Podcasts about Silicon Alley

"Product Talk" is a podcast hosted by SC Moradi, founder and chair of Products That Count. In a captivating episode, Xavier Segura, a general partner at Morgan Creek Digital, shares insights into his career journey, from innovation as a technology operator to managing investments as an early-stage venture investor. Learn more about your Digital Currents Host and how his experience at AppNexus, a Silicon Alley company, shed light on the challenges of newcomers competing against incumbent industry giants like Google and Facebook, and his exploration of fintech and mobile tech startups. Xavier discusses his decision to reinvest in himself from product manager to investor, pursue business school, and launch a venture fund. Xavier and SC Moradi also talk about several tech trends including the evolving cloud revolution, data security challenges, the potential of blockchain technology and the implications of AI. In addition, Xavier explores the potential return of on-premises data centers, driven by the desire of companies to own and protect their proprietary data sets, increased computing power, and AI usage. The hosts further highlight the importance of diversity of thought in AI training sets. "Product Talk" offers valuable insights and experiences for product managers, aspiring professionals, and anyone interested in the dynamic world of product development. To learn more, visit us on the web at https://www.morgancreekcap.com/morgan-creek-digital/. To speak to a member of our team or sign up for other content, please email mcdigital@morgancreekcap.com

Join Gregg Cohen in an inspiring interview with Dima Gutzeit, the founder and CEO of LeapXpert, as he shares his remarkable journey and the innovative strides of LeapXpert in revolutionizing professional communication within enterprise procedures and consumer messengers. Born in 1978 in the Soviet Union, Dima's life took a dramatic turn when his family, facing the collapse of their country, moved to Israel. This transition from a communist regime to a vibrant new environment was challenging, especially as they had no friends or connections. However, Dima's early fascination with technology, fostered by accompanying his father to work on mainframe computers since the age of five, stayed strong.Dima's passion for technology continued to flourish in Israel, where he served in the Navy for three years, managing communication systems and leading a team of officers on battleships. This experience sharpened his skills in communication and management, laying a solid foundation for his future career. After his military service, Dima transitioned from being a guard to a support person, eventually becoming a webmaster. His first significant role in enterprise communication involved mobile phone authentication, which marked the beginning of his deep engagement in the sector. Despite the novelty and challenges of internet messaging at the time, Dima was captivated by the potential to reach a broad audience.His journey then took him to Hong Kong, where he embraced the fast-paced world of startups. As a CTO, he faced both success and setbacks, learning valuable lessons about building a company and a product. This period of growth and reflection was crucial, as it matured him and prepared him for the founding of LeapXpert. Despite initial struggles, including a challenging financial situation and a difficult start at an Asian festival, Dima's breakthrough came when major businesses showed interest in his innovative integration of consumer messengers for enterprise communication. This pivotal moment led to meetings with industry giants like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, propelling LeapXpert forward.The Covid-19 pandemic, while challenging, also highlighted the critical need for effective remote communication solutions. LeapXpert thrived by addressing these needs, securing major clients, and raising substantial funds. Dima's journey underscores the importance of resilience, adaptability, and surrounding oneself with a team that complements one's strengths and weaknesses. His story is a testament to the power of persistence, innovation, and the right partnerships in achieving success.For more insights and to connect with Dima Gutzeit, explore LeapXpert's groundbreaking contributions to the enterprise communication landscape. Don't miss this inspiring conversation that highlights the intersection of technology, leadership, and the relentless pursuit of innovation.

Level Up Newsletter & Community paid members were invited to join this live event with Andrew Yeung and Jason Yoong discussing "How to Be a High-Value Connector & Networker". --- Show Notes: 00:00 Introduction and Welcome 00:46 Common Networking Mistakes 01:54 Building Goodwill in Networking 04:03 Effective Cold Outreach Strategies 09:05 Creating and Controlling the Room 24:59 Balancing Corporate and Entrepreneurial Pursuits 29:07 Maximizing Your Efforts 29:30 Navigating Networking 32:20 Internal and External Networking Strategies 34:39 The Importance of Building Relationships 35:04 Soft Skills at Big Tech Companies 36:25 Performance Reviews and Networking 40:02 Building a Personal Brand 42:30 Organizing Successful Events 44:13 Reflecting on Big Company Experiences 50:12 Future Plans and Community Support --- About Andrew Yeung Andrew is an ex-Google and Meta product leader turned tech and hospitality entrepreneur and investor. He hosts events and runs Andrew's Mixers (1,000+ person tech rooftop mixers), The Junto Series (C-suite and tech leader dinners), and Lumos House (a multi-day, multi-city experience in a private mansion). Over 30,000 people have attended across 8 cities. Attendees include founders of billion-dollar companies, media personalities with millions of followers, and Olympic athletes turned entrepreneurs. Business Insider dubbed Andrew the "Gatsby of Silicon Alley." ​ Andrew recently launched The OOO Summit for Owners, Operators, and Outliers to gather for a full-day event, with talks, activities, networking sessions, and of course a “party”, for you to learn from the top experts in the biz and meet some of the most ambitious, curious, and inspiring people in New York City on August 17. Follow Andrew on LinkedIn. Follow Andrew on Twitter. --- About Level Up ​​​ Level Up is your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. Paid members get access to member-only events, all newsletter articles, access to a private Slack leadership networking community, and more. Join here.  Jason Yoong is the operating partner at Level Up (and ex-Amazon). Connect with Jason on LinkedIn. Explore Ethan's website. Ethan's leadership development courses https://maven.com/ethan-evans (live online) and https://ethan-evans.mykajabi.com/ (on-demand)

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneIf you enjoyed our discussion, please check out the following media that relates to these chapters:Films/TV: The Thin Man; In the Toilet (fan made song)Books/Authors: Thomas Pynchon's Silicon Alley by Mike Godwin, The Thin Man by Dashiell HammettAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Twitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/

2:11:48 – Frank in NJ and NYC, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Wallet caffeine strips, Silicon Alley, the “real world”, Atlantic City, new bus terminal, Sheets Energy Strips – Cinnamon Rush, brown architecture, vegan breakfast, thought experiment, super expensive porridge, green spill, Kernel vegan robot restaurant, subway, the robot was broken, Ener-B, Wheel of DEATH, 6 chats, […]

2:11:48 – Frank in NJ and NYC, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Wallet caffeine strips, Silicon Alley, the “real world”, Atlantic City, new bus terminal, Sheets Energy Strips – Cinnamon Rush, brown architecture, vegan breakfast, thought experiment, super expensive porridge, green spill, Kernel vegan robot restaurant, subway, the robot was broken, Ener-B, Wheel of DEATH, 6 chats, […]

New Sode of Glitter Ledger Season 3 Episode 4 with Kyle Downey.  It's been a busy week with Airdrops of Jupiter in her hair not found at Fredrick Fekkai and other insufferable tragedies.  I've been on the lam in between Gstaad and Sidi Bou Said with ample bosom time to short the Vix, chainsmoke and ponder matters that have been plaguing my icy yet asbergers soul-Is there Valium in the metaverse?-Should I do the Monologue from Fight Club when describing my investment thesis? -Would well-dressed commies have supported decentralization?-Do Merkle Trees grow in Palm Beach?-Can you rip cigs on a (poorly decorated) private plane?-Why aren't their more female led high thread count rug pulls?Then, I changed the sign above my stepdaughter's canopy bed from Live Laugh Love to Read Write Own painted by my dear friend Jeff Koons.  I came to the painstaking realization that we are indeed in the Taylor Swift New Era of l'internet. Why? Because if le bebe can can become OnlyFans celebrity on Urbit, trade perps on Dexes, and achieve gains that ultimately finance a home in Mustique alongside Princess Marge, and Jae Kwon, then I must release my misconception that any smart contract needs to be reviewed by my Attorney. I digress, Back at Glitter Ledger Headquarters, reminiscing over a former lover who was the Head of Risk Management at Lehman brothers, I realize that if I want my stepdaughter to have a profitable Web3 Only Fans career, then I must become risk averse diverse head nurse.I thought of no guest more appropriate than a former high tiered Morgan Stanley Does Asia IT Quant, with a light stint on Silicon Alley, turned Risk Crypto Entrepreneur. Kyle Downey CEO of Cloudwall. He gives Daddy of DeFi energy with not quite silver hair that is palpable and respected. We met at the St Regis during an Aave Flashloans and Dog Lover meet up  I posted on a dark web subeddit thread hosted by me and my nanny. Wearing beat up Louboutins I described my fervent anger there were no sophisticated digital asset risk management platforms for my Quasi Family Office in Guantanamo Bay.  This dapper older man dressed in his own Crypto merch and rich person glasses recognized an incoming panic attack. Serenity, he explained is not only a mindset but a tool that can help you maintain the lifestyle to which you are accustomed.  He went to explain that I could use a state-of-the-art software to efficiently manage intricate portfolios of my digital assets, alongside onlyfans on Urbit to predict where I could fail.. All I need is Serenity, indeed. Read Write Own. Thank you Kyle.

Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer & Head of Investment Management Engineering @ Two Sigma shares some of the most unique and valuable cultural practices behind how the engineering org operates at Two Sigma. We discuss strategies that prepare you for scaling (like intentional relationship-building with your front-line managers); examples of how Two Sigma successfully deployed the “Inverse Conway Maneuver,” how to reinforce a consensus-driven culture from early-days to 1000+, how to navigate both large & small reorgs; and why Two Sigma made the intentional decision to rebrand their R&D org as M&E (modeling & engineering)! Plus, Matt's approach to full-bodied problem-solving.ABOUT MATT GREENWOODMatt is Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Investment Management Engineering at Two Sigma. He joined Two Sigma in 2003 and since then has led a number of company-wide efforts in both engineering and modeling. Matt is also an Advisor at Two Sigma Ventures and works closely with the business' portfolio companies as a board member and advisor.Matt began his career at Bell Labs and later moved to IBM Research, where he was responsible for a number of early efforts in tablet computing and distributed computing. In 2000, Matt was lead developer and manager for Entrisphere, Inc., where he helped create a product providing access equipment for broadband service providers. Matt earned a BA and MA in Math from Oxford University, and a Master's degree in Theoretical Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He also holds a PhD in Mathematics from Columbia University, where he taught for many years."We came to New York in 2003, nothing was happening in New York. Silicon Alley, as they called it back then was just kaput. Then one day, I was browsing Craigslist, because that's what you did in 2003, and there was a little ad, ‘Hedge fund, looking for excellent engineers.' So I was like, 'All right, maybe.' I said to my wife, 'This is either the sketchiest thing ever or the best decision of my life. It's one of those two things.' On Craigslist, there's no other way you can be, right? And it was probably the best decision of my life.”- Matt Greenwood   This episode is brought to you by incident.ioincident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Matt's eng leadership journey & discovering Two Sigma on Craigslist (3:34)Key moments of Two Sigma's evolution as an org that sparked excitement (7:26)Lessons learned on keeping your work exciting by focusing on “human problems” (10:25)Create a culture of investing in people's growth across longer timelines (12:22)How Sigma Two intentionally structures its R&D org (15:18)An unexpected way to prepare for scaling your org - intentional relationship-building strategies for your first-line managers (18:10)Frameworks for deploying the inverse Conway maneuver (20:56)The right people / conversations for small & large reorgs (23:30)Consensus-driven culture at 1000+, approaches to create buy-in & ownership with organizational change (26:02)Two Sigma's approach to full-bodied problem solving (30:26)Rapid fire questions (34:06)LINKS AND RESOURCESWhalefall - A scientifically accurate thriller from Daniel Kraus about a scuba diver who's been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Brian O'Kelley is CEO and co-founder of Scope3, leading the decarbonization of the media and advertising industry. A respected entrepreneur and executive with a track record of building companies that have defined and led multi-billion dollar categories, Brian was the co-founder and CEO of AppNexus through its $1.6B sale to AT&T in 2018. He co-founded Waybridge, a supply chain technology company, and served as CTO of Right Media through its successful acquisition by Yahoo. Brian is an active board member of LiveRamp (RAMP), Tech:NYC, and the IAB Tech Lab, and is an executive producer of the Wonderstruck podcast. Credited with the invention of programmatic advertising and the online ad exchange, Brian is deeply committed to technology-driven innovations that benefit society while improving the health of the planet. Brian has been named to Crain's 40 Under 40, Adweek 50 and Silicon Alley 100 lists, holds multiple patents, and was recognized as an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in the New York region in 2012. Brian was an early supporter of Girls Who Code and Moms First and is deeply committed to making the technology industry more inclusive. Brian has a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two daughters, and two cats.

