Meet the digital David taking on the Google Goliath

JEFF GREEN learned about marketing the hard way. In his late teens he was sent to Ventura, on the Californian coast, as a Mormon missionary. He spent 12 hours a day knocking on people’s doors, mostly to have them slammed in his face. His sales pitch was hardly compelling on the bikini-loving west coast, but as he tells Schumpeter: “If you can convince people to give up premarital sex, 10% of their income, no more alcohol, no more smoking or coffee or tea, and then go to church three hours on Sunday, then arguably you can sell anything.” Today he is head of a digital-advertising platform, The Trade Desk (TTD), which he co-founded and based in Ventura, his old stamping-ground. Its market value of $42bn is only slightly less than the combined worth of two of the most valuable ad agencies, Publicis and Omnicom. In digital advertising, the only firms bigger—albeit much, much bigger—are the Goliaths of big tech.