Primary Job Title Founder & CEO Primary Organization VideoStorm
Location New York, New York, United States Regions Greater New York Area, East Coast, Northeastern US Gender Male
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David Sidman is the founder and CEO of Linkstorm, an advertising technology company that makes online advertising more useful to the consumer, and therefore better-performing for the advertiser. Linkstorm has achieved 2x-20x improvements in click-through and conversion rates for IBM, Cisco, Wal-Mart, Blackberry, American Express and many others by
overlaying its unique, patent-pending navigation menu onto their display ads.
Mr. Sidman originally founded the company as Content Directions in order to commercialize a new linking system for the Internet created by the primary inventor of the Internet itself, Dr. Robert Kahn, with the potential to replace or supplant DNS and URLs as we know them today. In the course of setting the company on its current/successful path in online advertising, he re-invented the company several times over and raised >$13M from 175 Angel investors including Esther Dyson, Jim Rutt, D.E. Shaw, Robert Weissman and others, as well as creating an extensive patent portfolio for what is fundamentally a new/better way to navigate the Web.
Prior to founding Linkstorm, Mr. Sidman served as director of new publishing technologies for John Wiley & Sons, where he helped the U.S.’ oldest independent publisher to transition its print business to the Web through a combination of strategy development, internal projects enabling organic growth, and external acquisitions/investments. In four years he helped grow electronic product revenues 16-fold, with profitability rising more than 10-fold. He also helped initiate usage of the Web as a sales channel for print publications, growing this channel from nonexistence in 1996 to over $30 million by the time he left. As a member of the M&A team, he participated in acquisitions and integrations totaling about $300M.
In addition to his Linkstorm responsibilities, Mr. Sidman is the non-executive chairman of Anian Games, a social media gaming company, and a managing director at POM Partners (“Pulse On Media”), a boutique investment and advisory firm focused solely on digital media.
Prior to Linkstorm and Wiley, Mr. Sidman held senior management positions in the technology, finance and information businesses of Barclay's Bank, Moody's Investors Service, Shearson Lehman Hutton/American Express, Mercantile Stores and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Mr. Sidman is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, where he also taught physics, mathematics and philosophy as an undergraduate.
