. So what do you see in AI? Where are those pros and cons? Yeah, I think that AI, what I always worry about is being more buzzwordy stuff, right? Which it is. It certainly is. But people are starting to be more aware of how to apply those things. And so we are. So at Millennial, we built an optimization engine, and that's like, how do we make your inventory most valuable to an advertiser and let the person who is most relevantly targeted that ad see it at the right time. And so when we built that, the traditional model is just sort of from operational research, operations research, but we didn't solve it that way. We solved it with a neural network and we solved it with what would be called AI today. And so finding the right applications for those things, I think that's really where the value is. I do think that there are going to be people who excel in that, and I don't. I think of OpenAI and some of those large language models. I look at them less from an application standpoint and almost an infrastructure proof of concept kind of a thing. But I do think that there are opportunities to take broad AI and target it really specifically to solve specific business use cases. And that's happening all over the place. And that is what I think Paul is trying to go out and find and capture companies that are doing a, that model, not the model of, we now have the largest LLM on the Internet. It's valuable for sure, but it's not the sort of focus that's going to help a business necessarily grow. So do you think something like that will be your next investment? Well, we do have some companies that are dabbling in that. The other issue is that the price tag needs to be right in order to make sense. A lot of times those things will be frothy and there'll be a lot of people who want to dump a lot of money into it. It still has to make sense for me. But there's not a company that I'm working with now that isn't at least thinking about if not implementing some AI tools, and if they're not, then they're going to be falling behind and maybe irrelevant in three years. Right. Well, I mean, it's a, the whole thing is a fascinating story. Right. And it, it's, it. Whether it's the, the story or the stock prices, the public versus private. Right. It very much reminds me. 99 and 2000. Yeah, right. Very much. Right. So the infrastructure build comes first. So you think about WorldCom and you think about Lucent and you think about Cisco. Sure. Right. JDS Uniphase, Dell. Right. And they were the infrastructure. Yep. But the power of the Internet came later with application. Yeah, I think that's, here we are, we're Nvidia and ChatGPT. And you look at some of the models that Microsoft's building out, and that's infrastructure and what's next is application. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that that's really where the value lies. Being able to find ways to implement. To implement, uh, you know, things that can act, react rapidly to, you know, all of these changing environments. Those are going to be really powerful solutions, for sure. That's. That's amazing. I've got. I've got one last question, and for those who don't know this, when Chris wraps his head around something, he tends to get extraordinary. Let's call it focused. Someone say fanatic. Okay. Others say focused. I've heard both. Yeah. You know, I remember there was a time where you were 100% focused on how much you could bench press. Oh, goodness. Yeah. And what was the final number? My one rep max was 405lbs. Wow. And so. And so. But those days are long gone. Like, that was my version of a midlife crisis, so, yeah, yeah, those days are unfortunately long gone. I should get that. I should get something back. Like, it's embarrassing now, but, yeah. It was fun, though. I sort of liked being able to see the incremental approach. You know, it's funny, you know, there's a lot of correlation here. Yeah, I it is my MO. Like, if I start something, I kind of want to keep going and just keep figuring out how far I can push things. But, you know, I think it's, you know, there's, like, I have a pilot's license, and I have a pilot's license because a bunch of us started out doing it just to have something fun to do, and everybody else quit. I never did. And so I just kept kind of pushing at it. But, yeah, no, it definitely is. Maybe a character flaw, I guess. No, it's not. It's absolutely not a flaw. It's actually a big part of you, which is part of you that I love. And by the way, I don't know if you know this, Michele, but now he hangs around the gym, and he advises people on how to do bench pressing. That's right. That's right. That's bad form. He's been thrown out of four gyms already. Exactly. Yeah. No, I definitely wouldn't be the right person to advise him on that, on that front. But I wanted to ask a question, and that's more because I'm incredibly impressed with your branding. We skipped over marketing altogether, but the fact that you. Advertising.com, Millennial Media, I mean, that's a branding gold, in fact. I mean, the intellectual property of that at some point maybe eclipsed the technology that sort of. That it encompassed. So what was your thought process around the branding side of it? Yeah. So, you know, that really is all for the Millennial side, was all Paul. I can tell you, advertising.com started out as"Technosurf," so that was a good pivot. Yeah. So it wasn't bad to move off of that one. But yeah, I know Paul. Paul is a great, I think he's