By Mike Seiman
There is no other advertising experience as communal as the Super Bowl commercial. Three million dollars spent for 30 seconds of airtime so that 110 million people can be huddled around the water cooler the next day to discuss how cool/funny/ridiculous/stupid the ad with the hologram/talking fish/herd of cats/3D effect was. The primary reason that we connect around that particular experience is that we all saw it at the same time. In a weird way, we experienced it together.When traditional advertisers want to end the online discussion, they throw down the rhetorical gauntlet: “There is no Super Bowl moment in digital!” Intended translation: “Online advertising is not about branding!” It is a frustrating claim to counter since the Super Bowl spot is seen as the pinnacle of branding and since there isn’t a similar globally shared experience in the online world.Most of us would be hard pressed to remember the last online campaign we found interesting enough to discuss around the proverbial water cooler. The bottom line is that our industry seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid that “online is not about branding.” If the branding rules of television cannot be forced successfully upon digital, then digital must simply accept its relegation to the cost-effective remnant part of the RFP. Right?Wrong! We need our own set of rules. Trying to abide by those of traditional mediums is like owning a Ferrari and complaining that it doesn’t get very good gas mileage. At the risk of voicing a truism so worn it risks being ignored: Digital is not television. Digital may not possess branding chops in the same way that we have come to define them, but 10 years into this multidimensional medium, there are still only a few advertisers leveraging the uniqueness of digital creative to inspire.Of course, there have been a few exceptions through the years. Consider the major beer brand that executed an online campaign with multiple ad units on one page interacting to show a beer pouring from one unit to another. Then there was the self-propelled vacuum robot campaign that took over the user’s current page and zoomed around cleaning up dirt from the website. Cottonelle’s current campaign uses both television and digital by asking its TV ad viewers to visit the brand’s Facebook page to submit new names for a product described in the TV spot.What do these concepts have in common? The strategies were not designed for television and later retrofitted to the digital world, expecting to deliver the same results. Instead, they were specifically conceived to leverage elements exclusive to the digital world: multiple ads on one page, dynamic creative and interactions between the consumer and brand.If advertisers truly want to see what digital can bring to the table, they must first untie the medium’s hands from behind its back. Digital agencies, you need to step outside the box. So the next time you are met with, “There is no Super Bowl moment in digital,” you can respond with, “Maybe so, but can I pass that televised Super Bowl spot onto 100 of my friends with the click of a button?”Mike Seiman is CEO of CPX Interactive, a digital advertising company.
Ask any seasoned runner and they'll be quick to tell you that keeping a steady pace is almost as important as staying hydrated. Listening to music is one good way to keep a steady running rhythm, but it can be tricky to put together a playlist of songs that all have the same tempo. After all, the last thing you need is for some mellow song to pop up in the middle of your high-intensity workout.
Let’s get started…Tell us a little about what inspired CPX Interactive.MS: In the mid to late 90s I was a web publisher, building some sites, and advertising just started happening and I got involved in that working with the only two or three ad networks that existed back then.I built an ad server and grew the company for about 12-13 years; Today we’re 70 people in 5-6 offices around the globe. Digital advertising platform—video, social, mobile display. We manage about 2.5 billion ads a day in about 65-70 countries.
Can you tell us a little about 
Where do you find inspiration or how do you motivate yourself/your team?MS: I just do. To me, if I’m not doing something it’s a waste of time. Everyday I need to accomplish things and I push myself to make things happen and I push my team. I’m always looking at where we could be as opposed to where we are, and I’m always motivating everyone to see where the company could be and how life is more fun when we get there.What would you be doing if you had one year off (and it can’t be tech related!)?MS: What would I do? I would play more golf, see more beaches. I would sit at home a lot and relax, hang out by the pool, play with my dogs. I would probably…just…sleep more.
Got any great bootstrapping tips for the lean startups out there?MS: Don’t worry about how much you pay yourself. Invest in the business (if that’s your goal). Figure out how to make money as soon as possible, and then improve your product. A lot of entrepreneurs raise money thinking, “OK, it’s going to take us a year to build this thing perfect”, but if you are bootstrapping then you need to get a sellable product as quickly as possible and sell it cheaper. But make margin, get cash flowing through the company and then use that cash to bump the operations up.App or site you can’t live without?MS: My laptop, obviously. And, Linkedin I think business-wise is a great to find people and connect.
What’s your next projects or goals you’re working on?MS: Diversifying streams of revenue for the company, and looking at where we invest our resources. To a certain extent, we’re almost incubating our own business and we’re looking at all the ways we generate revenue from digital advertising and we’re starting to break them out. So, separate mobile division, separate video division, separate display, etc., so we can rationalize which ones create the most profit, where we should invest so we can forecasting how we can grow those businesses and double revenues by next year.Thanks Mike! Check out 
Audiophiles everywhere rejoice!There’s a new mobile application out on the market for both Android and iOS consumers, that might just change the way people think about their listening to music via portable devices.
We touched base with co-founders James Brown and Chris Sturgill to talk Goalee goals, bootstrapping advice and why entrepreneurship is like eating or breathing.First, a little bio action-
Chris Sturgill: A lot of us don’t know whom to contact when networking or what to say when approaching someone cold – whether it’s for social or professional reasons. Goalee acts as a networking coach; it not only suggests new connections in order to achieve your goals, but also helps you know what to say when you reach out to those people.
