Encinitas, February 19^th, 2026

Metajive is a premier digital design and technology partner dedicated to the mission of “Creating Great Experiences” for the world’s most ambitious brands. Since its founding in 2004, the studio has delivered over 300 projects, ranging from aspirational niche labels to Fortune 10 giants. A recognized leader in the industry, Metajive’s work has earned prestigious accolades including Webby Award Honours, Awwwards, and multiple FWA and Adobe Site of the Day recognitions. More than just an agency, they are craft-focused collaborators who blend high-end aesthetics with complex engineering to transform ideas into sustainable digital growth.

Dave Benton, the Founder of Metajive, is a Silicon Valley native whose entrepreneurial journey began at a kitchen table after leaving a college job at Jamba Juice. Having navigated the death of Flash, the volatility of COVID-19, and the rapid rise of AI, Dave’s career is a masterclass in resilience and strategic adaptation. Today, he leads a team that has grown to over 20 specialists, shifting his focus from hands-on design to scaling systems and ensuring every project is backed by complete ownership of results. In this interview, Dave explores the future of Agentic Commerce, the lessons learned through twenty years of survival and success, and why he remains an unapologetic optimist about the role of technology in society.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Dave. Let’s start with your roots — what was growing up in Foster City like, and how did your early experiences lead you toward the intersection of design, technology, and entrepreneurship?

Growing up in Foster City felt normal, but it was actually growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley. My friends parents were software engineers, Xerox, HP and Apple were pioneering the future miles from my house. I interned at Napster and other funded start ups in summers during college. I was exposed to how Silicon Valley worked while simultaneously living a normal suburban life.

You’re now based in Encinitas, California. What do you enjoy most about living there, and what local experiences would you recommend to someone visiting from abroad for the first time?

Encinitas in Paradise. The Metajive office is less than a mile from the beach and down town. It is a small enough town to feel normal and big enough to have great restaurants and community without being anonymous. There is almost every outdoor activity you can imagine. If someone was coming from out of town I would say get a California Burrito (with french fries) and go to the beach.

How do you typically structure your workday or week to manage both business and personal demands?

If I am not traveling I can predict my schedule any day a year in advance with pretty high confidence. My wife and I trade morning schedules before work and after work it’s family time. About 50% of my meetings are recurring to keep the team moving, my job has transitioned from being hands on in projects to helping the team across the business.

What led you to found Metajive back in 2004, and how has your vision for the studio evolved over the past two decades?

It would be hard to say I manifested where metajive is now 20 years ago, we have surpassed every expectation I could have set. We have an amazing team, we built out our “Forever Home” office and partner with some of the most exciting companies on the planet. Metajive started as taking a project or two while I was looking for a job, one project turned into another and I needed help so I started working with some great people. Eventually I had to make the decision to get serious and treat it as a business, invest in growth and think about building systems and planning for the long term. Running a business is a roller coaster with ups and downs but its not a journey I would have traded for anything.

You’ve worked with over 300 clients, from niche brands to Fortune 10 giants. What has remained consistent across all those collaborations?

Our best collaborations always have been based on a shared desire to explore and create something great. Large clients lend stability while start ups bring innovation and enthusiasm that keeps us motivated. Working with Google Creative Labs is a dream, they are the smartest kindest people who take work as seriously as we do. They are not the only client we share ethos with but they are a great example of how we are lucky enough to work with people who get up for the intrinsic value of doing great work. Additionally working with one of the worlds largest banks we get a rush knowing our work will be seen by 60 million people and you can affect their lives with a better digital experience. Beyond that we can’t talk about some of our most exciting work.

Metajive is known for “creating great experiences”. What does that phrase mean to you in practical terms?

Metajive defines great experiences across three pillars: the digital experiences we create, the experience we create with our partners(clients) and for our team. We all work in constraints so it is about doing the best you can with what you have everyday and find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

How do you approach the balance between design, technology, and business strategy when building for modern brands?

In my life design, technology, and business are all interconnected. Technology helps create opportunities for us to leverage for our clients. Design is what shapes our vision for the experiences we build. The design and technology teams work very closely to find an exciting way to create business outcomes for our Partners (clients). It is a business so we are looking for ways to connect with audiences and provide value for our clients.

