Mobile Marketing Leaders Since 1998
Press
Reporter’s Notebook on Chicago’s Vibes Media: Mastering the Start-Up Vibe
October 14, 2008
CHICAGO - In this week’s Reporter’s Notebook, we profile Charley Cassell. He was recently hired as CFO of Chicago mobile marketing firm Vibes Media. Cassell is armed with $15 million and plenty of experience taking start-ups to successful exits. We also highlight the Chicago investors behind the $360 million sale of Left Hand Networks and preview a social media event in Chicago this Thursday.
It’s not easy to raise $15 million for anything these days much less a mobile marketing start-up 10 years in the making. In doing so, Vibes Media can now be viewed as the Chicago-area tech company that’s most likely to succeed.
Founded in 1998 by then-recent college graduates Alex Campbell and Jack Philbin, Vibes Media today is a profitable player in the $4 billion mobile marketing industry.
The company, which received its first outside round of funding from Boston-based Fidelity Ventures, assists advertisers like Pepsi and Texas Instruments in creating text messaging campaigns.
Vibes Media recently hired a finance chief who has experience selling start-ups to both Yahoo! and Google and then serving as an executive with both companies.
“My relatively short tenure at Google suggests that I am a small company guy,” said Charley Cassell. He became Vibes Media’s CFO in June 2008.
A year before joining Vibes Media, Cassell served as CFO of FeedBurner during its $100 million sale to Google. During the “frothy” dot-comedy of the late 1990s, Cassell helped sell a company called eGroups to Yahoo!.
“This is a good time to make a transition back to something smaller,” said the 42-year-old North Carolina native. “The size and stage of Vibes Media made it interesting for me to join and develop my skills as a CFO.”
While privately held Vibes Media doesn’t disclose its financials, in 2007 it made the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States. Cassell says Vibes will invest the new money in acquisitions, technology and adding to its 60 employees who punch in at 205 W. Wacker.
“Charley knows how to do things to make a business run faster,” said Google executive and former FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo. “He had a huge impact and did a great job instrumenting our financials.”
Even after working for two Silicon Valley-based behemoths, Cassell (whose dad was born in Des Plaines, Ill.) prefers to play with local entrepreneurial companies. He added: “You can be a relatively bigger fish in a market like Chicago if you establish yourself.”