Joe Meyer is a man on a mission to elevate the ease with which executives connect to opportunities. As founder and CEO of ExecThread, he has grown a platform that is transforming the executive job search game. In this conversation, Joe shares the secrets behind ExecThread's success and discusses the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship. VIP Access to Career Opportunities: ExecThread serves nearly a million professionals with exclusive access to confidential career opportunities. From VP to C-suite, including board-level positions, ExecThread leverages a unique crowd-sourcing approach to unlock hidden career paths. Founding Philosophy: Joe reflects on the inspiration behind starting ExecThread. Frustrated with being approached only for opportunities aligned with his past experiences, he envisioned a community where executives could confidentially share opportunities beyond the recruiter's radar. Leveling the Playing Field: Joe explains the limitations of traditional networking and job boards and how ExecThread bridges the gap by connecting a vast network of professionals directly. Personal Branding for Executives: Under ExecThread's suite of services are services that support personal branding - an area Allison feels very strongly about. Words of Wisdom: Joe shares his leadership values, the hard lessons learned in entrepreneurship, and his evolving philosophy of success. Joe Meyer is the Founder & CEO of ExecThread, a VC-backed crowdsourcing platform and premium job-sharing network that enables 450k+ professionals to access the “hidden job market”. ExecThread is the largest global aggregator of unpublished executive-level job opportunities. Joe is a successful start-up CEO and operating executive at high-growth tech companies with a strong track record of recruiting teams, launching new products, raising venture capital, growing traffic, eliciting engagement, scaling revenue and achieving liquidity. Joe was also cited as the Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012 by Crain's New York Business, and was #9 on Business Insider's 2013 "Silicon Alley 100" list (as one of the Top 100 tech executives in NYC). Connect with Joe: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExecThread LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/execthread Connect with Allison: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsummerschicago/ Website: DisruptiveCEONation.com Twitter: @DisruptiveCEO #digitalmarketing #branding #socialgood #Bcorp #CEO #startup #startupstory #founder #business #businesspodcast #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, the Spotlight shines On author, entrepreneur, and teacher Seth Godin. I recently watched an interview with Seth wherein he was describing a discussion he had with someone asking him for career advice and he remarked, “I was not always Seth Godin”. For some of us, that is hard to believe. While his thinking and teachings have, of course, grown and expanded over the years, it seems like there has always been a Seth Godin and that he's been Seth Godin that whole time. I grew up as part of the first generation that had computers in the home, that came into the business world as technology and networks were coming to the fore, and who first did business on the internet. As an early denizen of Silicon Alley in New York City, I remember Seth's early company Yoyodyne (which sold to Yahoo! 1998) and his writings around permission marketing and communities. All very early, influential internet milestones. Seth joined us to talk about some of the concepts and themes in his recent book The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams. It is a book that identifies and offers ways out of the current dead end or cul de sac that is the modern workplace - that names the problems and behaviors that are driving so much angst up and down org charts. If you have ever felt trapped in a less-than-ideal work environment but could not quite say what it was that was wrong, the book might provide you a sense of recognition and even relief. It will also likely tell you how you contributed to the situation and give you some things to consider so the past is not prologue. There is much more to the book and Seth's thinking than we were able to cover in our brief visit but I hope our talk spurs you to dig deeper. ------------------Dig DeeperVisit Seth Godin online at seths.blogLearn more about The Song of Significance and other books by Seth Godin at seths.storeSubscribe to Seth's fantastic podcast and email newsletterFollow Seth on Instagram and LinkedInWhy Steve Ballmer FailedThe Psychology of The TricksterStop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?)Patti Smith - Just Kids (audiobook) ------------------• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate Spotlight On ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.• Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of Spotlight On in your podcast app of choice.• Looking for more? Visit spotlightonpodcast.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Spotlight On email newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, the Spotlight shines On author, entrepreneur, and teacher Seth Godin. I recently watched an interview with Seth wherein he was describing a discussion he had with someone asking him for career advice and he remarked, “I was not always Seth Godin”. For some of us, that is hard to believe. While his thinking and teachings have, of course, grown and expanded over the years, it seems like there has always been a Seth Godin and that he's been Seth Godin that whole time. I grew up as part of the first generation that had computers in the home, that came into the business world as technology and networks were coming to the fore, and who first did business on the internet. As an early denizen of Silicon Alley in New York City, I remember Seth's early company Yoyodyne (which sold to Yahoo! 1998) and his writings around permission marketing and communities. All very early, influential internet milestones. Seth joined us to talk about some of the concepts and themes in his recent book The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams. It is a book that identifies and offers ways out of the current dead end or cul de sac that is the modern workplace - that names the problems and behaviors that are driving so much angst up and down org charts. If you have ever felt trapped in a less-than-ideal work environment but could not quite say what it was that was wrong, the book might provide you a sense of recognition and even relief. It will also likely tell you how you contributed to the situation and give you some things to consider so the past is not prologue. There is much more to the book and Seth's thinking than we were able to cover in our brief visit but I hope our talk spurs you to dig deeper. ------------------Dig DeeperVisit Seth Godin online at seths.blogLearn more about The Song of Significance and other books by Seth Godin at seths.storeSubscribe to Seth's fantastic podcast and email newsletterFollow Seth on Instagram and LinkedInWhy Steve Ballmer FailedThe Psychology of The TricksterStop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?)Patti Smith - Just Kids (audiobook) ------------------• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate Spotlight On ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.• Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of Spotlight On in your podcast app of choice.• Looking for more? Visit spotlightonpodcast.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Spotlight On email newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One could claim, without hyperbole, that Ben Smith helped invent modern digital media. Smith, the co-founder of Semafor News, is a former New York Times media columnist and the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. He is also the author of “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral,” which chronicles both BuzzFeed's rise to fame and Nick Denton, the controversial mastermind behind Gawker. Along the way, Smith tells other tales of the many key players involved in New York City's Silicon Alley. Smith joined NY1's Errol Louis for a lengthy discussion about his book, and his years at BuzzFeed. They also talked about his blog years, the ability to make things go viral, his thoughts on Thread and how he and his colleagues may have misjudged human nature. They also weighed in on the role social media will play in the 2024 presidential election. And they touched on how so many major players in the right-wing media movement came from the same offices and companies that Smith did. Join the conversation, weigh in on Twitter using the hashtag #NY1YouDecide or give us a call at 212-379-3440 and leave a message. Or send an email to YourStoryNY1@charter.com

Ben Smith, the author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral, talks with Azi Paybarah about Silicon Alley, the internet of the early 2000s, and why local politics is less scalable than it used to be.

Saagar Govil is a serial entrepreneur interested in IoT, Wearables, Robotics, Advanced electronics, and Space Tech. In his leisure time he enjoys watching the Knicks, traveling, and sailing.   He is currently Chairman and CEO of Cemtrex Inc. (NASDAQ: CETX), a company that owns and operates multiple businesses and they are building industrial solutions and intelligent security systems. He has been CEO since December 2011. Under his leadership he has spearheaded the company's transition into new markets and product lines growing the business from under $3M in revenues to over $100M. During his time as a leader at the company, the company earned a spot on the Deloitte Fast 500 Technology companies list in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 while growing over 3000% in revenue. Cemtrex has over 350 employees in 6 offices worldwide. Saagar was recognized as a Forbes' 30 Under 30 in 2016, Business Insiders #17 on Top 100 of Silicon Alley in 2015.   Do you want the show on your podcast app or the written versions of the stories? Subscribe to the Business of Tech: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/   Support the show on Patreon:  https://patreon.com/mspradio/   Want our stuff?  Cool Merch?  Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com   Follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspradionews/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/  

EPISODE 1481: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Betaworks CEO John Borthwick about the origins of the social media age and why the intelligence for today's AI revolution is being built upon social media data John Borthwick is the CEO and Founder of Betaworks. He leads the company building and investment process since 2008. Previously, John was SVP of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner Inc.; CEO of Fotolog, one of the first social photo sharing sites; and head of AOL's product development studio after they acquired his first company, WPStudio, one of Silicon Alley's first content studios. John studied at Wesleyan University and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Private Placement Perspective," a new pod storm series hosted by Matt Brown. In this first series of 2023, Matt dives deep into the world of venture capital and investing, speaking with investors and CEOs who have successfully helped scale start-ups. Join Matt as he dives into the world of Private Placements. Series: Private Placement Perspective Michael is a serial entrepreneur and investor whose last company, social software company Buddy Media, sold to Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) for $745 million, where he served as chief strategy officer and chief marketing officer, Marketing Cloud. With 60+ early-stage investments under his belt, including Eaze, Scopely, Map Anything, Buzzfeed, Domo, Namely, Tumblr and Dash Radio. Michael was the recipient of Ernest & Young's coveted Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2011. Additional honors include Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40, Crain's New York 40 Under 40, #1 on the Silicon Alley 100 and the Ad Age Digital A-List. Michael earned a BS and MS in Journalism from Northwestern University. Michael is a co-founder of VSV and serves on the investment committee.Get an interview on the Matt Brown Show: www.mattbrownshow.comSupport the show

Meet Sina Chehrazi:Sina Chehrazi is an entrepreneur and business executive with experience across the various stages of the entrepreneurial process. Sina serves as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nayya, a platform that uses AI and data science to personalize the way people choose and use their benefits.Key Insights:Sina Chehrazi advocates for a leadership that is genuine with the team and with customers.● How to Improve Healthcare? Sina explains that if you want to change healthcare, you have to start by following how the money flows. ● Confidence. Customers who know what they're investing in are more likely to jump in with an innovator.● Integration. Nayya aims to be the hub that connects and personalizes a consumer's health life.  Read more about NayyaFollow Sina on Twitter

Head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the Partnership on AI (PAI) Claire Leibowicz, Tech Policy Press CEO and Editor Justin Hendrix, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, and Douglas Rushkoff come up with guiding principles for the future of artificial intelligence on a live panel discussion recorded at Betaworks on Monday, April 3.

In this episode of the Discomfort Practice, I talk with entrepreneur, author and someone I'm rather a big fan of, Margaret Heffernan. We chat about Margaret's sixth book Uncharted, which lays out an inspiring picture of what can lie on the other side of uncertainty - which is a discomfort we as humans naturally avoid. We also dive into her own practice of surrendering to experiencing discomfort, by which she has not only learned new things, but grown as a person. Margaret's TED talks have been seen by over 15 million people. You read that right! 15 million people. She's also written six books (so far). Her third book Wilful Blindness is one that I picked up last year and found more incredibly relevant now, during a pandemic, than ever - even though it was published in 2014. It was a finalist for the Financial Times Goldman Sachs Best book award and the Financial Times named it as one of its “Best business books of the decade”. Margaret has done a lot of things and done them all well. She worked in BBC Radio for five years where she wrote, directed, produced and commissioned dozens of documentaries and dramas. But just to add to her cool points, she then also produced music videos with Virgin Records. She was once described by the Financial Times as the most formidable lobbying organization in England, which is high praise indeed. She bought and sold leading Internet businesses as a chief executive and was named one of the Internet's top 100 by Silicon Alley reporter in 1999. She's won many, many awards.  Margaret really is a leading thinker and her now-or-never attitude is so inspiring, so tune in and enjoy! Key Points Discussed: Taking the experience from discomfort to euphoria: being encouraged by her father as a teenager to ask for forgiveness rather than permission (6:00) That experience has helped support her in her speaking engagements now: she speaks freely. Saying what others are thinking, but are too afraid to say (8:00)  How writing a BBC play, opened up Margaret to looking at where abusive attitudes to nature come from (16:18) How important it is to do something, however small. Margaret became part of her local Parish Council and hosted events to help people reduce their energy consumption, carbon footprint and enhance biodiversity (23:38)  How positivity is contagious: you can be the catalyst for change (26:30) Surrendering to the practice of experiencing discomfort in many different parts of her life, has helped Margaret not only learn new things, but grow as a person in so many different ways (33:02)   How ethical decisions being made by economists are a disaster waiting to happen (42:58) How reframing the way you view uncertainty in your mind, can actually open you up to new exciting possibilities (49:54) How the early death of Margaret's first husband when she was 30 gave her a really visceral experience that it's always now or never time. That is how she lives her life (56:46) Connect with Margaret: Margaret's Website Margaret on Twitter Connect with Betsy: Betsy on Instagram Betsy on Twitter Betsy on Linkedin Rate, Review, Learn and Share Thanks for tuning into The Discomfort Practice. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow, like, and/or drop us a five star and written review. Share this episode with others and help spread the word and grow our audience. Don't forget to tune into our other episodes and share your favourite ones on social media!  

