Anura

Q&A with Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder at Anura

Media 7 | January 11, 2021

Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder at Anura, has been a leader in the online advertising industry since 1993. In 2003, he started eZanga.com, a digital marketing firm specializing in pay per click and pay per call advertising. His commentary has been featured in a variety of publications and he’s been named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. MEDIA 7: Please take us through your career journey. How did you come up with the idea of Anura? Rich Kahn: I began my initial career in Internet Marketing back in 1993. Being so enthralled with what the internet could do, I quickly put together a newsletter sharing all of what I was learning about the new medium. As the newsletter grew, my readers would inquire about advertising within my newsletter, and that sparked my first digital marketing company. In an effort to grow my audience, I purchased a list of ‘opt-in’ email users from an Internet company, however, ultimately it ended up being fraudulent. As a result, this list almost cost me my company along with many other problems. This was my first experience with fraud on the Internet. In late 1994, with the introduction of the web browser, I quickly saw a whole new direction of where the internet was heading. Technologies were being built to make it easy for the average person to take advantage of this awesome and advanced new technology.  I got involved in all different kinds of technology and developed some of my own throughout the years. In the late 90’s I built a company that paid users to surf the web, where I was written up in WIRED magazine about this company. The article found that some of my users were using software to earn money while they were not online. To combat this user fraud, I built my first fraud detection software and began my journey of mitigating fraud. In the early 2000��s I was an advertiser promoting a variety of offers such as lead generati