“Who you are as a person can help you build new connections,” said Brown. “We pull in who you are as a person and your professional background from LinkedIn and the people that you follow [and] the things you talk about on Twitter… all those things combined to help you build new connections.”As he explained to us, Goalee is necessary because LinkedIn is focused on professionals and not social media per say. Facebook, on the other hand, is all about social and, essentially, transferring your offline social network to a digital platform.“You can’t really do what we’re doing if you use just LinkedIn or just Facebook,” Brown pointed out.“We’re not trying to be the new LinkedIn or the new social network for networking,” he continued, “we’re trying to help you have a better experience on the sites that you’re already using.”With so many new social services rising up, it’s hard to keep them all straight, let alone, take the time to try each of them out. However, one new social service takes a little different approach by aggregating data from existing social networks and utilizing it in a way that helps individuals meet real goals.The tool is called Goalee and, according to its co-founder James Brown, is a combination of LinkedIn and eHarmony. Although it’s not geared toward either online dating or professional networking in particular, it is designed to help people find the connections that they need to meet specific goals.James Brown, Co-founder of Goalee “Who you are as a person can help you build new connections,” said Brown. “We pull in who you are as a person and your professional background from LinkedIn and the people that you follow [and] the things you talk about on Twitter… all those things combined to help you build new connections.”As he explained to us, Goalee is necessary because LinkedIn is focused on professionals and not social media per say. Facebook, on the other hand, is all about social and, essentially, transferring your offline social network to a digital platform.“You can’t really do what we’re doing if you use just LinkedIn or just Facebook,” Brown pointed out.“We’re not trying to be the new LinkedIn or the new social network for networking,” he continued, “we’re trying to help you have a better experience on the sites that you’re already using.”In a nutshell, Goalee creates a persona of each person based on the data it has aggregated. From there, users can list goals that they hope to meet. In return, Goalee’s natural language processing matches users with each other, ranking them according to the most common interests that they have.“It’s all about getting you as quickly as possible to the best people for you to meet,” said Brown.Aside from its Web efforts, Goalee is also utilizing mobile and is integrating with services such as Foursquare and TripIt. At this point, the service is free, but later this year, it will be also offering a paid service that will give users the opportunity to have unlimited goals and receive unlimited connections.
The best music for working out has a tempo, or beats per minute, that matches or slightly exceeds your steps per minute. With PaceDJ ($1.99 on 
According to a recent 
We wrote a few weeks ago that the question we're asked most frequently as entrepreneurs and partners is "how do you divide up the work?" Well, coming in a close second is, "How are you funding your business?" Like most start-ups we've gotten Altruette off the ground with our own savings and a few family and friends loans. But we're aware that eventually, if we can make Altruette as big as we dream it can be, it's going to take outside investors. Now even though we worked together at Fortune for a decade covering business and finance, we have to admit that the hows/whys/wheres/who's of raising capital are still a bit mysterious to us.To help demystify the process we called Brian Rich, managing partner and co-founder of Catalyst Investors. Catalyst is a growth-equity shop in New York City that specializes in tech investments, including cloud computing, wireless networking, and digital media. Not only does Rich evaluate hundreds of companies a year, he's also a regular on the speaking circuit--so knows how to talk shop in plain English. In other words, he was the perfect guy to ask the most basic questions of all: How do you find the right investor, and how do you convince them to invest in your business?Rich advises targeting your search very carefully. "Our industry has become highly specialized," he explains. "I had breakfast with a guy this morning and all he looks at is venture investments relating to payments." But whether you own a bagel shop or the next potential Facebook, there's somebody out there who wants to make investments in your field. Four resources Rich recommends to target your search: pitchbook.com, quora.com, www.capitaliq.com and www.preqin.com. [Rich notes that some of the above sites require paid membership.]Once you've identified good prospects, Rich says that highlighting a personal connection goes a long way. He says that even if it's a distant connection, such as knowing someone in common on LinkedIn, that can help set a cold call (or cold email) apart from the pack. "Ultimately it's not going to be why I invest in you," he explains, "But it's a reference point and that can really help."Most companies approach Catalyst after hearing Rich or his partners speak at conferences, or are identified by the firm's group of advisory board members who are constantly on the lookout for hot prospects. For the intial contact, Rich recommends you write a bare bones pitch: an email with a one-to-two page attachment stating: What you do, key metrics of the business, how much money you need and what you're going to do with it. That's it. "Don't send an email with a diatribe," says Rich, "just get to the point."Rich estimates he probably only meets (in person or over the phone) with about 10% of the companies that pitch him. But if you do get a meeting, there are a few rules that entrepreneurs should heed. First, assume the meeting will be one hour max–and plan a succinct presentation accordingly. [I can't tell you the number of times during our conversation that Rich stressed entrepreneurs should keep it short!] Also, says Rich, "If you're going to bring a whole team make sure everyone has a talking role. My antenna go up if five people come in and only one talks!" That scenario makes him think either the CEO is too hands on, or the supporting players lack the self-confidence to contribute–both red flags for investors. In the end, Rich describes a successful pitch to investors as similar to a real estate. "Have you ever been shown a house or an apartment by a great broker? All the lights are on, everything is tidy, they've thought how they're taking you through the house and which views they're going to emphasize?" If as an entrepreneur you can do that, you're on your way to making the sale.