Ever since she was young, Mollie knew that she wanted to pursue a career that would bring her to a big city, allow her to foster connections with different types of people, and expand on her passion for reading and writing. While journalism started off as the means in which Mollie thought she could find a job that would satisfy her craving for being able to connect and showcase people’s experiences, her move to New York introduced her to the world of advertising, “I fell in love with how exciting and interactive the industry is, and have met so many amazing people and have had so many wonderful experiences.” The hustle and bustle of the city that never sleeps introduced Mollie to the power that advertising holds in showcasing human experiences through brands and partnerships.
This newfound passion for advertising led her to working at Meredith in marketing and sales when she first moved to New York. Prior to founding Brandverge, Mollie cycled through sales roles at Sporting News and AdTheorent: while these jobs made Mollie grow passionate about the industry as a whole, she finally saw firsthand how much the media industry was changing with the advent of social media and technology. Whether it was through the expansion of digital media or increased reliance on mobile, Mollie’s career prior to founding their company brought to light the frustrating gap between the changes within this new media landscape and the archaic sales processes still used to create partnerships and brands. Websites like Kayak make booking a trip so much easier, and apps like Airbnb make comparing different types of hotels: why wasn’t there anything similar to that for the media & advertising industry? Mollie took the frustration she had in this delay in innovation and called her best friend and college roommate, Lynn Browne, to come up with a better solution: best friends since day 1 of college, Mollie was able to find someone who was just as passionate about her dream for the media industry as she was and who had the same passion to jump head-first into the world of entrepreneurship.
Thinking of the BrandVerge platform was only the beginning of the process, the biggest challenge for Mollie was moving past the personal doubts and fears that come with launching something complete new into the field, “We remember the day that we launched our products, we looked at each other and were worried that nobody was going to even log on,” noted Mollie on her biggest challenge after starting BrandVerge. However, the challenges that come with starting a completely new business soon subsided after the success of the platform in the beginning: now, Mollie’s greatest accomplishment has been to be able to stick to their purpose to constantly evolve to fit the changing needs of their customers. Being a company created in order to alleviate the gap between the buying and selling side of the advertising industry, everyday is a new chance to grow and innovate for the platform. In the future, Mollie plans on expanding their company offerings to include all media-types, not just digital and audio marketing programs.
The road to getting where Mollie is was not easy, but it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t 100% worth it. Her best advice for young entrepreneurs is to “not be too hard on yourself when things go badly. It’s okay to make mistakes: acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on.” From meeting her partner-in-crime at college, working in sales, to now being the CEO of her own company, the future possibilities for Mollie are endless.
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