Meet Sina Chehrazi:Sina Chehrazi is an entrepreneur and business executive with experience across the various stages of the entrepreneurial process. Sina serves as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nayya, a platform that uses AI and data science to personalize the way people choose and use their benefits.Key Insights:Sina Chehrazi advocates for a leadership that is genuine with the team and with customers. ● How to Improve Healthcare? Sina explains that if you want to change healthcare, you have to start by following how the money flows. ● Confidence. Customers who know what they're investing in are more likely to jump in with an innovator. ● Integration. Nayya aims to be the hub that connects and personalizes a consumer's health life. This episode is hosted by Gary Bisbee, Ph.D. Read more about NayyaFollow Sina on Twitter

A new, creative business idea caught your eye? Perhaps you can become an angel investor to look things over. As an angel investor, you'll not only provide support for the budding startup, but you can also have more direct access to a company with high growth potential. Talking about angel investors, Steve Distante invites David S. Rose as he talks more about his experiences as an entrepreneur and as an angel investor. He recalls how he founded New York Angels and how he helps make the process of angel investing easier for startups and investors. In this conversation, David Rose discusses his experience as an angel investor, including how he got started in the industry and his work to organize and manage angel investor networks. He also talks about his book on angel investing and his active involvement in answering questions about startups and angel investing online. Who's The Guest? David S. Rose is an Inc. 500 CEO, real estate developer, financial technology investor, and serial entrepreneur. He founded or funded more than 100 pioneering companies. He has been described by Forbes as "New York's Archangel", by BusinessWeek as a "world conquering entrepreneur", by Crain's New York Business as "the father of angel investing in New York”, and by Red Herring magazine as "patriarch of Silicon Alley". David is the New York Times best-selling author of both Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money & Having Fun Investing in Startups, and The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business. Highlights Other than being the founder of New York Angels, who is David S. Rose? Gaining different titles: Godfather of Angel Investing, Patriarch of Silicon Valley, and Archangel of New York Angel Investing What the future of technology is and its impact on humanity Angel investors vs venture capitalists: What's the big difference? The different kinds of investors and their motivations What are the stages of funding for startups? How much money should you raise and what valuation should you expect What the JOBS Act 2012 is all about The dangers of investing in angel deals Pros and cons of crowdfunding for startups The reality of crowdfunding for startups Essence of a good pitch How to learn more about angel investing Call to Action Join the Early Access List Episode Resources Connect with Steve Distante https://pitchology.ai/ https://joinvanderbilt.com/ https://www.facebook.com/stevedistanteCEO/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevedistante https://twitter.com/Sdistante https://www.instagram.com/sdistante/ Connect with David S. Rose http://www.davidsrose.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsrose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Rose https://twitter.com/davidsrose 

With tech startups being one of their main sources of business, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shockwaves through the industry. Looks like tech brows now have to sell their ping pong tables to make rent. Also, time to trade in the backpack for a briefcase! Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders approved a bill eliminating a requirement for children under 16 to obtain state documentation in order to work. Plus, a couple of airplane hacks: how to get an entire row to yourself while also getting the people in front of you to shut the hell up --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/its-news-to-us/message

With tech startups being one of their main sources of business, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shockwaves through the industry. Looks like tech brows now have to sell their ping pong tables to make rent. Also, time to trade in the backpack for a briefcase! Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders approved a bill eliminating a requirement for children under 16 to obtain state documentation in order to work. Plus, a couple of airplane hacks: how to get an entire row to yourself while also getting the people in front of you to shut the hell up --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/its-news-to-us/message

Lee was the original head of marketing at DoubleClick in the 90s and the force behind its notorious guerilla tactics including the Flatiron sign 'DoubleClick Welcomes You to Silicon Alley'More

Lee was the original head of marketing at DoubleClick in the 90s and the force behind its notorious guerilla tactics including the Flatiron sign 'DoubleClick Welcomes You to Silicon Alley'More

122: In the Consequences of the Startup Life, Jon Carder, founder of Vessel Health, joins host William Glass to discuss his 23+ year entrepreneurial journey. From bootstrapping early in his career to raising venture capital, Jon experienced all of the classic trials and tribulations of being a startup founder. Living on Ramen early in his career helped him through the bootstrapping phase, but ultimately took a toll on his health. After discovering functional medicine, Jon was able to revitalize his health and wellbeing. Vessel Health was born to help bring functional medicine to the masses. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Jon Carder: Jon Carder is a serial entrepreneur. He built four start-ups over the last 23 years, including successful 3 exits. Jon has raised ~$100M in venture capital and hired hundreds of employees. That entrepreneurial lifestyle eventually took its toll and he started having challenges with low energy, brain fog, and trouble sleeping. These problems prevented Jon from consistently showing up as his best self. After talking to friends, he realized that these issues were actually pretty common. Jon learned that through lab work he could identify the root cause of some of the problems and improve them, but that wasn't going to happen with his conventional doctor. After a lot of searching he eventually found a functional medicine doctor, who was able to identify, through expensive blood work, that Jon had nutrient deficiencies and high toxin levels. So, Jon adjusted his supplements, nutrition and lifestyle accordingly. And, within a month, he was feeling the best he had felt in years. This inspired Jon to start Vessel and use new technology to empower people to track and improve their wellness from home. www.vesselhealth.com Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

While the Federal Reserve is trying to slow down the economy and basically kill a few million jobs, some areas are just not cooperating. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio have been gold mines for investors in recent years, and now that gold mine is moving north into the suburbs of North Texas. It's not only attracting remote workers who want a lower cost of living, but the area is turning into the next big American technology hub that will create thousands of new jobs. That's why I started a single family rental fund that is buying properties near those jobs. If you want to find out more about our Texas Single Family Rental Fund, got to GrowDevelopments.com.Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. As real estate investors, you know that population growth and job growth are essential for a good real estate market. Texas has both of those.Texas Population GrowthCensus Bureau data shows the Dallas-Fort Worth as the top population growth region in the U.S. Three other Texas metros were also on the top ten list. From July of 2020 to July of 2021, 97,000 new residents moved into Dallas-Fort Worth. Another 69,000 moved into Houston, 53,000 into Austin, and 35,000 into San Antonio. (1)Texas Job GrowthThe Lone Star state also grabbed the top spot for U.S. job growth. According to the Texas Economic Development Corp., Texas created a total of 736,700 new positions since July of last year. More than 400,000 of them were created since January of this year. TWC Chairman Bryan Daniel says it's a record amount of new jobs for Texas within that short time frame. (2)Growth in North TexasBut while some of the big metro growth is softening, there's another Texas hot spot that is just taking off. It's happening north of Dallas, along a 30-mile stretch of Highway 75 between the cities of McKinney and Sherman, and surrounding areas. The highway runs north from Dallas and is known as the new Silicon Alley or even Silicon Prairie by some people because it's attracting big players in the chip-making industry.The New Silicon AlleySherman appears to be ground zero for much of this big tech growth. Just a few months ago, in May, Texas Instruments broke ground on a $30-billion semiconductor manufacturing campus in the city of Sherman. The TI project will be a huge 4.7-million square-foot campus consisting of four chip-manufacturing factories and an estimated 3,000 new good-paying jobs. According to an article in Axios, TI hopes to be producing tens of thousands of 300mm wafer chips a day by 2025.Governor Greg Abbott also announced several months ago that GlobiTech will expand its chip-making operations in Sherman with an additional state-of-the-art $5 billion dollar chip-making plant. The factory is expected to employ another 1,500 people and produce 2.4 million wafers a month when it's up and running. GlobiTech is the subsidiary of Taiwan-based GlobalWafers. A chip supplier for Apple's iPhone is also operating a factory in Sherman. It opened in 2018 as Finisar but has since changed its name to Coherent. The Mayor of Sherman says: “Sherman has spent years building a business-friendly climate and laying the groundwork to support large employers. Now for the second time in less than a year, that investment has paid huge dividends.” (3)President of the Sherman Economic Development Corp. Kent Sharp says the two new chip-making projects are “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities for the region. He says: “You work your entire career in economic development with the hopes of being part of a deal that has a “B” in front of it – and we've landed two in the past year.” I think he's referring to the multi-billion dollar price tags.New Boomtown Darlings But Sherman isn't the only boomtown darling along the Highway 75 corridor. Some of the other cities getting the attention of new residents, developers, and investors include Denison, Gainesville, Plano, McKinney, and a sleepy town called Anna.The Real Deal writes about Anna, saying that developers weren't interested in Anna prior to the pandemic because it was considered too far north of Dallas. But things started changing when Covid hit the nation. Thanks to remote work, people began migrating into the Texas suburbs from the bigger metros and other parts of the country. For reference, Anna is about 45 miles north of Dallas.Anna's Mayor Nate Pike works in Sherman as a financial advisor, and is seeing first-hand how the area is changing. She says: “The amount of momentum that (local leaders are) going to put into the U.S. 75 corridor, all the way to the Oklahoma border, Anna is certainly going to feel a lot of positive impact from that.” (4)The Real Deal says the city is expecting its population to more than double by 2030. That's prompting the city to invest in things like road improvements and to simplify the permitting process for developers. New rules have reportedly shortened the permitting process from a few weeks to just a few days.The Mayor says: “We have truly created a culture of wanting to be the most developer-friendly city in all of North Texas.” And homebuilders are responding with new development projects in various cities along the Highway 75 corridor. According to DMagazine, construction permits have more than doubled in Sherman since June of last year. They are up 15% in Anna and 2% in the city of Melissa, for example.Anna's Economic Development Director Joey Grisham says: “My phone has been ringing off the hook with interest. It's definitely an exciting time for the Dallas-Fort Worth region as a whole.”RealWealth has been helping members acquire rental properties in North Texas for over a decade now, and the growth has not slowed down. If you want to build your portfolio with the team we've been working with, just go to RealWealth.com and click on the invest tab. You'll see the drop down for Dallas, Texas, where you'll get more information on the area and contract details for the acquisitions team and property manager. If you are looking for a more passive investment, and are accredited, which means you either earn $200k as an individual or $300k as a couple, or have a million dollar net worth, check out our Single Family Rental Fund at GrowDevelopments.com. You'll find links to articles with more info in the show notes at newsforinvestors.com. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review!Thanks for listening! I'm Kathy Fettke.Links:1 -https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2022/06/06/north-texas-population-growth2 -https://businessintexas.com/news/with-72800-new-jobs-in-july-texas-hits-monthly-employment-high-for-2022/3 -https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-globitech-semiconductor-facility-expansion-in-sherman4 -https://therealdeal.com/texas/2022/10/19/is-this-sleepy-village-the-next-north-texas-boomtown/5 -https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2022/september/north-texas-is-the-countrys-new-semiconductor-manufacturing-capital/

121: In A New Way for Content Creators to Engage with Fans, Derek Gorthy, founder at Enshrine, joins host William Glass to discuss how web 3 can bring content creators closer to their fans. Derek shares his journey of founding Enshrine and how NFTs can be used to power a community. Enshrine was founded with creators in mind making it extremely simple to utilize NFTs without having to learn how to code or becoming an expert in web 3. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Derek Gorthy: Derek started his first business at the age of 15 after teaching himself how to repair Xbox 360 consoles and smartphones. Since then, he has started multiple companies that range from affiliate marketing sites to algorithmic stock trading. After college, Derek started his career in consulting -- working in the tech, finance, energy, and health industries. He found his niche in understanding difficult concepts and complex systems, then distilling the value of those concepts and systems into a form that anyone could understand. Derek is currently working on his latest company, Enshrine. Enshrine is a Web3 community engagement platform focused on giving content creators the ability to build unique, cross-platform experiences for their fans. Derek is passionate about the company's mission because he believes content creators should own their financial relationships with their fans, not large tech platforms. https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekgorthy/ https://enshrine.io/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

(0:00) Welcome Rashad(2:25) Kanye Controversy(9:32) Elon buys twitter(13:58) Welcome Jason Calacanis(15:00) NYC and Silicon Alley(18:32) Getting into media(28:52) Web 1.0 to Web 2.0(34:02) Tech and journalism(44:09) This week in startups(49:48) Palmer Luckey interview(56:56) Kanye on Lex Friedman(59:35) Responsibility as a public figure(1:02:53) All-In and Cartoon Avatars(1:09:23) Capturing lightning in a bottle(1:16:19) Being in the public spotlight(1:22:30) Wrap up Mixed and edited: Justin HrabovskyProduced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad AssirExecutive Producer: Josh MachizMusic: Griff Lawson 

120: In Unlocking Profit for SaaS Marketplaces, Joe Keeley, founder of JustiFi, joins host William Glass to discuss how processing payments can drive revenue. Previously, Joe built a successful business connecting college athletes and students to families seeking highly skilled nannies and tutors. As the business shifted to a SaaS model, Joe was frustrated with how much he was paying in payment processing fees. Which led Joe to found JustiFi which arbitrages payment processing options to ensure SaaS marketplaces can process transactions more efficiently. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Joe Keeley: Joe Keeley is a dynamic, yet thoughtful entrepreneur and conscious leader. As such, Keeley is the CEO and Co-founder of JustiFi Technologies, a venture-backed fintech business providing payments and fintech infrastructure and strategy for vertical SaaS platforms. JustiFi exists to accelerate the potential of vertical SaaS platforms by bringing optimized embedded payments and beyond payments fintech solutions to bear resulting in increased value for the platform of 3-5X with a remarkably lower cost of ownership. https://www.linkedin.com/in/joekeeley https://www.justifi.ai/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

119: In How to Run the Perfect Venture Capital Fundraise, Nathan Beckord, founder of Foundersuite, joins host William Glass to discuss the secret to raising capital for your startup. Nathan walks through step-by-step the perfect startup fundraise and where many founders go wrong. You'll learn how to set yourself up for funding success and increase your likelihood of raising venture capital. Nathan also shares his entrepreneurial journey and how he came to start Foundersuite. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Nathan Beckord: Nathan Beckord is the CEO of Foundersuite.com a venture-backed company that makes the leading “funding stack” (Investor Database, CRM, Pitch Deck Hosting, Bulk Email, Virtual Data Room and Investor Update tools) for startups raising capital. Since launching in 2016, users have raised over $3 Bln in seed and venture capital. Prior to starting Foundersuite, Nathan spent ten years working with over 150 startups as interim CFO, Business Developer, and Advisor. Nathan has an MBA in Entrepreneurship, a BSC in Finance, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). In his free time, he enjoys sailing, traveling, and riding motorcycles. Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