a great branding mind and he's a good marketer. And actually, I said good, not great. He probably a great marketer. I'll get a phone call later today if I don't say that. But no, I mean, I think he was really smart about that sort of thing. And it was the right outside of, nobody can spell millennial. Maybe now they can, but back then, nobody could spell millennial. So we had to have every permutation of the word millennial. But, yeah, I mean, it was exactly the right, it was exactly the right brand name. We kind of went back and forth on some thoughts on it, but even to the point where our logo was green, but it wasn't just any green, it was Xbox green or a very close, non proprietary version of Xbox green, but it was Xbox green, and it resonated with the people that were going to be using their phones. Twenty four seven. And so, yeah, there's a lot of thought that, frankly, I didn't put in. But marketing people, you're a marketing person, right. And so you guys see things a little bit differently and it was very valuable, for sure. Sounds like the green was a little Pavlovian. Just, I think there's a part of that, though. People sort of, you know, it, for whatever reason, it made, you know, it made people sort of feel like, you know, it was something comfortable and something, you know, youth oriented. And, you know, that's, that's the magic of some of that stuff, for sure. Well, there's no question, given that you're having this conversation with our chief marketing officer. Right. And no offense to my prior guests, I think you've just catapulted to number one on our list, my all time favorite, favorite, favorite. All right. Yeah, yeah. But also, and another thing, especially for younger entrepreneurs who maybe don't have the budget to hire an executive, you mentioned you're going in a few days a week that the concept of fractional CEO, fractional CTO, for those who've already made their careers or experiencing that corporate detox, maybe, and want to help the younger entrepreneurs, I think that's amazing. As an option for young companies. Yeah, I think that's right. One of the things that Tedco did very early on was sort of, I guess they called it something sort of cheeky, like lend an executive or something like that. For executive loan. Loan or something like that. Yeah. Rent a. Yeah. But, you know, they had that model where somebody would come in and help work with these really early stage companies, and that kind of went by the, you know, that kind of went by the wayside. But the concept is valid, and there are some where they sort of draw a salary. Generally speaking, if I'm going to be working with a company, I've already probably invested in them. And so I really don't take money out. Sometimes there'll be an equity component or something like that. Like a stock grant or something like that. I'll do. But, yeah, I hope I'm valuable to some of them. And I think for the couple that we've had that have had good exits, you know, they're, some of those guys are doing that, that same thing. You know, they're investing in early stage companies. They are, you know, some of them are off building, you know, building their own next thing. And, you know, I think, you know, I think it's, it's part of what makes, you know, this, you know, especially in the media space and certainly in med tech and, and, you know, a lot of, a lot of the military contracting world, it's like people stick around and they give back to the community because they feel like they've gotten something out of it. And, you know, that's, that's, I think, I don't know if it's unique, but it's important, you know? And so I think, you know, I'm happy that that's, that's kind of, you know, I'm part of that. And, you know, that it's much, much bigger than me, for sure. We need, we need to make it, you know, less unique. Yeah. Make it more commonplace, because it is, it's, it's very, very valuable. By the way, we're going to name our podcast company Gen Z Media. I just came up with that. And we use chick fil a red. Yeah. Whatever happened to Gen X? Did we just skip over all the Gen X names? Nobody cares about us. Right. Right. We're still drinking from the hose. Remember, we're the Latchkey kids, right? I just read that book, the fourth turning is here, and they talk about repetitiveness of generations, and they talk about each generation. And it was absolutely entertaining to hear you read the gen, the Gen X chapter, which is us latchkey kids. Yeah. Just go out. Should just show me your face once all day. I stand on the front porch and yell, dinner. You better come. I have a game. Well, you better leave early because you're walking right. know that all too well. All too well. Anything else exciting happened? What, philanthropy, family? What are you up to? Yeah. So, you know, I, that is a part, probably a big part of what we're, you know, what we do now. You know, we. I've been involved with the Maryland Food Bank for a number of years. Yeah. You've been heavily involved in that. Yeah. I actually love that place. You know, the mission is, it started out like we. Such a pragmatic mission. