Very impressive. I was going to say, "for a 15 year old", but that demeans the work--it's impressive, regardless of age, to build something like that in a short time frame with a small team.

And very astute from a business perspective. Every time there is an ad network acquisition my first thought is, "Wow, that must be the last one of those", because there have been so many, and all of the really well-known names have already been acquired. But the reality is that advertising on the web is becoming more important every day, and more valuable every day. It will continue to grow at the same pace as the Internet itself, and so any innovative advertising play is probably a smart one. Mobile advertising is also a world that is currently untapped.

And, interestingly, at least to me, advertising is a market where no matter how many established players there are, there's always room for someone to be "high touch" in a particular industry and be able to build a nice sized business. My brother-in-law works in old media advertising (which has been a well-settled market for over fifty years), and yet he's built an independent agency over the past twelve years or so that employs a number of people and makes plenty of money (where "plenty"==$millions). He does it by building relationships, and doing good work.

'I was going to say, "for a 15 year old", but that demeans the work'

And 15 yr olds. I mean, I've met some kids who are better hackers than I would ever dream of being -- I'm guessing that markbao is in that category. So concentrating on the guy's age seems like completely the wrong take on this.

Great sense of web design on all your sites, and being 15 is pretty impressive too :-)

I second this. Very clean but also dramatic. Good work on the logo, too.

The "learn more" section under "advertiser" states that "Cadmium provides a deep data collection system". Did you design something of an analytics dashboard as well? If it looks half as nice as the rest of the site, I'd be impressed.

The analytics 'dashboard': http://files.markbao.com/cadmium-db.png

The data collection results visualizer (insights): http://files.markbao.com/cadmium-insights.png

Thanks for your kind words!

Awesome job. Pie charts are generally not the way to go, though.

Wow, very nice.

If you're not in stealth mode, may I ask what is your current venture?

Random curiosity: did you change your name from Steve to Mark? If it isn't personal, mind sharing why?

Isn't it obvious? It's one character shorter. Just like one of Arc's guiding principles: "How code looks matters: short names, no swearing". Of course, since ones name is so frequently typed, one might prefer something even shorter. Like, "Joe", as a purely hypothetical example. I'm not sure one can go any shorter than three characters for a common male US name.

More seriously, I'm guessing Mark/Steven is of Asian descent (Bao make this seem more likely). They don't necessarily take their American name very seriously, since it's not their "real" name. I've known several Asian folks who've gone through a couple of Americanized names over the span of a few years. Their Japanese or Chinese or Vietnamese or Thai name stays the same throughout.

Most Asian Americans I know take their "American" names very seriously, as it's their legal, social, and personal identity.

Growing up Asian in the US, I hated when kids always asked me for my "real" name. I have a Chinese name, as well as an English name. Both are aliases for the person and both are "real".

Apologies for implying otherwise. I was primarily referring to Asians who grew up in Asia and still call Asia home, but that do business with Americans. I promise I won't ask you your "real" name.

Al?

Now you're talking! You can call me "Al" from now on, thanks.

Now we know why the superintelligent being called himself "Q".

Another alternative is to name yourself Zed, then emigrate to the UK.

But, we like to reserve one character identifiers for variables used in loops and such, right?

My hairdresser is from Korea. His name? "D".

Beat that!

I'll see your D and raise you a friend named Y.

(With apologies for the figure of speech to our poker playing friends).

Yes, I did. It was previously something Chinese, which I changed to Steven a year or so before, and decided that it wasn't what I liked, so Mark is what I changed it to.

It is, however, my legally recognized name.

Ah, good call. Steve Bao sounds like it has too many vowels. Mark Bao is much better :)

now if i was an investor, i would buy in.