118: In Hacking the Student Loan Repayment System, Bobby Matson, founder of Payitoff, joins host William Glass to discuss his journey of becoming a founder. Bobby shares how his family's struggle to pay down student loans prevented him and his wife from starting a family. After hacking their way out of student loan debt, Bobby decided to commercialize his knowledge through Payitoff. Payitoff provides debt paydown software that supports fintech companies and banks repayment solutions. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Bobby Matson: Bobby Matson is the CEO and founder of Payitoff, a venture-backed team automating every aspect of student loan repayment for fintechs and workplace providers. A few years ago, Payitoff's founder, Bobby, and his wife were weighed down by crushing six-figure student debt, unsure if they'd ever be able to start a family or own a home. Bobby spent nights and weekends codifying student loan regulations and building an algorithm to help his family navigate their personal student debt crisis. This technology, which in time became the core to Payitoff's algorithm, helped him gain what every borrower seeks: a course of action for his student loan management that without a doubt would get the the best possible financial outcome for his family. Amidst the confusion and complexity of the student loan system, Bobby was able to turn chaos into certainty thanks to this algorithm. With that freedom, Bobby and his wife were empowered to start a family and move forward with their lives. (They currently have an adorable 3-year-old daughter!) Of course, Bobby quickly realized his struggle wasn't unique. 43 million other borrowers could benefit from the technology he developed in order to overcome the overwhelming complexity of student loan debt. He founded Payitoff in 2018, and we've since built a suite of innovative tools to revolutionize student loan management, from the unique perspective of having experienced the struggle firsthand. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbymatson/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

117: In A Contrarian View of Technological Innovation, Somi Arian, founder of InPeak, joins host William Glass to discuss the future of human society. Somi describes herself as a tech philosopher and is passionate about the implications that technological innovation has on our society. Somi shares her views on the difficulties that technology will have on human society and how to rectify the challenges that technology will present on society. This episode is deep and a bit contrarian, enjoy! Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Somi Arian: Somi Arian began her journey with a passion for making science and technology more inclusive. In 2018 Somi released her multi-award-winning documentary, "The Millennial Disruption", featuring industry leaders from The Economist, Marie Claire, Bentley, JLR, and Gary Vaynerchuk, to name a few. The documentary was followed by Somi's book on the future of work, “Career Fear (and how to beat it), where she observed the severe lack of women in leadership in Business and Technology. So, she set out to do something about this. Somi launched FemPeak as a Think Tank for Women in Business and Technology in August 2020. With her "I have a Dream" video on LinkedIn. The Think Tank consisted of four big virtual conferences with thousands of attendees and close to a hundred panellists including the Managing Director of Marie Claire, CEO of Bentley Motors, and thought leaders from Google, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley. We wanted to know why women were absent in the top tier of business and Technology. https://www.somiarian.com/ https://inpeak.xyz/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

116: In Venturing into Venture Capital, Ketul Patel, investor at Headline, joins host William Glass to discuss his journey into the venture capital world. Ketul shares how he was drawn to technology and innovation at an early age. His curiosity led him deeper into the startup world where he joined a family member on the investing side. After finding some initial success, Ketul had to pivot his investment philosophy and joined a large global venture capital firm. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you get your podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Ketul Patel: Ketul started his career working in startups. He joined Jet.com after it was acquired by Walmart, and he joined Paxos before it became a unicorn. In 2019, he launched a tech services investment firm called Eximer Capital. Today, he's an early stage investor at a global venture capital firm, Headline. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ketulpatel1 Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

115: In Marketing in the Metaverse, Andre Kay, founder of Metaiblock + Sociallybuzz, joins host William Glass to discuss the future of marketing. As a social media marketing veteran, Andre Kay has been at the forefront of new marketing channels for multiple decades. Andre shares how he typically works with franchise clients and how business owners should be approaching marketing in web 3. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich provides a financial habit-building app that helps you build a strong financial foundation. When you first join Ostrich you'll receive your Ostrich financial health score that shows where you are today and how you compare to your peers. Get your Ostrich financial health score for free at https://www.getostrich.com Wicked Bold Chocolate is a vegan chocolate brand using just 3 natural ingredients in its chocolate. Delicious, natural and get 15% off using the promo code: SiliconAlley go to https://www.WickedBold.com About Andre Kay: Andre Kay, is the CEO of Sociallybuzz. he founded Sociallybuzz in 2008, as one of the first Social Media Marketing Agency to exist in the world. 14 years later, and with over $19 million in sales, Andre gained a vast amount of knowledge and resources in what it takes to be successful in marketing, and as an Entrepreneur. Sociallybuzz specializes in franchise businesses working with franchisees and franchisors. Andre recently launched Metaiblock to focus on the opportunities in web 3 marketing. https://twitter.com/MrAndreKay https://www.instagram.com/sociallybuzz/ https://metaiblock.com/ (See an inside video of the Franchise Funverse on Horizon World) https://www.sociallybuzz.com/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

114: In Busting Outsourcing Myths, Daniel Ramsey, founder of MyOutDesk, joins host William Glass to discuss how to find more time in your business through virtual assistants. Daniel shares the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when hiring a virtual assistant and helps clarify what tasks and job roles best suit a virtual assistant. In addition, we discuss the key concerns around quality, security, and communication that many entrepreneurs struggle to understand when hiring a virtual assistant. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Daniel Ramsey: Daniel Ramsey is the founder & CEO of MyOutDesk, rated #1 in Virtual Assistant services by TechRadar + Analytics Insight, and is one of the longest-running Virtual Assistant Services companies — serving 7500+ clients with more than 800 verified 5-star business reviews. MyOutDesk fortifies & scales growing companies with Virtual Professionals. Daniel is a long-time entrepreneur having ran and sold several businesses in his career. Back in 2008, he was inspired by his own time-management struggles to find a better way to help businesses leverage their time & energy, and created MyOutDesk to provide a trusted, reliable solution to the office administration, marketing & prospecting tasks that every business has – but most lack the time to focus on. Daniel has worked with some of the largest companies in some of the fastest-growing industries: sales organizations, tech startups, insurance, real estate, healthcare, and more. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myoutdesk Website: https://www.myoutdesk.com/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

113: In the Psychology of Money, Melissa Pancoast, founder of the Beans, joins host William Glass to discuss why our current approach to finances leaves millions of people behind. Melissa has spent years studying behavioral tech that can reduce financial stress and shares her learnings that she's applying at the Beans. We discuss how our current approaches to financial improvement are not aligned with our psychology which directly impacts financial stress levels. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Melissa Pancoast: Melissa Pancoast is the founder and CEO of The Beans, a financial care company that is building financial products, experiences, and community for America's “Caring Class”- those who choose careers of mission over money. She started her career as a teacher, where she saw the impact of financial stress firsthand in her community. After completing post-graduate work, she served as a researcher in the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Interventions, where she saw the potential to massively and cheaply scale effective behavioral tech and developed the first program proven to reduce financial stress. Since then, she has run operations for Big Health, launched Seacliff Sales, and co-founded Comet Labs, a venture capital fund focused on early-stage machine intelligence companies. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgpancoast/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-beans/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

Today, Jason Calacanis is one of the most prominent names in the Silicon Valley tech and entrepreneurship community. But, before he was a well-known West Coast investor, he was at the center of the smaller bust fast-growing East Coast tech scene in New York known as "Silicon Alley."Jason ran Silicon Alley Reporter, a magazine dedicated to the tech innovation happening in New York City. It grew from a 16 page, homemade, photocopied booklet into a 300+ page glossy generating millions in ad revenue.On this episode of Web Masters, Jason shares the story of how he created the magazine as well as what entrepreneurial life was like in the early days of New York tech.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

112: In Build a PR Machine for Your Startup, Donna Loughlin, founder of LMGPR, joins host William Glass to discuss how to make a big splash with your company and keep the media coverage coming. Donna shares her own journey and examples of how startups can generate big buzz and sustain it long-term through strong storytelling. Towards the end Donna does a little workshopping to show you how to get started with your own company. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Donna Loughlin: Donna Loughlin is the Founder of LMGPR known for her work with futurists and innovators. She has launched more than 500 companies taking them from stealth to market leaders since forming her agency in 2002. With LMGPR, Donna has secured more than a dozen personal and agency awards from global organizations. Prior to establishing LMGPR, Donna spent more than 10 years leading creative PR programs for several high-profile consumer and business services and IPOs in Silicon Valley for global market leaders in the consumer and business tech sectors. She is also the host of BeforeItHappened, a leading narrative podcast featuring visionaries and the moments, events, and realizations that inspired them to change our lives for the better. Website: https://www.lmgpr.com/ Podcast: https://www.beforeithappened.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnal2/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

111: In Debunking the MVP & Thriving in a Downturn, Bo Davis, founder of MarginEdge, joins host William Glass to discuss how he approached building MarginEdge counter to the traditional MVP model. Bo shares how his experience as a restauranteur gave him a competitive edge that allowed him to skip the traditional minimum viable product step. You'll also hear how Bo focused on putting customers at the forefront in 2020 when essentially their customer's business stopped and how the decisions made in those few weeks allowed MarginEdge to thrive. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Bo Davis: Bo Davis is the co-founder and CEO of MarginEdge, the restaurant solution combining paperless invoice processing with POS and accounting integration. After the acquisition of his first technology company, and subsequent service in the Peace Corps, Davis co-founded his restaurant venture, Wasabi. Growing Wasabi to 12 locations in seven states over eight years, highlighted the disjointed data and systems that plague the back office management of restaurants - and also inspired his development of a solution and what would become MarginEdge. MarginEdge now provides powerful, real-time operational and financial data to over 3,000 restaurants nationwide and has over 300 employees under Davis's leadership. Davis holds a BA in Philosophy from George Washington University, a Masters in Finance from London Business School, and a second Masters in Data Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern University. Website: https://www.marginedge.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davis-bo/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message

110: In Start with the Exit, Mart Achler & Mert Iseri, partners at MATH Ventures, joins host William Glass to discuss how to sell your startup for a lot of money. Through Mert's recent exit of his startup he learned that by focusing on how you will exit the business from the start you can build relationships that will ultimately lead to a better exit. Mark & Mert dive into the FAIR Framework and other tools that founders can implement to ensure the best outcomes for all stakeholders involved. A fun and informative conversation that is great for startup founders, investors, and employees at venture-backed companies. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Mark Achler: An early employee of Apple and Head of Innovation at Redbox, Mark Achler has been creating and investing in tech startups since 1986. Today, he is a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, a technology venture capital fund, and an adjunct professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markachler/ About Mert Iseri: Mert Iseri is the founder of SwipeSense, a healthtech company acquired by SC Johnson in 2020. He also co-founded Design for America—using design thinking for social impact—which won the National Design Award in 2018. Together, they wrote Exit Right to be the definitive guide on exits, delivering the best possible results for you and your company. Website: https://www.exitrightbook.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merthiseri/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

109: In a Consumer First Approach to Debt, Sean Hundtofte, founder of Solve Finance, joins host William Glass to discuss how our current lending practices fail borrowers. Sean spent years in consumer finance at the NY Fed and Better Mortgage and became frustrated with how our current lending practices fail consumers. We discuss his experience in the industry and how Solve Finance is taking a consumer-centric approach and the keys to building a better system. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Sean Hundtofte: Sean Hundtofte, CEO and Founder of Solve Finance, has dedicated his 20+ year career to consumer finance, most recently as a member of the exec team at Better Mortgage (where he halved CAC while growing D2C volumes 4x), and previously as a distressed investor, a PhD in household finance and as a research economist studying household credit at the NY Fed. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedIn.com/in/sean-hundtofte Website: www.seanhundtofte.com Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

108: In WTF is Financial Independence Anyway, Matt Ruttenberg, founder of SureLI Insurance, joins host William Glass to discuss financial independence and how to achieve this mythic state as an entrepreneur. Matt became frustrated after only spending 7-hours with his kid and realizing that his work was impeding his ability to be happy. Matt shares how he mapped out financial independence and a way for him to take his knowledge in the financial services industry and translate that into a business that would support a more flexible lifestyle. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Matt Ruttenberg: Matt is a Financial Entrepreneur, founder of SureLI Insurance, CMO and shareholder of Life, Inc. Retirement Services and 401k expert. He sold his financial planning practice of 15 years and now has dedicated his new ventures to the Financially Independent community helping entrepreneurs reach FIRE faster. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattruttenberg/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

107: In Angel Investing in Startups for Dummies, Hall Martin, founder of TEN Capital Network, joins host William Glass to discuss how to get started investing in startups. Hall covers a wide range of basics from what size checks to write, what types of companies to focus on, and how to do proper due diligence. You'll come away with a solid foundation to start your angel investing journey and source potential investments. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Hall Martin: Hall T. Martin is the Founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network and Host of the Investor Connect podcast program. He launched TEN as the Texas Entrepreneur Networks in 2009. Today, TEN Capital Network has over 15,000 investors, and has helped startups raise over $900M. Mr. Martin serves as the Vice-Chair of the Baylor Angel Network. He previously led the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) as its first Executive Director. Mr. Martin is also the Host, founder, and director of the Investor Connect podcast which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to the education of startup investors. Mr. Martin is a Founder and initial Managing Director of SKU (Incubation Station), a consumer product goods accelerator based in Austin, Texas, and the former Managing Director of AccelerateNFC, an accelerator based in Dallas, Texas, focusing on Near Field Communication. Mr. Martin serves as an adjunct professor for the University of Texas leading the Idea to IP program which fosters startups from the engineering program. Website: https://tencapital.group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/halltmartin/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

