For a little context, I thought I'd give a quick overview of how AdHatchery got its start and the people involved.  In the spring of 2008, I was ending a three-year stint at a venture capital firm in Boston.  We had just funded two entrepreneurs to start a new ad network, and they graciously (or grudgingly, I’m not quite sure) offered me a sales role with the company.  On day 1, we set out to spread our gospel to anyone who would listen.  We called media buyers at every level, from junior planners to agency CEOs, from assistant brand managers to SVPs of Marketing.  Over the course of the next year, I met hundreds of overwhelmingly talented people in the digital media world.  I also made more cold calls than I ever care to remember.

Throughout all of my conversations with buyers and other sellers, it became clear that we all suffer from a similar problem.  While we all work in “digital” media, our daily routines are decidedly un-digital.  So, I decided to do something about it.  On April 10, 2009, I set out to create AdHatchery and we'll be live next week.  

- Clay Gran

At AdHatchery, our mission is simple: to make it easy for buyers and sellers of digital ads to connect.  While much of the hype in the digital ad world is around machine-driven buying, we know that great ad campaigns are conceived by real people.  Buyers and sellers sit down in agency conference rooms, munch on stale sandwiches, and hash out brilliant ideas for engaging customers online. This is the way that it's been done for years, and we'd bet that it'll continue this way for the foreseeable future.

The question is whether we can use technology to help improve human relationships in this industry.  Take Facebook as an example – they’ve helped all of us broaden and deepen our personal relationships with family and friends.  We can now passively stay in touch with more people, more often than ever before.  Ironically, by removing some of the “friction” of one-to-one communication, FB actually helped in many ways to improve our relationships.

AdHatchery has a similar goal for digital advertising.  We want to improve the offline relationship between buyers and sellers by facilitating more info sharing online.  The first release of AdHatchery will be live very soon, and we’ll dive more into product details in following posts.  In the meantime, thanks for visiting!