Eric Litman

Age: 36

Company: Medialets

Year founded: 2008

Site: medialets.com

What Medialets does: Medialets is a rich media, ad-delivery platform built explicitly for smartphone apps. They provide a platform for brands and agencies to create ads that take advantage of the features and hardware capabilities available with smartphones.

How he’s changing the game: In 2008, Eric Litman had been living Washington, D.C., but decided to move to New York for family reasons. He planned to take six months to a year to figure out what his next move would be. On May 31, 2008, he moved, and on June 1, 2008, he woke up and thought, “Crap, what am I going to do today?” That was the day he came up with the idea for Medialets. “At this time, Apple was just about to launch the App Store,” says Litman. “Ifthey were able to nail it down, they had the ability to change the entire landscape of the mobile economy and I wanted to be in on it from day one.” He came up with the idea for a smartphone ad platform. By June 4, 2008, Litman had hired 14 people, and they all worked 24/7 with the single goal: to get this product launch to coincide with the App Store launch. Litman wanted to beat the competition before there was competition. “We had a table piled high with every caffeinated substance on earth. We slept on the floor. But, in 41 days, I got the product to market. The premise was get out there early, and be there on day one of this new ecosystem.” The App Store launched on July 11. As a result of that early start, the company’s offerings can now be found installed on nearly half of the iPhones and iPod Touches in circulation. “The mobile industry is growing at a pace that is faster than anything I’ve ever seen,” says Litman. “Mobile use is outpacing desktop Internet use.”

Recent highlight: Medialets recently created the platform for the first shakable ad for a Dockers campaign. “We got months worth of press and won awards,” says Litman. “Like the Steve Job’s quote, we created an ad that didn’t suck. It was a huge defining moment for us, because it demonstrated the capability for advertisers to spend in mobile in a way they never thought about. The team here recognizes that, and is humbled.”

What’s next: Litman won’t provide specifics about projects currently in the works, but he would say that a big part of Medialet’s mission is to make it easier for media buyers to buy across platforms in increased scale.

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