106: In M&A Uncovered, Kison Patel, founder of DealRoom & M&A Science, joins host William Glass to discuss how exactly mergers and acquisitions work. Kison shares what you need to know about M&A as a business owner, employee, and investor. Kison also goes into how he stumbled into an organic content strategy that has enabled DealRoom to grow without having to raise massive amounts of investor capital. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Kison Patel: Kison Patel is the Founder and CEO of M&A Science, with a passion to drive the M&A industry forward. He was an M&A advisor for ten years in which he sold larger companies such as commercial banks and hotel chains. In 2012, he noticed teams lacked efficient technology to manage deals and created DealRoom, an M&A lifecycle management platform. In 2016, he started the M&A Science podcast devoting his time to creating a platform where all the best practitioners could share their best practices and lessons learned from real-life deals. Kison then created The M&A Science Academy in 2020 to offer step-by-step training to those looking to master M&A featuring courses created by top-level practitioners. Through developing technology, educational content, and industry training, Kison aims to bring better practices to an industry with growing market pressures, transaction values, and competition. Website: https://kisonpatel.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kisonpatel/ Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

105: In Creating Ads that Convert, Ben Marcoux, founder of Bottomless Branding, joins host William Glass to discuss the importance of creating ad copy that actually converts. Ben shares the steps to create really compelling ad copy that will increase your conversion rates. Additionally, Ben shares what led him to start his own agency and what it's like to be a solopreneur. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Ben Marcoux: Hi, my name's Ben, and I'm an ad-aholic. I'm a jazz saxophone player turned freelance media buyer, copywriter, and strategist. I officially hung my shingle in 2015. And since then I've spent thousands of hours studying history's (and today's) most lucrative ads. My copywriting's grossed multiple 7-or 8 figures of revenue (who really knows). And I've profitably managed $10,000,000+ of ad spend for my own businesses and for clients, generating over 250,000 leads and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales across many verticals. My “day job” is making business owners big bucks by creating simple scalable advertising systems, writing direct response sales copy, driving targeted traffic to high integrity offers, and using data, analytics, and relentless follow-up to maximize the ROI of these funnels. Now I help other B2B experts effortlessly close premium clients by using “The FAME-WORK” to package their expertise into a Money Making Signature System and position themselves as the go-to authority in their market. Website: www.bottomlessbranding.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-marcoux Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

104: In for the love of sport, David Arnett (@ChuckSportsApp), founder of Chuck, joins host William Glass to discuss how his passion for sports led him to build a better way to engage as a fan. David an avid sports fan felt there was something missing. He struggled to track all of his favorite teams, keep up with his fellow sports buddies, and began to dream of a better fan experience. That led him to build Chuck the social network for sports fans. You'll hear his journey building as a non-technical founder and his vision for both the die-hard and casual sports fan. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About David Arnett: David Arnett is a first-time entrepreneur, having spent 20 years in Market Research before making the leap to launch Chuck, the Social Sports app. Website: https://www.heychuck.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chuck-inc Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

103: In the difference between an owner-operator & an owner, Todd Randall, serial entrepreneur, joins host William Glass to discuss the different types of entrepreneurs. Todd shares his own journey of being an entrepreneur without an idea and how he managed to build multiple businesses using the franchise model. In addition, Todd shares the keys to building both a business and the life you desire. Follow the Silicon Alley podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. __ Visit SiliconAlleyPodcast.com to become a guest and sign-up for the newsletter. Follow on: - Instagram: http://bit.ly/SIliconAlleyIG - LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyLI - YouTube: http://bit.ly/SiliconAlleyYouTube Our Sponsors: Ostrich helps you go from being one of the 92% of people who fail to achieve their financial goals to one of the few who does. 80% of Ostrich members are on track to achieve thief financial goals. Sign up for free at https://www.getostrich.com About Todd Randall: Todd Randall, the eight-time CEO and business coach from rural Florida, found that running a business can lead you to an early grave if you let it. He set out to build a business enterprise that worships freedom more than money and somehow ended up with both. This is the story of how a man set a crazy goal for himself, to learn to play polo and travel the world indulging that passion, and then worked persistently until he achieved it. His businesses have included spas, gyms, operations consulting, business brokerage, construction, and wholesale companies. His latest and proudest venture is a thriving business coaching practice where he enthusiastically shares his experience with budding entrepreneurs. Website: https://www.facebook.com/BeachviewCoaching Silicon Alley is a Financial Glass Production --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/silicon-alley/support

