Inside The Mind Of An Industry Visionary

David Steinberg | Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder | Zeta Global

A Founder's Seventh Act: David founded his first company coming out of school in 1990, calling himself "unemployable" during the recession of that era. Seven companies later, including two IPOs and four exits, he's still building. Zeta is the seventh, and he says it's the biggest. 🚀

The Bet On AI, Eight Years Early: Zeta started programming artificial intelligence in 2017, long before every martech deck had AI on the cover slide. That head start is why Forrester clocks Zeta at a 600% return on every client dollar, and why David thinks that's the floor, not the ceiling. 🧠

The Athena Era: Zeta's biggest innovation is Athena, a voice-enabled superintelligent agent built on a simple premise: humans have communicated by voice for 400,000 years, the keyboard is 75, and the interface itself has become the blocker. Athena unlocks the 90% of platform capability most marketers never touch. 🎙️

Attribution Is Out, Accountability Is In: David's call for 2026: attribution is at all-time highs, but the bar is moving. True accountability, the return on every dollar spent, is the new standard. And the companies that can't prove it will fall behind the ones that can. 📈