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I think about, you know, when things happen and you need these resources. Right. Whatever it is, if it's housing assistance, that sort of thing. The first thing that happens is you get hungry. Your rent is paid till the end of the month. Your utility bill is not due for 20 days or whatever, but you're hungry right away. And so the food bank is sort of the tip of the spear when it comes to that sort of thing. And what Carmen Doreshio, who is the, the CEO of the food bank, what he's driven over the last eight years is unbelievable. And it's less of sort of providing band aids and really providing longer term solutions of how do we, you know, we know we're going to get the first call, most likely. How do we make sure that, that we get you into the pipeline so that you're not going to lose your apartment, so that you're not going to, you know, like, if you, if, if your car gets repossessed, then you can't make, make it, know, make, make it to your work. And then, you know, you're, it's this, it's this slippery slope. And so trying to get ahead of that sort of thing, you know, being a, being a, you know, they're, they're building almost like an ecosystem of support and help. And, you know, that's been, that's been amazing. So we was, it was an incredibly powerful resource during COVID Yes. Yes. Incredibly powerful resource during COVID Yeah, I mean, and I don't, you know, I've been off the, the board for a couple of years now, but, like, the amount of excess expenditure that they, that they had was just staggering because what, what happened was the demand went up drastically, but all, but then the supply of food went down, and so they ended up having to, you know, spend a lot more buying food as opposed to getting donations and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, it was definitely tumultuous, but, you know, they weathered it exceptionally well. And I think, in part, it's, you know, they've got a great team there, and, you know, Carmen's a great leader, and that's great. Yeah, so that's. Yeah, so we do. We do a little bit of that. We do some. Some stuff with, you know, the. The Arc of Baltimore, which helps. Helps, you know, disabled folks with, you know, daily life. You know, things with daily life and, you know, sort of making some of those things easier and more manageable and. Yeah, so those are. Those are some of the things that we're, you know, that we're into. We have some. Some, you know, philanthropy around, you know, medical. You know, medical discovery and that sort of thing. So. But, yeah, no, that's a. That's a. That's a big part of it. Sounds like you're still bench pressing. Yeah, definitely not as much. But, you know, the thing that's. That's. That's interesting to me about all of that stuff is my entire career, everything was ephemeral. Right. I'm building. Building software. You don't touch the software. Right. Like, you see the output. You see the results. Right. You know, but when you put the fourth plate on, you're touching that. Right. And so, you know, one of the things that, you know, that we were doing at the food bank, like, you're. You're packing boxes, you're making a difference, and you can. You can feel that and touch that, and, you know, and so that's. That's something that's been, you know, a departure for me. You know, this farm and cutting grass and that sort of thing. But, like, building things. Like, we. You know, we sort of, you know, the mowing system that we made. Well, we. We designed and built that. Right. I. And it's shocking. Yeah, I know. I know. And it is. It is so unbelievably over the top. You wouldn't. You know, it's. It's like. It's. It's so out there. But. Hold on. Let me look at the camera. Do you see the look of surprise on my face? Okay, go ahead. Right. I should send a picture in, but. But, yeah, I mean, that's. We've got. Please do. We're gonna put. We need to put that up there. Yeah, we've got things on hydraulic pistons. I mean, it's unbelievable, but. But it's. You know, it's enjoyable and it's. It's tangible. And so you finding things like that that you can do or, you know, it's sort of good for the soul, I guess. Yeah. That's bench pressing. Yeah. The only fourth plate I have is on Thanksgiving. Now, you were getting up there. You were getting up there. Well, this has been a heck of a lot of fun. And thank you for coming in. I mean, I think the story, you know, this is, this is such a good story because you've spanned so many different, so many different segments of what we, what we talk to entrepreneurs about. Right. From, from, you know, how you've shifted in your career to how you've built a company and dealing with private equity and then dealing with going public and post business life. And I think what's consistent is two things. And it's one of the things I absolutely love and respect about you is your passion never dies. Right. It moves from one endeavor to another, but your passion never dies. Your caring for people never stops. And your sense of humor is always fun to be around. So thanks a lot for being on Chris. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And then for everybody out there, thank you for tuning into this From the Ground Up with Chris Brandenburg of many different companies. We had a great conversation. And as always, if you like this episode and want to hear more of these, please subscribe. Like and subscribe. We're on. Ready, Michele? Let's see if I get them all. YouTube, Spotify on our website, verdence.com, under Podcasts, and Apple. And you are also now. Drum roll FromTheGroundUp.FM So you can go right there. All right. FromTheGroundUp.FM Invest early. Yeah, you invest early into Gen Z Media. Damn it, we didn't patent that. Okay. All right. Thanks, Chris, for coming. I really appreciate it.