This interview features Michael Cohen, CEO at Team Whistle. We discuss being denied by a Goldman Sachs recruiter, when wearing a suit can be bad for business, being on the launch team of Whistle Sports, why the movie The Martian inspires his leadership, executing an M&A roll-up strategy and going from $0-100M in revenue, exiting to ELEVEN Group, and learning how to “play it where it lies”.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Michael Cohen:The presenter started off his presentation, and he said, "None of you in this room are going to get a job at Goldman Sachs right out of school." Sort of the most deflating thing ever. I've been preparing for this for an ungodly amount of time. And I was so angry for so long, but what I took away from that has stayed with me for my entire career, because what he then went on to say was, "I didn't start a Goldman Sachs. I started at X company. I then went to Y, then over to company A, and ultimately got to where I am today as a managing director at Goldman Sachs." And his point was that not all career paths are linear. You have to have different experiences along the way that ultimately allow you to become a better managing director at Goldman Sachs, or wherever you were going. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Michael Cohen, CEO of Team Whistle and chief transformation officer of ELEVEN Group. Michael was born in Long Island and grew up with parents who worked in tourism and technology. He decided to migrate to Atlanta for college, kicked off his career in a financial training program at Wells Fargo, but he soon returned to his home turf in New York City to be an investment banker, where Michael learned how to tell stories with numbers. Of note, this is where we first met and actually worked together for a few years. Chris Erwin:Michael's career then progressed into private equity and strategy consulting, but he left to take an early bet in digital media and helped launch Whistle Sports in 2014. Today, Michael is the CEO and has spent the past year integrating the business into its new owner, ELEVEN Group. Some highlights of our chat include being denied by a Goldman Sachs recruiter, when wearing a suit can be bad for business, why the movie "The Martian" inspires his leadership, executing an M&A roll up strategy and going from zero to a hundred million in revenue, and learning how to play it where it lies. Now I've known Michael for over 15 years, and he's one of my favorites to share industry notes with and riff about all things creator economy. Telling his story has been a long time coming, so let's get to it. Chris Erwin:All right, Michael, thanks for being on the podcast. Michael Cohen:Chris, thanks for having me. Been a long, long time that we've known each other, so I'm excited to chat with you. Chris Erwin:Yeah. This has been a long time coming. I think I've been asking you to be on the podcast for almost over a couple years now. There was some assumed perhaps missed emails or lack of responses or who knows what, but finally able to make it happen today. Michael Cohen:I take the fifth, but I'm glad I'm glad to be here today. Chris Erwin:All right, Michael. I've known you for a long time. I think dating back to 2006. This is ... I know. It's pretty crazy to say that. It's almost over 15 years starting in Wall Street finance into the world of digital media. A lot to talk about today, but let's start where you grew up, if there's any glimpses into your early career. Let's rewind a bit and tell us about where you grew up and what your household was like. Michael Cohen:I grew up in Long Island in New York, a nice, quiet suburban town called Jericho. I have an older brother and my two parents as well. The town was a very small town. Everybody knew each other, which was great, but also a little bit of a bubble. And so I think having grown up in that environment, it was something that I liked a lot, but also knew it was something I needed to get out of and experience the world a bit different. And I think part of my childhood allowed me to do that. My mom worked in travel, which allowed us to go to all different places. Some I appreciated at the time. Some, I certainly did not as a kid. Whish I could go back and appreciate some of those more, but again, this is well before we had digital cameras, let alone Instagram. Michael Cohen:You couldn't experience a culture the way you potentially can today through Instagram or other apps. I got to have a feel for other cultures around the world through that lens. And then my dad worked in and around technology for his entire career, which was pretty awesome. He traveled to Japan a lot. And I would always ... We went to the consumer electronic show, when CES was actually consumer electronics, or at least more prominently consumer electronics. I would inevitably have some new gadget. I remember a small, little TV that had a massive antenna that I got channel two on, which was great, super exciting as a kid. And then I definitely had the first MP3 player, which I think it was called the Diamond Rio. Chris Erwin:It could hold five songs? Michael Cohen:Yeah. It literally had I think five songs. You could upgrade the memory and you might get eight songs. It was literally the coolest thing ever, but you'd use it to go for a run because you had a Walkman. That was the only other thing. And if you do more than a 20 minute run, that's kind of it. But I think being around my mom and dad who were both working, gave me a strong appreciation for hard work and work ethic. I think both of the industries that they were in gave me perspectives that I probably wouldn't necessarily have had. I'd say my older brother, in terms of work ethic, not to say he didn't have great work ethic, but he is wildly smart. And he didn't actually have to work all that hard to do really well, which, on the other hand, I believe I'm somewhat smart, but also had to do a lot of hard work to keep up. That's just something that's always driven me. Chris Erwin:Michael, I think you have many moments of great intelligence, so don't cut yourself short there. All right. With your mother in travel, your father in tech, did you have a sense of what you wanted to do as a kid? Did a lot of people in your community work in New York City? Did they work in finance? What were you thinking about your careers you were preparing for college? Michael Cohen:Yeah, we had a lot of different folks in the neighborhood. Some worked in finance, some accountants, a variety of folks that worked in different industries. I think for me, business was something that was always an area where I wanted to focus. I knew I wanted to be a business man at that time, follow predominantly in my dad's footsteps and be able to work with a great company and travel, be a part of important meetings, a big team. All that stuff was important to me. Exactly where and what that meant was certainly TBD. Again, we didn't have internet, and all that stuff wasn't as prevalent as it is today to sort of understand all the options and choices. Chris Erwin:And actually, a quick tangent to that ... As a kid, what were your hobbies? What were your passions? What did you do outside the classroom? Michael Cohen:Played a lot of sports. I grew up in a neighborhood that after school, all of us would get our bikes. We'd go to a park. We go back to the school. We'd play pick up basketball, roller hockey, baseball, you name it. We were out until dinnertime. And that was just awesome, being able to always be playing sports. And then at home, I would say because I was able to get exposure to a lot of the technology, I probably had the latest and greatest computers, these massive machines, and got to tinker around with that. So played on the computers. I probably had the first CD burner that existed, and turned that into a little entrepreneurial business in high school, selling CDs. Chris Erwin:Burned popular CDs that you would buy at the time and sell them to your friends? Michael Cohen:There was a very popular dance mix. I don't remember what it was, but it was one of those things that ... I don't know if it was Tower Records or one of those [inaudible 00:08:06] things that you get 22 songs or something on. And it's a mix. I had this CD burner. My friend and I, we started selling these CDs for a few bucks to our friends. It was a nice little side hustle back in high school. Chris Erwin:Okay, so there's a little bit of an entrepreneurial bend in you. I see that. You decide to go to college, and you go to Emory university in the south. What were you thinking when you went to Emory? What was the plan there? Michael Cohen:It was interesting. My brother had gone to Emory. I went down to visit him, Emory in Atlanta, Georgia, early 2000s. The "dirty south" was really having a moment in terms of growth, in terms of pop culture, a really awesome vibrant place. I think for me, having grown up in more of a smaller neighborhood where I knew a lot of the people, I think feeling like a bigger fish in a smaller pond was something that was more exciting. And I think looking at Emory, looking at the curriculum, the school wasn't super small, but at the same time, it would give me warmer weather and the ability to feel part of the movement in pop culture happening at the time. Chris Erwin:And so from there, you end up going into finance, right when you graduate, which I think is around 2005. And I think you end up at Wells Fargo. What was your thinking there for your first role out of school? Michael Cohen:I'll back you up a little bit. At Emory, I majored certainly in business, but with a concentration in finance and marketing. And again, I had always had the desire to be a leader, wanting to be the head of a company someday. Didn't know exactly what that meant at the time, but that was always something that was important to me. I remember going to a ... The school had put on a road show of meeting different investment banks. I got to go to Goldman Sachs, the cream of the crop. I remember this so clearly. I had my suit on, I had studied, I had the vault guides. I knew every question that could be answered. I was ready, and the presenter started off his presentation. And he said, "None of you in this room are going to get a job at Goldman Sachs right out of school." Chris Erwin:Why are you there? Michael Cohen:I'm like, "Well, this is sort of the most deflating thing ever. And I've been preparing for this for an ungodly amount of time." I was so angry for so long, but what I took away from that has stayed with me for my entire career, and it's something I pass on. Because what he then went on to say was, "I didn't start at Goldman Sachs. I started at X company. I then went to Y. I went then over to company A, and then I went to company B and ultimately got to where I am today as a managing director at Goldman Sachs." And his point was that not all career paths are linear. You have to have different experiences along the way that ultimately allow you to become a better managing director at Goldman Sachs, or wherever you were going. Michael Cohen:Fast forward, that stuck with me. I didn't get a job at Goldman Sachs and actually, for the first time in my life, I decided to take a different road. I stayed in Atlanta after I graduated when a lot of my peers were moving back to Manhattan and New York. Again, Atlanta during this time was really booming, and I was excited about the city. I worked for Wells Fargo in their corporate banking group, where we were lending money to large Fortune 500 companies. Michael Cohen:It was a really interesting experience because it was so foundational in terms of learning and the training program that Wells Fargo had. It was just an incredible training program, got exposure to a lot of different people, a lot of different industries that we were covering. And it really gave me a very solid foundation. Ultimately, it was something that I would say, started to lay a very strong finance acumen for me down in Atlanta. I stayed down in Atlanta for a year after graduation and worked at Wells Fargo. It was a two year training program and my focus was all right, it's not investment banking, but maybe I can complete this training program in one year versus two years. So I completed all the training requirements. Chris Erwin:This is actually where we have a lot of overlap. Right after undergrad, I also started my career as a corporate banker. I went to the Bank of New York. It's now known as BNY Mellon. Similar to you, we were lending to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries. So paper manufacturing, TMT, energy and utilities, and much more. I remember spending a lot of time pouring over financial statements and getting into all the details. I learned a ton. Follow up question for you, Michael, is what did you like most about the training program? Michael Cohen:What was great about the training program is that, and I remember this so clearly, they taught you how to hold your plate and a glass at a cocktail dinner. They taught you how to answer the phone. And you think about these soft skills that you take for granted today. Most people don't even use a phone anymore, let alone know how to actually pick up the phone. Go to a cocktail party, how you're supposed to hold the glass on the plate with one hand so you have the other hand free to shake someone's hand. Little fun things that you learned outside of just the core finance and accounting. Michael Cohen:But what was interesting, and why I ultimately decided to move back to New York, was it was a little too slow for me in Atlanta at the time. Still very much a nine to five attitude in that city in terms of where I was, and the opportunity to advance as fast as I would've wanted. This is when I got the opportunity to move to New York, and I landed a job at Waller Capital, which is where you and I had worked together. Chris Erwin:I remember that first meeting where I think you had just joined within the past handful of months. This is I think in 2006, and very similar experience to you, incredible training program at Bank of New York, learned a lot from the leadership there, but wanted something that was more faster paced. Wanted to jam in the hours while I was young in my twenties. I remember coming to an interview at night in the office, and this was a small office, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or one rock, and meeting at the upstairs meeting room. It was in the dark. I walk in and I think we do a 45 minute or hour interview. And I was like, "Wow, look at this guy. He's got a similar background to me, but he's super sharp. He's very confident. And you got me very, very excited about the role." The interview I had was okay. Chris Erwin:But I guess it was good enough to give me the job, because I remember getting an offer letter shortly thereafter and then joined the company a few weeks after that. I'm curious, one of the things we talked about before was building three legs of the stool. Each of those legs being finance, operations, and strategy and leadership. What do you think that you got out of your experience at Waller Capital? And then you moved to The Cypress Group thereafter, what was the financial acumen that you were really building at that point? Michael Cohen:I think it was a few different things. It was a core foundational skillset in corporate finance and accounting, which is really understanding how the numbers work, how an income statement, a balance sheet, a cash flow, not only how that works, which I think I learned in Wells Fargo, but in investment banking and at Waller capital was more of how it's applied. Because what we did was we were advising companies ... As you know, you worked there, but we were advising companies on raising capital to support their businesses and more often selling the companies. Helping them with the most important moment of their lives to sell them to somebody else. How do you write a story based on these numbers and present them to the marketplace? I think that was ...What I learned there was really the combination of how to use numbers to tell stories. And certainly learned a massive attention to detail. Michael Cohen:You talk about Jeff Brandon, who we both worked with. I remember what he said to me. He goes, "In our business, 99% right is a hundred percent wrong." And that's really stuck with me. The detail side of that, because what he was trying to say was one wrong number calls out your credibility to a client, to a potential buyer. And it's cast judgment, cast doubt on the rest of the financial model. So we really, the threshold for being correct was there was really zero tolerance. It taught you how to double check, how to triple check your work, how to work with others, like yourself, to ask questions, to make sure that you were approaching things the right way. Michael Cohen:I would say the storytelling with numbers, the attention to detail, and then again, work ethic. Because we worked long hours together to ultimately be able to deliver for our clients. And you had to find a solution. I'll give you an example of that, which was, we had a pitch, it was a very large pitch. We had done the pitch deck. We were all ready. Again, Waller Capital was media and telecom. I don't think we hit that early, but we spent a lot of time focused on cable companies. These cable companies, if you zoom out of a map of the United States, it's like a puzzle. There's pictures of this map that we would often use in our pitch decks to show how some different assets, where a strategic fit of different areas. Well, that needed to be part of a physical pitch deck. Michael Cohen:And unfortunately the files were so large that they couldn't print out. Again, this is '06, so didn't have these great printers that you can buy off the shelves today. And I had said to the managing director, "Look, sorry, there's just nothing I can do. It won't print. It keeps jamming. It won't print." And the response was like, "That's just not acceptable. I need this for a pitch tomorrow morning. It's got to be at my house in Greenwich by 4:00 AM, because I've got a 6:00 AM flight." So, okay. And I've got my new shoes on, my new suit, my investment banker gear. Meanwhile, I'm living on a couch at this point, and I go down to the financial printers on Wall Street, and begging them to take this file. The financial printers were the people that actually printed out all the 10Ks, all the SEC documents that had to be physically printed back in the day. Michael Cohen:I begged them to find a way to get this file open. Ultimately after going to three different ones, I found someone that was able to print it. They printed it. I bartered with them, so instead of charging with me, we said, "Hey, the next virtual data room that we use will go with you." And I took a black car all the way to Greenwich. I dropped it off. My feet were all blistered up. Ultimately got home, got a couple hours of sleep, and back in the office by nine o'clock. While going through that, I was obviously fairly frustrated and tired and exhausted, but it taught me that every problem has a solution. You just have to work it hard enough. I think those three plus years at Waller Capital really instilled a core foundation in how I work, and not only what I know, but how I work and what I really am able to do. Chris Erwin:Very well said. After investment banking for a few years, you then head to private equity. You head to the Cypress Group and Torque Capital. Tell us about experience and what the training was there that was setting you up for the rest of your career. Michael Cohen:Wat was really interesting coming out of Waller Capital after three years was, I don't know how many different sell side mandates we were on, but probably, 30, 40 over my time there. Sell side is when, as you know, when you're selling a company to the marketplace, so you're representing a seller and you're going out and you're positioning them to a marketplace of buyers to ultimately sell it. Now, what was really fascinating for me, and what I wanted to do, was go on the opposite side. Okay. You sell the company, now what happens? A buyer buys it, what do they do now? How do they operate it? And Cypress Group was a two and a half billion dollar private equity firm. I would say they were focused on diversified industrials and manufacturing. Michael Cohen:And for me, what I wanted to get next in my career was a broader exposure to the economy. No better way to do that than getting more involved in industrials and manufacturing. The other side of it is I wanted to be involved in the actual operations of the company. Cypress was sort of nearing the end of its fun life, but really was focusing on portfolio operations. It would give me an opportunity to really roll up my sleeves, work with various executives in each of these companies that they had owned, and literally be on the front lines of operations. And I think that was an incredible experience, particularly because the fall of Lehman Brothers happened during that. When you have exposure to everything from automotive companies to kitchen cabinets during a recessionary period, how do you operate those businesses? Michael Cohen:It's one thing when you can't stop selling kitchen cabinets. It's another thing when home builds are cut in half, and you've got a massive manufacturing line