Brian O’Kelley is an inventor, serial entrepreneur, digital industrialist and the co-founder of Waybridge, a first-of-its-kind supply chain technology company. Initially breaking into the startup space as an ad industry disruptor, he pivoted into commodities, a $4 trillion dollar industry untapped by technology. Just as railroads created the physical infrastructure for the industrial revolution, O’Kelley, as a technologist, is creating the digital infrastructure for a 21st century economy around raw goods.

O’Kelley was the founder of AppNexus—the transformative advertising industry disruptor and one of New York City’s most successful startups ever— who led the company through its $1.6B sale to AT&T in 2018. Starting AppNexus from his tiny New York City apartment, O’Kelley, over 11 years grew it into a global company that powered some of the most important advertisers and publishers in the world. (Think: Microsoft, AT&T, WPP, Yahoo! Japan, Axel Springer, and News Corporation.) At AppNexus, he invented real-time and header bidding, as well as helped create Prebid.org, the world’s leading open source header bidding technology. Previously, while CTO at Right Media, O’Kelley invented and commercialized the online advertising exchange and data marketplace. These innovations launched the $30B programmatic advertising industry and catalyzed Right Media’s 2007 sale to Yahoo! for $850 million. 

O'Kelley’s been included in Crain’s "40 Under 40”, Adweek 50, and Silicon Alley 100 lists. In 2012, he was recognized as an “EY Entrepreneur of the Year” in the New York region. O’Kelley represented AppNexus as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer at Davos. He is an active Tech:NYC board member. O’Kelley graduated from Princeton with a B.S.E. in computer science.

A dedicated New Yorker, O’Kelley lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters with whom he shares his love of books, foreign languages, and taco night.