In his talk delivered at Casual Connect Tel Aviv, join Gil Dudkiewicz, CEO of StartApp, as he explained what the future holds for us in terms of mobile advertising. He remarked that at StartApp, “We do believe that you need to take into account all the mobile capabilities in terms of data as well as take into account the look and feel and user experience. We call it Brains and Beauty . . . Combining the look and feel with the data makes a big difference in both conversion and user experience.”
Four years ago, Gil Dudkiewicz realized the market was exploding with billions of app downloads, yet there was no good solution for monetization of the free apps. He and partner Ran Avidan saw an opportunity and set out to remedy this situation; they created StartApp, a New York based mobile advertising platform. He was inspired to pursue this career by his passion for thinking outside the box and by his enjoyment of the combination of people and technology.
Gil had never considered a career in anything other than business, even as a child. By the time he decided to found StartApp, he had founded and managed two other companies. One of these was a TV search and recommendation engine that works with hundreds of the world’s largest TV networks, such as ESPN, NBC, Bloomberg and Time Warner. The other, SweetIM, was in the PC messaging and advertising market. He took this company from only five employees to a highly profitable organization with over 100 million download applications. He then became the “entrepreneur in residence” at The Cedar Fund, a venture capital company. It was at this time that he decided offering a new way for app developers to generate new revenue would be his next venture.
How to Build and Run a Company
Through his previous business experiences he learned how to build and run a company and how to get the credit from the financial market to raise funding based solely on an idea. He believes the most important thing he learned from his experience was the understanding that different platforms and different ecosystems require different approaches. The user interface, the product, speed, solutions and many other things must all be custom tailored to the particular situation.
StartApp does not work exclusively with the games industry, but game apps are a substantial part of their business. Gil especially appreciates working in this area and says, “I find the game industry to be one of the most creative ones among the different app categories, and as a company that puts an effort into the beauty aspect as much as in the brain aspect, it’s wonderful to explore new levels of design and sophistication in the games industry.”
Bringing People Together
The aspect of his work that gives Gil the most pleasure is bringing people together and building teams that will work well together. He looks for team members that are creative, honest, hard-working, fun and “ego-less”. When the inevitable complications arise, he has the group sit down together to talk over the issue until they resolve it.
As with any job, his work brings its share of challenges. For him, the most difficult of these is being the final authority for all the hard decisions.
Four Years of Growth
Last November, StartApp marked four years in business. During the celebration, Gil felt great pride to see how much they had grown to over one hundred employees in eleven offices around the world. He also felt tremendous satisfaction when he heard that one of their partners, an Indian company, had been able to grow to a company of forty-five as a result of the partnership.
When he is not working, Gil has several other interests. He travels as much as possible and enjoys spending time with his kids. You could also find him snowboarding, diving and reading.