needs to be retooled or relooked at. And so how do you fix that? I was able to go to many interesting places similar to our days in Waller Capital, driving around the country and various markets, and get on the manufacturing floor. What I remember very clearly are two things. One, the first company I went to that we owned, I was wearing a suit, tie, nice shoes, clearly bringing a New York aura to this company that was in Tennessee, I believe. And it was like, who is this guy? What is he doing here? How can he possibly help me? Michael Cohen:I quickly learned culturally, you can't get things done by decree. What I quickly did was, the next day I changed. I was no longer wearing a suit. I was a little bit more suitable, but I started just asking questions and listening. What I took away was, what are the biggest pain points that the CEO has, that some of the senior managers have. And ultimately I came away from that trip knowing that if I could solve some of those pain points for them ... And some of them were fairly easy. Some of them were, "Hey, I need just better communication between the board and us," or, "Hey, there's this issue that keeps popping up." These were fairly simple, but it just required connecting of dots to do. And I did that, and what was magical out of that was the respect and credibility that I was able to get. Michael Cohen:From that point on, I was able to acclimate and get involved in these companies in a way where I started to be able to understand truly what would move the needle for them as operators, versus me wearing a New York private equity hat. And that was probably the most fun I had ever had. It really reinforced my desire to really be an operator. I had now investment banking, private equity experience. After two years ... Private equity was a two year program. You signed two years, and then you're typically off to business school or you do something else. Ultimately, I had asked the head of the private equity firm for his advice on what I should do next. I said, "Hey, should I go to business school?" Michael Cohen:I had taken GMAT. I had done well. He was a big golfer. He said, "Play it where it lies." He goes, "You're sitting in the fairway. Why would you go to business school? You've already got the education. Everything you would've gotten, you've seen. You've been operating. You've been operating through these tough environments." And this was about the time where we saw an opportunity in the market to create what I would call a lower middle market distressed fund that would focus on these smaller companies that were forgotten during the post Lehman era, that were still extremely valuable, had a lot of asset value, again from manufacturing, whether that was equipment or what they were doing, but just were victims of the challenging environment. Going in, helping to restructure those, bringing those back to life, was awesome. It was the best. After two years, I joined a couple of folks there. Michael Cohen:We created this vehicle called Torque Capital Group. It still exists today. We made a couple of investments. I was really part of the very beginning of a fund, the very beginning of the investment that we made, putting together a hundred day plan, living in places like New Hampshire and outer Georgia, really working with the operators on what is this next iteration of the company. That was just such an incredible experience. What I took from that was ultimately, I was more excited about the top line growth side of things, the innovation that was happening in Silicon Alley. That then led me to the next stage of the career. Chris Erwin:Few interesting notes there. One, in terms of really listening, and being aware, and understanding the cultural nuances when you're working with different companies or leadership ... I feel you on that because I remember you and I used to do this. We used to do the cable tours when we were in banking, and I would show up to the middle of nowhere, Missouri or middle of nowhere, Wyoming to a cable head end, where we were representing the seller. The private equity company, their buyer, and their leadership and diligence team would come out. They'd all just be in general outdoor work gear. And I'm showing up in a suit, slacks, nice leather shoes. I was totally the odd man out. I thought that dressing nice like that would get me respect in the room, or respect in a situation because I was typically 20 years younger than everyone else that was there. Chris Erwin:That was not the case, and I learned pretty quickly that I got to adjust the wardrobe. And I got to listen more to the people that are around me if I'm going to have an impact in this situation. I think that's very right. And your boss, I think at the Cypress Group said, "Play it where it lies." Probably around that time, it's 2011 for you, I decided to go to business school because I think I realized I was making a change where I wanted to change geographies. I wanted to change roles. I wanted to change industries, and I felt that I didn't have the right skillset and I didn't have the right plan. I needed to reset and take two years to get the operating experience that I needed. Chris Erwin:It's funny, we took two different paths, but ended up in pretty similar industries thereafter, and pretty similar roles that have diverged over the past few years. It's just funny to kind of reflect on that. All right, so then after Torque Capital, we're going to get shortly to your rise in digital media at Team Whistle, but I think there was a quick stint of strategy work that you were doing. Tell us quickly about that, and then we'll get to your current role now. Michael Cohen:So now, I've got the finance acumen under me, I've got the operational acumen under me, and I see very clearly what I need next, which is more of the strategy work that was missing. What I was looking for at the time was, do I jump into a startup and take some sort of role that's ... I think at the time everyone coming from private equity or MBAs was looking for a business development role, or a strategy role within these companies. I got some really great advice from an angel investor who introduced me to the CEO of Fahrenheit 212, which their whole mantra, how do we take an existing asset, existing distribution channels, existing marketplace position, and how do we leverage that to create a new product, a new technology, bring that to market and ultimately build a startup within a Fortune 500 company? Michael Cohen:I was advised by this angel investor who said to me, "Go talk to Fahrenheit. I think this is a great bridge that will ultimately get you into more of that operating role, that startup role, but this is a great place to go. You'll have the ability to work with large Fortune 500 companies that you've been working with, but you'll also be able to help them work on new products, new innovation, very exciting activities." And so got the job where I was an engagement manager. My role there was to lead different engagements. I got the opportunity to work with everyone from Citigroup, to Samsung, and a number of others in between, but big companies and big challenges that we were trying to tackle for them. One of the best pieces of advice I got from the founder, a guy by the name of Jeff Valletta, stuck with me. He said, "Free yourself from the fear of failure." Michael Cohen:What he was saying was a couple things. One is, in innovation, you're going to fail sometimes, but if you play your hands scared, you're never going to innovate. The team that we built at Fahrenheit was there to support you. So it was one, the team around you is here to support you, so don't worry about you failing. And two, don't worry about the product failing because you're going to learn from it. And it was about iteration. It was a great environment to frankly, retrain my brain because in banking and private equity, when you hit a wall, you think about how do I financial engineer around this? How do I cut it? In innovation when you hit a wall, that's opportunity. Michael Cohen:It took me a number of months to sort of retrain my brain on that notion that this is opportunity, and so how do we innovate around it? How do we innovate through it? What does this mean in terms of opportunity? That to me was an incredible experience. I was at Fahrenheit for about a year, and then I left and ultimately started my own consulting company. And why did I leave? Well, something interesting happens when you work with Fortune 500 companies and you deliver them, at least in my experience there was you deliver them this great strategy. You deliver them this great idea. They sign off on it. Two things happen: one, the person who's the key stakeholder gets promoted and it's no longer their problem. Or two, they decide to take it internally. They're like, this is great. We're going to run with it from here. The idea of me getting to build a startup within a Fortune 500 company was not really a super viable path. You're able to bring the strategy to life, but often, they're going to run with it on there. Michael Cohen:So obviously lots of internal stakeholders, lots of different things you need to do. And being inside the company was how they were able to be successful with it or take it. But at that point, I was very confident in the skillset that I had built. And so I started my own consulting company called, Who Is M. Cohen Ventures. Chris Erwin:Can I just ask why, Who Is M. Cohen? Michael Cohen:A friend of mine was more advanced in the social media space at the time than I was. In terms of branding and everything, I was like, "I need a Twitter handle. What Twitter handle should I do?" I couldn't redo my AOL handle from high school. So he's like, "What about who is M. Cohen? There's so many Michael Cohens out there. What about who is M. Cohen?" And so I took that as my Twitter handle, and then I just started branding a lot of other things with it. I liked it. Chris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating, wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it. Everybody let's get back to the interview. Chris Erwin:After Fahrenheit and after Who Is M. Cohen Ventures, you joined what is now known as Team Whistle back in 2013. I'm curious to hear, from your point of view, how you ended up making this transition. Because I do remember when I was graduating from Kellogg, I was working for a company called Pritzker that actually invested in Big Frame and Awesomeness. I joined Big Frame back in, I think July 2012. I remember increasingly getting calls from you being like, "Hey Chris, I see you're working at Big Frame. You're in the YouTube MCN world, what's going on there? What are you doing? How are you building?" And I remember the frequency of those calls really ratcheting up. I think there was an eventual call I got from you, which was, "Hey, I joined Whistle." And I thought that was awesome. I loved having one of my financial brethren making the move into digital media where there's going to be some more quantitative focused minds and strategy minds entering the mix, which we needed. But how did that come to be from your side? Michael Cohen:I was doing the consulting thing as Who Is M. Cohen Ventures. One of my clients was the Whistle, and I was doing consulting for probably six months. I had a number of clients, probably had five different clients. And I wasn't sure whether I was going to just keep building a consulting company or do something else. It would actually, frankly, gave me the opportunity to date a lot of really interesting companies. I worked with small seed stage companies, some more funded companies, and some actually Fortune 500 companies as a consultant. But, I would say what got me to join Whistle was two things that happened. One, I would come home and I would talk to my wife and she said to me, "What's interesting, you talk about all your clients. When you talk about Whistle, you say, we. When you talk about your other clients, you say they." It was a really interesting, subtle observation that she had made. Michael Cohen:And then too, Chris, as you know, back in time, this was a wild west. Not many people knew what YouTubers were. It was probably the only platform that had creators. I don't think the term influencer was coined yet. And then Disney comes in and buys maker studios for a billion dollars. I sit there and say, well, one, there's a great team, a small team, but really interesting people that are here. And then two, there's just got some validation in this industry that perhaps there is some validation coming from Disney. Michael Cohen:At that point, John West, who was the founder of Whistle, said, "Hey, we got to raise some money, so I can't have my finance person as a consultant. So you going to join? You can create a consulting company anytime in your life. There's not going to be many opportunities you get to join a company at an early stage like Whistle." And he's a great salesman and a great mentor and friend, so I jumped on board. At the time it was called The Whistle and that began the nine plus year journey that I'm still on right now. Chris Erwin:Got it. When you first joined, what was the mandate? Was it, "Hey, Michael, we need to raise money. Let's get the model and the deck together"? And then the money's raised, what was your mandate immediately thereafter? Michael Cohen:They had raised some seed capital. Really I joined in 2013 and I would say our public launch was January 1st, 2014. And the premise of what we were trying to do was if you were to reimagine ESPN today, how would you do it? That was the question that we were asking ourselves at the time. It would be very different than what was happening back then. Traditional media, in our view, underserved today's generation. It was mostly a one way broadcast directly to you from the old guys with gray hair, talking about the glory days, talking about this scandal, that scandal. And, when I came on, the mandate was to help figure out what's the initial strategy that we want to take this on. Our view was, looking at how ESPN came to be and studying it, was ESPN came to be on the back of cable and satellite providers. They bought sports rights and, again, they sold them and then sold it to Telcos and had licensing fees and all that type of stuff. Michael Cohen:Our view was that the next company was going to be built on the back of social media company. Instead of cable and satellite, you're going to have the Facebooks, the YouTubes, et cetera. But our view was that instead of sports rights, it was going to be social influencer rights. And so the first step of what we did was we created a sports MCN, like a Big Frame before us, or a Maker, or Style Hall. All these others that were either generalists, or they were very vertical focused, Style Hall being more fashion and beauty. Tastemade, being more around food. Michael Cohen:There was still room for sports. The first thing that we did and that I was part of, was really trying to come up with that strategy. Once we landed on the MCN strategy, which, our view at the time we came after a number of other companies, was instead of this actually being the destination we're trying to go to, it was more of the vehicle. Michael Cohen:And what I mean by that is, we would create this MCN, we'd have a lot of creators under our belt. It would give us access to tons of data, which would then give us the ability to learn more about the audience and then figure out how best to serve that audience. So I would say the initial part of me coming on was helping with the capital raise, putting the deck together, putting together a financial model. But in order to put together a deck in a financial model, you of course need the business strategy. Looking back nine years, it's very easy to tell a linear story on what we did, but between us that's BS. We all know building a company is not a linear story. So that was the first piece of coming on. Chris Erwin:When you launch in January of 2014, did the launch go as expected? What surprised you? Michael Cohen:We were so focused at the time of being a very good for you sports media company that we launched Dude Perfect, as I'm sure many people know, one of the largest creators in the world. I think they were only 2 million subscribers on YouTube at the time. Now they're multiples of that. They were one of our launch partners and a number of others were. We had PR around it. It was great. And then we're watching YouTube videos and we see you can block certain categories that you don't want to run ads. Our whole premise was certainly no alcohol, only really positive advertisements that could go on it. We didn't want soft drinks. We didn't want certain junk food. I think we got served a Pepsi ad or something, and it caused a whole panic of are we having sugary drinks? Michael Cohen:Are we allowed to have sugary drinks? Are we not allowed to have sugary drinks? And I think that was a funny moment. But at the time the rally cry was build our subscribers, the subscriber network, on subscribers being on YouTube. We had different targets that we ran after to bring creators on, to hit a certain subscriber threshold, which, was more of a proxy for the size of our audience and how we would be able to monetize it. But I remember that early on, it was getting a little over spooked on a very non-controversial ad that ran in pre-roll on YouTube. Chris Erwin:Yeah. And I have to ask, what was it like for you to start working with creators for the first time? For me coming out of finance, so venture capital, business school, Wall Street. I was very accustomed to working with private equity leadership, sophisticated investors, C-suite executives from the companies that we were representing. Transitioning into this intersection of digital media technology and entertainment, working with creators and personalities, working with the representatives that manage them. That was an entirely new world for me, both working with those talent and the reps in house, and then also out of our building as well. Did you have a lot of creator exposure early on at Whistle? Michael Cohen:I would say I wasn't leading the creator efforts. We had an awesome person named Julie Kikla who came from YouTube that helped us launch that. Dev Sethi then came on, who I know has been on your podcast here, but definitely got exposure to the different creators. I would say that my diversified experience in the past very much helped me for how to navigate, how to partner with these creators, who very often were not sophisticated businesses. And certainly at the time they weren't. First and foremost, they're in incredibly talented, innovative creators that they're most suited to creating incredibly engaging content. The monetization side of it was where we came in to help them. Michael Cohen:And so trying to apply a commercial acumen to a creative acumen often was easy to meet with challenges. But I think my prior experiences ... Where the story in private equity where had to really acclimate to the people around me, working in the strategy roles, and having empathy for what it's like to be in a larger company, what it's like to be in a smaller company, understanding both a commercial desire, but also a creative of desire, and how that all works together. I would say it gave me the tools to have a lot more empathy for it. Certainly didn't prepare me for the world of mom-agers and dad-agers, and how intensely passionate those folks are about their sons, their daughters, but I was prepared. But I've learned a lot in terms of how to partner. Chris Erwin:So phase one, with the initial launch of Whistle, call it the MCN stage, and some learnings there. And then I think there was a decision where working with the team, you guys then enter phase two, where you're investing in intellectual property, audience growth, capabilities. This is I think where you transition from Whistle Sports to Whistle. Tell us how that came to be. Michael Cohen:We went from The Whistle to Whistle Sports. We started off as The Whistle. When we launched, we were Whistle Sports. It was important to make the point that, we were Whistle Sports. We weren't well known at the time, so making sure that the name stood for what we were was important. As we evolved, and as we studied the data, we learned that sport was being defined very differently for this generation. We were focused more on a YouTuber generation, I would say, mid to late teens, the mid to late twenties. We learned a lot from them and really no greater learning than they are really defined by the intersection of multiple passion points. Sports fans today are very much, yes, I may be a ravenous sports fan, but I also care about the pop culture aspect. I care about the music aspect. I care about the culinary aspect of it. Michael Cohen:Very often today we're taking it for granted, because on Instagram you can see an athlete out partying on yacht, and what they're doing behind the scenes. You see them walking their dogs. You have such a more intimate exposure. I think at the time, again, it was really only YouTube was the platform that had the most data that you could get followed by. Facebook's started to get in it. But we learned from the data that there was a white space that we could create content in that was more what I would call sport attainment. As we were