Unwind Media (Solitaired)

Neal Taparia and Darshan Somashekar go way back - the two high school friends who grew up in Chicago started building websites in their teens. One of their first products, a citation tool called EasyBib, became a hit among students and the basis of an edtech company they would later grow. However, it wasn’t until 2019 when they had the opportunity to experiment with how to infuse classic games with an educational twist. They imagined a platform where players of all ages and backgrounds could learn a thing or two while playing Solitaire, one of the most popular games in the world.

Thus, Solitaired was born.

The duo replaced traditional cards with ones that carried focused themes like "Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement" and "Notable Women in Computing," telling fascinating stories about notable figures and moments in history through Solitaire.

Then, the pandemic hit.

"People were stuck at home and wanted to play games, so we shifted to, ‘how do we make an awesome gaming experience?’" Neal recalls. "It was during the pandemic that Solitaired really found its footing and became a gaming platform."

Neal and Darshan’s new concept served as a source of educational entertainment for many during lockdown measures, and soon they grew their team of two to five - a feat they say would have been much more difficult without the support of Google Ad Manager. "Being ad-supported allows us to grow our business and stay true to our goals," Darshan says. "When you have a consumer business that’s reaching a lot of eyeballs it's just a great business model to monetize," Neal adds. "Ads support you and your goals to grow the business, without the ad component we couldn’t do what we do."

Emry Downinghall, SVP of Programmatic Revenue & Strategy at Unwind Media agrees. "We think of advertising as the democratization of learning and access to information," Emry says. "Advertising is what powers the open internet."

This has been an important area of focus and mission for Emry as he helps the team navigate internet privacy changes. "Users have a right to privacy online," Emry says. "As a publisher, we need to figure out how to replace the value of the third-party cookie. It’s been really encouraging to figure that out in partnership with Google."

Outside of their core work, Neal and Darshan are focused on creating a great company culture. "We try to live up to the namesake of our business: unwind," Neal says. His co-founder echoes the sentiment. "We’re about flexibility, freedom and not being overly managed," Darshan says. "We’re an intentionally small team, who we know and trust super well, and our philosophy is ‘less is more’ so we can focus on what's important - the more effective we are with our partnership with Google, the better we are at building business."

The success of Solitaired has opened up another avenue for Darshan, Neal and Emry: connecting with other publishers to keep the free access to information and education going.

Through Google, the team initially connected with two other publishers, and that eventually snowballed into a message group which now has over 200 publishers sharing tips and trends on how to approach monetization.

"We share in a community of publishers to give back and learn as much as we can," Emry says. "This is my favorite aspect of being a publisher!"