Firsthand, founded by digital advertising veterans to empower publishers with AI tools, has come out of stealth mode with seed funding from industry pioneers. Venture Beat said the company raised $6.65 million.
The New York-based startup was co-founded in 2023 by former Comcast executive and FreeWheel co-founder Jonathan Heller, former AppNexus executive Michael Rubenstein, and former FreeWheel engineer Wei Wei. Its technology helps publishers build their own AI agents that, in turn, directly engage with consumers of content.
Ad Smarts
Heller, who was chief product officer for Comcast’s advanced advertising unit, and Rubenstein, whose AppNexus was acquired by Microsoft, serve as co-CEOs of Firsthand. Wei is chief technology officer.
The funding round was led by Toronto-based Radical Ventures, with the firm’s adtech expert David Katz joining the startup’s board. Other key investors included programmatic advertising pioneers Brian O’Kelley (Scope3, AppNexus) and David Rosenblatt (1stDibs.com, DoubleClick).
Rosenblatt led DoubleClick for over a decade before Google acquired the online advertising giant. He served Google for over a year before being hired to lead the ecommerce firm 1stdibs in 2011. Rosenblatt served on Twitter’s board for nearly a dozen years, besides holding seats on the boards of media giant IAC and luxury e-tailer Farfetch. Kelley co-founded AppNexus and ran it for 11 years before selling it to Microsoft, which renamed it as Xander.
Power Play
“They are the team to bet on,” Katz told VentureBeat, adding that this is a “moment in time” when publishers and brands “can control their own destiny and these moments don’t come often.”
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Firsthand is betting that its technology can help publishers regain the power they lost to powerful algorithms that today dictate traffic, monetization, and representation. It says its AI platform allows brands and publishers to securely manage deployment of their data and content, and directly engage with consumers.
The company’s platform includes a rights and data management layer, called Lakebed, which helps content owners fully control access to their proprietary assets, and generative marketing agents that act as surrogate search tools.
“These agents can conduct 1:1 personalized conversations and content presentation with consumers in their moment of need, anywhere they’re seeking information online,” Firsthand, which is running pilots with some unnamed brands and publishers, said in a statement on its website.
