Online advertising is much more manual than anyone...

Online advertising is much more manual than anyone outside the industry thinks. That’s why you need “rockstars” (I hate that usage but I couldn’t come up with a viable substitute) in areas other than engineering, which is where most tech startups battle for resources.

For early stage startups, the ability to hire good developers is a moat. For digital ad firms/startups, you need really great people in other roles such as ad ops, sales, account services, etc. because they go hand in hand with establishing sound business processes, which is critical to differentiate your firm from the pack.

We’ve been at a juncture where the best people for these roles realize that it’s better for them to be founding startups instead of working for them. I suspect that won’t change in the near term.

From the mysterious and always astute ECPM Blog regarding the recent NY Times trend piece about the talent gap in ad tech. I think this is something that goes under-reported in the start-up space: engineers are critical to all technology companies, but talent in areas such as account management, ad ops, sales etc.. is key to building a great ad tech company.

I can think of some instances that correspond to his last point regarding people in those roles starting their own companies, anyone have any good examples?