Josh Schenker may well be the only CFO we’ve interviewed who claims to have dropped out of high school—which he actually did, sort of. In order to accelerate his academic ascendance, Schenker passed the General Educational Development (GED) test, which in turn allowed him to enroll at college ahead of schedule.
“I never received a diploma from my high school, so, technically, I am a dropout,” explains Schenker, who logged many hours during his high school years at his father’s wealth management company. It was there, he tells us, that he first developed a keen understanding of finance.
Read MoreSchenker relates that he would immerse himself in learning the intricacies of portfolio allocation and market optimization, which ultimately laid the foundation for his future career. With a strong interest in finance and business, Schenker pursued further studies in these fields, eventually earning a master’s in finance from MIT. This academic background, combined with his early hands-on experience, equipped him with the skills needed to navigate the complex world of finance.
Schenker began his career in strategy consulting at PwC, where he further developed his analytical skills by working across multiple industries to identify key business metrics and optimize performance.
His transition to AOL’s Corporate Development Group marked a significant step in his career. There, he participated in numerous M&A deals, including the high-profile acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon. Eager to gain deeper involvement in business operations, Schenker joined Yahoo Sports as head of business operations, a position that enabled him to hone his skills in budgeting and investment strategies.
Driven by a desire for hands-on experience in running a business, Schenker then moved into the start-up world, assuming roles at companies like clean.io and Cluster. In these CFO positions, he leveraged his M&A experience and strategic insights to drive business success, which would lead to his current role as CFO at Aditude, where he continues to apply his diverse expertise in finance and business management.
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CFOTL: Tell us about Aditude … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Schenker: Aditude is one of the largest header bidding and advertising operations companies in the world. We power advertising for hundreds of sites and process billions of events on a monthly basis. I would say that what truly separates us from our competitor set is not just our best-in-class technology—which I think a lot of companies try to say—but also our unparalleled customer service. Even though we have a lean team, with maybe only about 30 people on this staff, we’ve obviously been able to scale the business pretty substantially because of our methodology.
Read MoreWe try to make sure, basically, that the people who can solve problems for our customers are never more than one or maybe two steps away from them. So, instead of having layers and layers of customer support people and having it take lots of time to get an answer, we prioritize the ability of our clients to talk directly to the folks who are actually going to be able to solve their problems. I think that this is what sort of sets us apart and has made us successful to date.
CFOTL: Who is a typical target customer? What size would they be?
Schenker: We work with companies large and small in two different specific arenas. Primarily, we work with content publishers. These are online publishers that run the gamut in terms of genre: gaming, sports, leisure, entertainment, news. We work with tons of sites that sort of span these types of industries.
We also work with advertisers. In March of this year, we bought CPMStar, which is what’s called a supply-side platform. As a result, we’re now selling directly into advertisers for the inventory that they’re bidding on. So, we sell into both of these categories of customer base.
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Aditude | www.aditude.com | Bronxville, NY