Ben Padnos

Summary

An Internet sales and marketing pioneer, Ben has been operating and investing in early-stage technology companies since 1994. Ben was one of the first 200 employees at Yahoo! (NASD: YHOO) where he was involved in online sales, strategy and business development from 1997-2001. Ben founded DONE! Ventures in October, 2001 after leaving Yahoo’s strategic “think tank swat team”, ValueLab, where he was involved in forging relationships with key Fortune 500 companies. DONE! has incubated several successful businesses, including eCreditCards, a network of financial-services lead-generation websites (featuring such clients as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, American Express, Discover Financial, etc.), credit card marketing business opportunity CashFlowFromCreditCards.com, and Audioo, an audio file and voicemail sharing service which was selected as a TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 “Start-up Battlefield” finalist. In 2004, Ben Co-Founded BetterPPC, a scientific testing and optimization platform for pay-per-click advertising, and a search engine optimization firm, DONESEO. He merged the two businesses in Nov '06 to create a full-service Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology-enabled services provider, Better, Inc. The El Segundo, CA based SEM firm was acquired by Tsavo Media, a portfolio company of publicly-traded American Capital Strategies (NASD: ACAS), in Sept '08. After attending the Univ. of Michigan, in 2004, Ben helped co-found a CD-ROM turned web media company, University Netcasting, Inc. (UNI). He successfully developed the marketing, advertising and sponsorship plans for UNI’s launch of a new collegiate on-line sports network, FANSonly.com. The company was later acquired by Boston-based Student Advantage, which went public in 1999. Today FANSonly is known as CBS College Sports Network. Ben serves on the Board of Directors of PADNOS. a century-old family owned and operated scrap metal, paper and plastics processing and recycling company based in Holland, MI.