Career Path of a CEO and Co-Founder at Digital Niche Agency DNA

Sure. I started at Santa Barbara City College and did some different internships. One was with the Tony Hawk's Stand Up for Skate Parks Foundation, which began my career in action sports.

I actually got the role I wanted at a marketing agency, so I didn't go as far in school for that reason. At the same time, I was working with some of the biggest brands in snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing. That's what I grew up passionate about, and I was building marketing strategies to connect with Gen Y, which is what millennials were called back then.

I later moved to a different agency called Focus Group. That was after being at MCA. I worked on other Gen Y accounts and QS, including music, entertainment, fashion, apparel, and tech hardware. I was on the new business team at Focus Group, so I was going into pitch meetings and talking about where a brand could go.

One of our clients, a social gaming company, absorbed their whole team. I was one of those team members who was then part of the initial group in-house at a social gaming development company. I was doing brand and entertainment, working with brands on social media platforms with over a million followers. We monetized that audience through the sale of freemium goods inside social games.

We merged with an advertising sales company called Ad Players. I got to work with the CEO directly. He had a deep background in gaming; he started EGM and created Walmart Game Center Magazine. We built a gaming advertising network, mobile and tablet ad placement advertising network, partnering primarily with print publishers who were moving their print publications into different mediums. We would sell full-screen, interactive ad placements, high-end inventory to the branding advertisers.

For the next few years, I was flying all over the country, meeting with top agencies and top brands, Fortune 500s, top 100 advertisers, and setting up campaigns for them. I eventually oversaw the sales team as well as product marketing and the marketing team. My role was Product Marketing Director before starting DNA, which is my agency.

I have 22 team members here in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, California, and we've worked with over 750 brands to date. We've found a niche in investor marketing, as many of our clientele sit in the early stage to mid-market areas of the spectrum, and fundraising is a common theme and conversation.

To date, we've worked on over 350 equity crowdfunding campaigns. We are looked at as one of the top groups in the space. We've raised hundreds of millions of dollars through our campaigns in this vertical. I've also been able to apply our investor acquisition tactics to various types of venture capital funds, including real estate-focused and digital asset-focused. We've worked with cryptocurrencies, FinTech exchanges, and various types of apps, and we're always looking for more applications in this growing space.