Richard K. Kahn’s greatest leadership lesson comes with a sense of loss and sorrow.
“Do not hire friends to work in your business because when it comes time to be the boss, they pull the ‘friend card’ which will spell trouble for your friendship,” he said. “I have lost two of my best friends because of this.”
Kahn is CEO of Anura, an SaaS-based ad fraud solution with the mission to increase client growth by improving marketing results through ad fraud mitigation.
Kahn co-founded a digital marketing company in 2003 known as eZanga.com and noticed inconsistencies in his traffic, which he believed to be fraudulent. A solution was evasive, and in 2005 he developed code that was able to filter out traffic to eliminate ad fraud. The program, Traffic Advisors, is still in use today.
In 2015, Kahn and his team used the base code of Traffic Advisors to build a more advanced technology using a combination of machine learning and years of studying the digital footprints of online advertising. In 2017, after extensive testing, they launched Anura as an offering available only through his digital marketing company. Anura became its own entity in January 2019. Under Kahn’s leadership, Anura has seen amazing growth, and he is now a leading expert in the industry, specializing in ad fraud detection.
“Our vision is to create the next unicorn company,” the company said. “If we continue the trajectory we are headed, the billion-dollar valuation is within our grasp.”
Anura has had record-setting growth every year, increasing by 139% in 2019, 75% in 2020 and 47% in 2021. Staff has doubled and is expected to double again by the end of 2022. There are plans to expand offices worldwide.
At the age of nine, Kahn wrote his first computer game. At age 16, he wrote his first bulletin board system, which was the predecessor for his later websites. In 1993, Kahn launched his first internet company. Ten years later, he co-founded a successful digital marketing firm that is still in operation today.
In 2010, Kahn received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Kahn’s business was recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in 2008. His company continued to appear on the Inc. 5000 list in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Kahn has served as a board member of the Consumer Consent Council since 2017, and his awards include the SmartCEO and Deloitte’s Fast 50 awards.
“I will continue to produce content for people to read so they can learn about fraud and what they can do to prevent it,” Kahn said.