Interview with Efficient Frontier Founder Anil Kamath

Back in mid-2003 Chris Moore at RedPoint Ventures asked me to meet Anil Kamath and talk about the keyword management technology he had built. I went into the meeting thinking I was going to tell Anil that he had no hope to build a business. Bid management systems already existed (GoToast and others started in 2002) and the SE's themselves provided bidding-related functionality as well.

Then Anil showed me a simple example of how Efficient Frontier (then Everest) algorithms worked better than anything on the market, subsequent to which I got down on my hands and knees and begged him to let me start Sales for the company.

Since then Anil's been busy building and enhancing EF's algorithms and technologies, so it's rare for him to see the light of day. However, he was interviewed recently by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting and the transcript is here. The discussion is on one of my favorite topics: portfolio based bid management.

Enjoy!