Now that the “Internet” has been around in some shape or form for almost 40 years, there is an entirely generation of people who have never known life without it. With that comes innovations in marketing, advertising – and fraud. Our next guest is doing his part to help people fight back.

Please introduce yourself to our readers: 

Rich Kahn, CEO of eZanga.com

You are working on something pretty cool. Care to share a little bit about that?

There’s been an ongoing problem with click fraud in our industry for several years. Our product, Traffic Advisors Infinity, helps prevent advertisers from losing billions of dollars each year.

What made you decide to follow that path?

We actually started as advertisers ourselves, but we noticed the traffic we were buying wasn’t converting as we would’ve liked. So I started playing around with code and created a program that could detect fraudulent traffic. Eventually, I started sharing this product with other advertisers. This led to a shift in our business model, leading eZanga to where it is today.

Have you taken any outside funding?

None. All of the money that went into eZanga came from my wife and myself.

Do you have any partners?

Just my wife, Beth Kahn. She’s our CFO!

What outcome do you hope to achieve?

We’d love to get to a place where we were involved in setting an industry standard for preventing fraud. Currently, there are no standards, allowing fraudsters to get away with costing advertisers money.

What is your company culture like?

Our company motto is ‘Work Hard. Eat Hard. Play Hard.’ It’s something we live by here every day.

Walk us through your average day:

There’s no such thing as an average day for me. I start by day at 5AM, and then throughout the day I’m checking in with various departments, clients, and media outlets. But variety is the spice of life, and that’s what I love about what I do. There’s never a dull day at eZanga.

What advice would you give to someone else thinking of starting their own business?

Make sure you have a good plan, and make sure there’s a market for your product. Then you need to check if someone has tried out your idea before. That’s when you can see what mistakes they made, and learn from them. Once you’re happy with your research, don’t ever give up. Too many people give up too fast.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 things would you bring?

1. I’d bring a water purifier so I could drink.

2. I’d bring an iPad

3. I’d bring a solar charger

I’d bring the last two because there’s too much to do for work to completely disconnect (even hypothetically). But since I’d be on a deserted island, I’d also use these to surf the internet. There’s so much content and news out there that I miss out on. Even though my business is online, I couldn’t tell you the last time I just surfed the net. At the end of the day, I like to disconnect and spend time with my family. If I was completely alone, I’d have time to consume some of the amazing content that’s online.

Thank you for sharing, Rich! You can find him on Twitter!