How MNTN Is Bringing Hollywood Creativity to Small Business

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This is a snippet of an article featured on Inc.

“How’s everyone else’s nervous system?” When actor, producer, and flourishing business savant Ryan Reynolds walks into the room asking this, he does so in a cloud of unexpected modesty. Here in Inc.’s offices for a photo shoot, he steps in front of the camera enacting various shades of casual executive realness, trading quips and volleys with the crew about his own anxiety. (“That little maladaptive coping mechanism,” he says. “It’s wildly insecure.”) It’s an unexpected approach for a ubiquitous A-list Hollywood star, but one Reynolds has deployed to disarming effect throughout his career, both onscreen and in business. “I have a people-pleasing kind of Canadian habit ingrained,” he says. “I need to deliver for those I’ve promised I’ll deliver for.”

Lately, Reynolds and his business partner, Mark Douglas, have been delivering for clients on their self-serve television advertising platform, MNTN, one of the fastest-growing names in the ad business. The company says its proprietary technology—an AI matchmaking system it calls MNTN Matched—helps advertisers of all sizes target the commercials you see on your connected TV. The platform is Douglas’s baby; he merged it with Maximum Effort, the creative agency that Reynolds co-founded in 2018. Combining forces, the partners believed, would give them a winning combination of technology and brand personality.

In a world where rizz counts, MNTN seems to have it. In 2022, it raised $119 million, and it has been vying to steal dollars and market share from adtech and agency competitors like Trade Desk, NextRoll, and even Amazon. Though the company declined to share revenue figures, it is reportedly on track for an initial public offering, likely in 2025. (When asked about an IPO, Douglas laughs and shrugs.)

It’s intriguing that such a high-potential growth company could find traction in a business—TV advertising—that’s supposedly on the decline. It’s also fascinating that Reynolds, with Douglas at his side, may prove to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in defining the future of media.

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