What excites you most about the role AI can play in the creative process — and what are you most cautious about?

AI is re-inventing itself every day, it is as exciting as the early 2000’s when I was growing as a Flash designer. There is always something new, our team is leaning in on all fronts; the designers are making amazing images and videos with generative AI, our technology team are leveraging AI in the development process and we are working on exciting projects implementing AI on all sorts of project types. So AI is affecting what projects we create, it is affecting how we create our projects and we are using it in our business for ourselves. There is always something new to explore I have not been this excited about technology in a long time.

You’ve expressed interest in Shopify’s growing presence in the enterprise space. Why do you think it’s time for larger companies to take the platform more seriously?

Shopify has spent over 2 billion dollars investing in their platform to be a serious place for businesses of all scales. We take on more and more Shopify projects every year; as an enterprise partner we have helped fortune 500 companies make the leap. For speed, scale and reliability, the complexity of doing this on any other platform just doesn’t make sense. We still do work on other platforms but we always explore Shopify first.

What kind of shift are you seeing in how e-commerce experiences are designed for enterprise-level clients today?

We are working with all of our clients to get them ready for “Agentic Commerce”—this summer Google and Open AI are going to enable full shopping checkout through their agents. This is a game changing moment for AI and e-commerce; in order to be ready there is both technical preparation in how you set up and serve your data as well as what content you put into the world. AI loves structured data so tables and FAQ’s feed the machine. Machines aren’t great at “midnight blue” so believe it or not you also need to provide hex colors to identify your product isn’t royal or navy blue. This also means you have a huge advantage in AEO/GEO to make sure agents know where to find your brand and your products. This is an opportunity to be out front on a new frontier.

Can you walk us through a recent project where your team helped a brand transform digitally through both storytelling and tech?

The HP All in plan was one of the biggest and most exciting projects we have ever been a part of. HP trusted our team to bring this new initiative to life from day one. We worked our long time partners for over a year exploring how to make sure people understood you are renting a printer with ink refills and tech support for less than $10 a month—this is an absolute game changer for the industry. Todd Purgason our Executive Creative Director lead the whole project from ideation, messaging, campaign visuals and immersive story telling. The team not only delivered on that vision we stayed with our partners through testing to make sure it performed better than any product launch in HP’s history.

Awards aside, how do you define success for a digital experience or campaign?

One of the first parts of kicking off any project is aligning on the business metrics of what success looks like for the client. From a higher conversion rate, more leads, or clear communication and messaging to stakeholders of all types make a project successful. Beyond the business end a great digital experience is easy to use, guides the user and ideally makes them feel something. Fast loading, clean typography interesting visuals are all fascets. A great experience is not one thing but the culmination of 1,000 details all refined to work together.

Collaboration is clearly central to your process. What do you think makes for a truly productive partnership between agency and client?

Alignment with our client partners is what makes a productive partnership. We all need to have a clear vision for what outcome we want to create together. Working together with alignment means we don’t get feedback like “im not sure about that font” but “is this layout optimized for conversion”—that means our team doesn’t have to work with subjective feedback but the clients trust the team to find solutions for what they care about most.

As the digital landscape continues to shift, what advice would you give to brands trying to stay relevant — or even ahead of the curve?

The best advice is to “keep experimenting”, tiny iterations compound over time. In a digital medium nothing is permanent which gives us the opportunity to test, play and try new things. With a large enough audience you get near instant feedback. The world is changing fast right now so standing still is not an option.

Outside of work, what are some of your hobbies and interests?

Snowboarding is where I am happiest in life, living in San Diego doesn’t give me as much time in the mountains as I would like but life here is amazing. Surfing, camping with my daughter, skateparks it’s all fun.

From your personal standpoint, what is the greatest challenge of our time?

How society deals with integrating AI will be telling of our time. I am an optimist and hope we can leverage this technology for advances in medicine, climate change learning, companionship and every other challenge in society. We are all learning how we can take advantage of this shift in society at the same time. I hope I can find a small way to contribute to how we shape our future.

Finally, can you share a fun or unexpected fact about yourself that people wouldn’t guess from your founder bio?

My hair has been most of the colors of the rainbow.

Thanks Dave!

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