Collective Audience Appoints Peter Bordes, As Chief Executive Officer

Collective Audience, Inc. (NASDAQ:CAUD), a leading innovator of audience based performance advertising and media solutions, has appointed Peter Bordes as chief executive officer, succeeding Brent Suen who will continue to serve on the board of directors.
 

A lifelong entrepreneur, operator and venture investor, Bordes brings to the company more than 30 years of executive and board experience leading private and public companies across the AdTech, media, AI, fintech and technology sectors. His career and investing have focused on innovation and disruptive technologies that drive digital transformation.

"I have followed Peter's career since the early 1990s, and over that time I've seen the AdTech industry evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry thanks to the visionary executive leadership and investments of pioneering individuals like Peter," commented Suen. "I have experienced Peter's guidance and leadership on the executive, operational and board level to be unparalleled. This makes Peter ideally suited to the new initiatives we are pursuing to build a full stack integrated platform, the acquisition of highly complementary technologies, and the formation of key new partnerships. We are fortunate to have someone of Peter's caliber to step into this important role at this pivotal stage for Collective Audience."

The company's recently appointed director, and noted digital media and technology executive, Elisabeth DeMarse, added: "As an exceptionally well-known and highly respected leader in the advertising and technology communities, we anticipate Peter's deep industry relationships and connections to open doors to new business opportunities that will be transformative for both Collective Audience and the partners and technology innovators we bring onto our platform."

Bordes has been ranked among the nation's Top 100 most influential angel investors, and has funded and scaled numerous companies from startup to fully operational, highly-successful organizations. He has also been a noted thought leader across multiple industry sectors, including for the performance marketing industry as a founding member and former chairman of the Performance Marketing Association.

"On behalf of the board and our shareholders, we would like to express our deepest appreciation for Brent's unwavering drive and commitment that successfully completed our business combination with Abri that secured our valuable Nasdaq listing," stated Bordes. "The listing has opened the door to a whole new world of exciting opportunities to build, innovate and disrupt.

"This includes addressing a great unmet need for a next generation fully integrated end to end digital media and advertising platform that solves the many challenges the industry faces, from the death of the cookie, the fragmentation between buyers, sellers and audience, and walled gardens, to lack of liquidity, innovation and access to audience data. Our approach will bring together previously disparate technologies as building blocks with uniquely powerful integrations. The integration and cross pollination has the potential to enable exponential growth in a way not possible as stand-alone solutions— creating a ‘rising tide' effect that increases revenue across our audience-based ecosystem, and drives meaningful, enterprise value.

"Designed as an open, interconnected, data driven, digital advertising and media ecosystem, it will uniquely eliminate many inefficiencies in the digital ad buyer and seller process for brands, agencies and publishers. It will deliver long sought-after visibility, complementary technology, and unique audience data that drives our focus on performance, brand reach, traffic and transactions. For the AdTech providers and media buyers who come onto our platform, they will be able to leverage audience data as a new asset class, powered by AI as an intelligence layer to guide decision making.

"As a next generation audience-based performance advertising and media platform, we expect it to disrupt the traditional digital advertising, media and consumer data business in ways previously unimagined. It will distinguish Collective Audience as a clear new leader in the space."

Peter Bordes Bio

For more than 30 years, Bordes has been an entrepreneur, senior executive, board member, and venture investor focused on disruptive innovation in the areas of artificial intelligence, big data, fintech, cybersecurity, digital media and advertising, and next generation digital infrastructure technology.

He is the founder and managing partner of Trajectory Ventures, a venture capital platform comprised of operators, founders, and entrepreneurs focused on advancing technology and industry innovation with investments in over 100 tech innovators. He is also founder and managing partner of Trajectory Capital, a later-stage investing platform and private equity fund.

Through Trajectory Ventures, he helped lead investments and exits for multiple disruptive companies, including:

• TripleLift, a global Adtech platform.
• Think-Realtime, a first machine learning RTB platform for performance advertising that was acquired by Dealer.com.
• LocalMind, a location-based information platform providing real-time answers for destination-related queries that was acquired by AirBNB.
  
   

Bordes is also co-founder and managing partner of TruVest, a next generation impact real estate investment, development, and technology company.

He also served as CEO and a board member of Trajectory Alpha Acquisition (NYSE:TCOA), a special purpose acquisition corporation focused on high growth innovative technology.

An active angel investor and entrepreneur mentor, Bordes has been ranked among the Top 100 Most Influential Angel Investors in the U.S. and social media.

He currently serves as vice chairman of Ocearch.org, a non-profit world leader in scientific data related to tracking and biological studies of keystone marine species, such as great white sharks. He is also chairman of Hoo.be, a leading platform for the creator economy.

His other board directorships include:

• Beasley Broadcast Group (NASDAQ:BBGI), a public media and digital broadcast company providing music, news, sports information and entertainment to over 20 million listeners from 63 stations across the U.S.
• Fraud.net, a leading AI powered collective intelligence fraud prevention, risk mitigation cloud infrastructure platform for the real-time economy.
• BeeLine, a fintech infrastructure platform transforming the mortgage and real estate finance industry with embedded finance tools for real-time transactions.
• Fernhill MainBloq (OTC:FERN), a modular cloud-based infrastructure platform for trading digital assets.
• GoLogiq, Inc. (OTC:GOLQ), a U.S.-based global provider of fintech and consumer data analytics.
• Logiq, Inc. (OTC:LGIQ), a U.S.-based advertising technology company and significant stockholder of Collective Audience.
• MediaJel, a transformative software platform with proprietary data tools and compliant MarTech solutions, purpose-built to serve cannabis, CBD, and regulated brands worldwide.
• Board of Trustees for New England College.

Bordes previously founded and served as founder, CEO and chairman of MediaTrust, the leading real-time performance marketing exchange. He led the company from startup to being recognized as the 9th fastest growing company in the U.S. in 2009. He also founded and served as member and chairman of the Performance Marketing Association, a non-profit trade association.

He has contributed his technology insights to a number of publications, including the CNBC article, "A.I. can ‘Augment Humanity in a Very Positive Way,' says Family Office Investor Peter Bordes," published on May 8.

Bordes holds a bachelor's degree in communication, business and media studies from New England College.

Inducement Grants Under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5635(c)(4)

In connection with the hiring of Peter Bordes, the compensation committee of Collective Audience's board of directors issued to him 71,429 shares of restricted common stock of Collective Audience as an inducement material to his entering into employment with Collective Audience in accordance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5635(c)(4), which grant shall be made outside of any company equity incentive plan.

The restricted stock will vest monthly over six months, commencing on the first completed calendar month after the date of issuance and subject to the terms thereof. The vesting of shares of common stock underlying the restricted stock grant are subject to Bordes' continuous service with Collective Audience through each such vesting date.