This interview with Brian O’Kelley, chief executive of AppNexus, an advertising technology company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. Were you an entrepreneur early on?
A. I was always a failure at lemonade stands, but when I was in high school I was into computers. A buddy of mine and I started building Web sites for local businesses, right when the Internet was taking off in ’95. We eventually had about 50 customers. It was our side project to help pay for pizza in college.
Q. Sounds like you were busy in college.
A. At Princeton I got roped into rowing crew. I didn’t really enjoy it all that much. I would row crew at 6 in the morning, go to classes all day, go back and row some more, go to my campus job washing dishes, come home and do my homework and then build Web sites. I would go to sleep at 3 or 4 in the morning, then wake up at 6.
Q. So you don’t need a lot of sleep.