talking to a number of our advertising partners, they said, "Look, your name's Whistle Sports, but you're not sports. Sports is, what I would say, classically defined as what an ESPN is doing, what a Bleacher was doing, a Turner was doing at the time, you guys are more entertainment. The content you're creating is more entertainment. And if you focus on sports and entertainment, that's a much bigger pot that you can focus on. So have you thought about dropping the name sports when you're going from your go to market standpoint?" Michael Cohen:We started to test it, and all of a sudden we are getting lots more RFPs, lots more inbound interests, lots more PR opportunities, because we were really defining a new category. And early on, I would say in that category definition, people that would say to us, "You're trying to be everything to everyone. You're really sitting in this middle bucket." What we try to convey and what is true today is that no, no, no, that's a category of our own. So trying to define us in yesterday's boxes is not the right way to approach it because we're creating a new box for ourselves. And so that began really where we were consciously investing in our own content, building a diversified network of platforms. We wanted to be diversified across not just YouTube, not just Facebook, as many platforms as possible, not wanting to have the risk of being tied to any one platform in particular. Chris Erwin:How was your role changing at the company as you were rising up and as your business was evolving? Michael Cohen:As we start to invest in our own product, I got the opportunity to expand my role and oversee that. Now, I wasn't running production, but I was overseeing the production side of things. My role was really focused on, at this point, not only how we operate internally, but the product that we're creating. I think one of the approaches that I took to it was, very often in media companies, there's a separation again of this creative and commercial, and there's a tension, there's a massive tension. And there's often like a wall in true editorials, environments or newsrooms, there is a wall. In our world, my focus really was about trying to align commercial and creative again. And that was something that has really been important throughout my career is trying to get people to see and understand certain things from different perspectives. Michael Cohen:I would say one of my strong abilities is to help connect dots that people aren't readily seeing. And so why commercializing a piece of content is important to our ability to do new and interesting creative endeavors. It was really about trying to align the product and revenue needs together so that we're able to create really cool, compelling content, but we're not creating content for content's sake on a gut or a hunch. We're doing it because it is somewhat grounded in, "Hey, this is a commercially viable type of thing that we can be taking to market." I spent a lot of time on the product side, and our product being content for the most part. Chris Erwin:After this point, I think you enter what you describe as phase three, which I think began in 2018. This is a bit of the inorganic plan, or this is where you're starting to exercise some of the skills and abilities that you learn from finance, banking, private equity, and you conduct an M&A roll up strategy, enhancing your capabilities by buying other companies. I think there's three specific acquisitions that you led. And I think as you described, you're starting to marry live sports and entertainment in a more meaningful way. Tell us about that point of the company. Michael Cohen:This is really, again, focused on IP, audience, and capabilities. I think at this point, as we're building the company, our focus is okay, we have a creator network, which is awesome, and we can help those creators continue to be successful, both in terms of helping to monetize, but also in terms of bringing them into the IP that we're creating. So that creator network, the creators that are a part of our company still to this day are still core to everything that we do. Now we're creating our own IP and we're monetizing it mostly via both indirect programmatic revenue and then direct sales. As we keep expanding into IP and keep expanding into this entertainment area, we saw that there were opportunities in 2018. Really, if you remember, I think this was sort of the nuclear winter of digital media. Michael Cohen:We had little things, which they were on top of the world and then a Facebook algorithm shifted. And they went out almost overnight. We had Mashable, which was as a darling at the time, which was frankly fire sold. And this then began I think Cambridge Analytica around the time, lots of scandals around social media, video, compression in CPMs. And so we saw an opportunity that there were a lot of companies that had raised a lot of capital. They had a choice to make. They didn't necessarily get to the scale that they wanted to be. And so the choices were, we shut down the company, we raise more capital from other investors, or we partner with someone else that can potentially get us to the promise land. And so we saw that opportunity that most people would probably want to choose the last piece. Michael Cohen:Many investors were tired by 2018. The tolerance to put more capital into these companies was few and far between. The desire, and frankly, the PR nightmare of shutting down was not something that people wanted to do. And so we started to be very smart in terms of, okay, if we were going to build this vertical, or build this capability ourselves, what would it take us to do? How much capital would it take? Or, who's out there that we can go and take a look at? The first company that we had gotten introduced to was a company called New Form. New Form was based in the LA ecosystem. Whistle was still primarily focused in New York and we knew if we were going to be taken seriously in the Hollywood ecosystem, we really needed to have a studio. Michael Cohen:And so this is again, the time where lots of streaming platforms are coming out, new types of mediums are being created. And so we bought New Form. They brought in a strong slate of IP that they had already created. They already had a number of distribution partners. Some that we had, some that they had. They had scripted, we had unscripted. It really made us a very strong studio. The who's who around the table gave us a pretty strong signal to the market in a market that frankly was very challenged. We brought in the skillset to integrate these companies, and then be able to do more of them. We then got an opportunity to look at a company called Vertical Networks. Vertical Networks Brother, which was the largest Snap discover channel at the time, but the problem was they couldn't get off of Snap. Michael Cohen:They didn't have ... Both from a capital standpoint, and just from a capability standpoint, they just weren't able to scale off platform to other platforms as fast. Well, we already had the other platforms within our distribution, but we also didn't have as much on Snap. So was a nice little partnership where we were able to come in and take a look at Brother, work with a lot of the existing people on that team, rethink what Brother was, reformat some of the shows. That really gave us more of the IP and audience. So now we've got both. We've got IP from both New Form, we've got IP from Vertical Networks. We've got a much bigger audience coming from Vertical Networks and the Brother. And then, what we realized was, okay, now we've got more IP, more audience. We need more capabilities to take this out into the marketplace. Michael Cohen:So we acquired an agency called Tiny Horse that was based in Charlotte. The premise of that was really adding more capabilities that we could bring out to our brand partners, that we could help different distributors and other partners with subscriber acquisition, because so many different streaming platforms coming out. How can Whistle not only use their audience, whether those are paid marketing, or inventory buying, other types of strategy work, and identity work that we could do to help these different companies navigate what I would call the digital transformation. We brought that skillset in. We built a very strong company that had this nice puzzle coming together of IP audience and capabilities, serving a younger demographic with a great suite of partners. Chris Erwin:A couple quick beats before we get into the rapid fire to close this out. So now you have this incredible platform. You started to put the puzzle pieces together for a really exciting new build, a new growth strategy for the company. And then at this point, I think you guys sold to ELEVEN Sports in 2021. What's the quick story there for how that came to be? Was the M&A all with the intention of, "Let's put the pieces together because we're going to run a sales process for the company," or was the acquisition unplanned? Michael Cohen:John West, our CEO has a great saying. He said, "Companies are never sold or bought." So we never thought about putting ourselves up for sale. We had raised a lot of money over the years, and really we had now, to your point, put together a lot of these puzzle pieces and it was really about fueling growth. We went out into the market in 2020 to raise some additional capital to, I would say one, continue to weather the COVID storm that had impacted a lot of media companies. But two, be ready with a war chest to capitalize on opportunities, capitalize on what we already were building. And then other opportunities coming out of that. Ultimately got a number of different term sheets from mostly debt providers because we did not want to focus on diluting the company, and then ELEVEN Sports had put in an offer to buy the company. Michael Cohen:ELEVEN was someone that we had known well. Their main investor was Acer Media backed by a guy named Andrea Radrizzani. He sees the world in a different way than most, and frankly, very aligned to the way we see the world. ELEVEN was focused more outside of the United States. They're more of a sports, live rights, more of their focus and they operate in a number of markets outside in Europe and Asia. They saw what we had already been seeing. Sports was being defined very differently. And so what we saw was together, we could unlock the power of live sport and on demand entertainment, and win a lot more hours of the consumer. Michael Cohen:If we could better serve the consumer, ultimately we would be able to monetize in more ways. When you start to put these pieces together, you really are creating a global sports media and entertainment company that plays across live and non-live, and both with an entrepreneurial spirit that can continue to be more scrappy than others out there. Our board, John, myself, we all recommended that this was the right opportunity that together we could get to a much more meaningful outcome for all stakeholders. We could better serve our partners, better serve our audience. And ultimately of course our shareholders. Chris Erwin:It's an incredible story, Michael. I have to ask, looking back on all this, you've helped the company raise over a hundred million dollars in capital. You've helped take the company from zero to a hundred million dollars in revenue. Going back to the beginning of this interview, the through line of building the three-legged stool. I need finance, I need op, strategy and leadership. Do you think that this is the ultimate culmination of all of your hard work? Do you look back at this and be like, "I did it. I'm content"? And then second, I want to hear about what are the two or three key learnings about how you are now a better executive from this experience and what you will take with you going forward? But let's start with the first one. Michael Cohen:First of all, it's definitely not I. The most important thing that I learned is it's always we, never I. I tried to take blame for the failures and would want the team to take, and have asked the team to always take credit for the wins. I don't think you can be a leader in today's environment by being an I person. In terms of looking back at the last nine years, the thing that stands out for me is adaptability is the reason that we are still alive and kicking today. John, our founder, he has a saying, and I think it's been attributed to Darwin, but we'll do that. "It's not the strongest or the biggest of species that survive. It's the ones that are most adaptable to change that survive." That's really been our operating mantra. Between that and a nice quote that I love from the Martian, the movie and the book, it says, at some point everything's going to go south on you and you're going to say, this is it. Michael Cohen:This is how I end. You can either accept that or you can get to work and that's it. You just begin. You start to solve problems. You solve one problem after the next. And then if you solve enough problems, ultimately you get to come home. He was on Mars. And that's just been a mantra of ours. Again, goes back to that very first experience in investment banking, was solve the problem. There's nothing that can't be solved by an incredibly talented team that we've built at team Whistle. I'm lucky to have the privilege to work with all these great folks. And it's been fairly humbling experience. Chris Erwin:Do you feel on this almost 20 year journey, partially satiated? This is what I set out to do? Of course, with a whole team around you to make it happen. Because this kind of impacts how you're thinking about what's next. Michael Cohen:Yeah. I do feel somewhat satiated. I think I felt it probably for a little bit after the acquisition. For me throughout the journey, I started as EVP of finance and operations, I then took on the COO title. I then took on the president title, and then ultimately took on the CEO role. I think each one of those was a milestone that I had. Okay. Have I arrived? Okay, have I? And that's ... Being able to appreciate that in the moment is something that I probably wish I spent more time appreciating in the moment of having arrived at that and celebrating that. Michael Cohen:I just thrive on searching for things that haven't been done, doing them, working with a great team, getting to be challenged every day, and working again in a media and telecom space. This intersection of media tech and commerce, it's so dynamic. And so there's always a challenge every day. For me, the satiation come from the challenge, the constant challenge. Maybe that's right, maybe that's wrong, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing now, and continuing to build. And that's what's fun for me, is the opportunity to continue to be challenged and built Chris Erwin:Final question before rapid fire. In terms of what's next, with the acquisition, you have been leading the integration and transformation of the company. Your chief transformation officer of ELEVEN Sports. Are you coming to the end of that process? Is there a lot more work to do there? And what are you thinking next for you? Michael Cohen:It's been an incredible opportunity. Mark Watson, the CEO of the ELEVEN group, and Andrea's also involved. The whole team have been great. Getting the opportunity after selling your company to help lead an overall transformation effort, not only integrating your company, but working with their company as well has been a really incredible experience. Getting to reimagine, rethink the strategy and how we evolve it. I think we're only getting started. I don't think transformation necessarily starts and stops. There's certainly some infrastructure building, some tactical things that we had to get done. Now we're able to actually just keep executing on that plan of winning more hours of the consumer, whether that's through different types of content, different types of products we're putting out, different types of distribution. That's the fun of it. I would say the journey continues, and as long as I'm being challenged and having fun, and get the opportunity to work with great people, that's something that keeps me going. Chris Erwin:Well said. In closing, I just want to give you some kudos. I've known you longer than most people in my professional career over 15 years. And I think you are a big part of what sold me, "I'm coming into investment banking," and also getting my foot in the door. Just like you, all the skills that you learned there was what I learned. And that is what allowed me to get into business school, and then to join the whole digital media revolution and Big Frame and Awesomeness, and actually hire our old bank to represent Big Frame in the sale. Chris Erwin:You are a big part of that, Michael. I give you a ton of kudos for that. I think our relationship's been a fun give and take where you got inspired by some of the things that I did, and that was a catalyst to your entry into Whistle, but then you just took it to a whole other level and it's been really awesome to see. I've learned a lot from your rise up. I think you even brought in our advisory firm to help you when you were looking through some different VOD strategies a few years back. So very thankful for that. And it's just been a delight to know you professionally and personally. I think there's much more fun to come for both of us going forward. Like we said in the beginning, we're going to have to do some outdoor activities or some sports or something like that next time we hang out. Michael Cohen:I'm all ready for it. And I appreciate the kind words, Chris. All I would say is right back at you. It's been a great friendship, a great partnership, and we're still in the early innings, to use the sports analogy. Chris Erwin:Let's get into the closing rapid fire questions. Six questions, the rules are as follows. You can answer in one sentence or in just a handful of words, keep it short and sweet. Michael, do you understand the rules? Michael Cohen:I believe. Chris Erwin:All right, let's kick it off. Proudest life moment? Michael Cohen:Becoming a father. Chris Erwin:What do you want to do less of in 2022? Michael Cohen:Zoom. Chris Erwin:What do you want to do more of? Michael Cohen:In person discussions. That fuels my energy. Chris Erwin:What one to two things drive your success? Short answer. Michael Cohen:I would say just a relentless desire to learn and to be challenged, and to work with great people. Chris Erwin:Advice for media execs going into 2022? Michael Cohen:Know your audience, know your partners, serve them well. Don't future chase. Chris Erwin:Any future startup ambitions? Might we see Who Is M. Cohen Ventures coming back into the mix? Michael Cohen:I would say I've always had the entrepreneurial itch, and there's a lot of good ideas out there and great people to partner with. For right now, I'm focused on leading team Whistle, continuing to lead the transformation office at ELEVEN, bringing a great outcome to all stakeholders. But let's revisit this in a couple years, because I think there's something there. Chris Erwin:Maybe you can come lead the sports media division at Rockwater. It's an opportunity. Michael Cohen:Maybe. Chris Erwin:All right, Michael, this is the last one. Pretty easy. How can people get in contact with you? Michael Cohen:Always up to chat. You can email me. You can hit me on Twitter. Text message me. LinkedIn as well. I'm always up to collaborate, meet smart, great people, help make introductions, connect people. Chris Erwin:All right. Awesome. Michael, this was a ton of fun. Thanks for being on the show. Michael Cohen:Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you having me. Chris Erwin:All right. That was a really fun interview. As I said at the beginning, I think I've been trying to interview Michael for the past couple years, so thrilled that we could finally make it happen. All right, but a few quick points before we wrap up. We just had an awesome executive event at Gjelina in LA a few weeks ago. We brought together various livestream commerce executives for a panel. Included Popshop Live, Stage TEN, and MARKET. That was a lot of fun and the Gjelina rooftop never disappoints. It was great to see a lot of you there. We do have another executive event coming up in New York in early November. More on that to come, but there'll probably be an event in advance of that as well, maybe around VidCon, so stay tuned. As always, if you want to attend our events or learn more or interested in being a sponsor, ping us at hello@wearerockwater.com. And then we always love to hear from our listeners. If you have any feedback or any ideas for guests, shoot us a note at tcupod@wearerockwater.com. All right, that's it, everybody. Thanks for listening. Chris Erwin:The Come Up is written and hosted by me, Chris Erwin, and is a production of RockWater Industries. Please rate and review this show on Apple podcast and remember to subscribe wherever you listen to our show. And if you really dig us, feel free to forward The Come Up to a friend. You can sign up for our company newsletter at wearerockwater.com/newsletter, and you could follow us on Twitter @TCUpod. The Come Up is engineered by Daniel Tureck. Music is by Devon Bryant. Logo and branding is by Kevin Zazzali, and special thanks to Alex Zirin and Eric Kenigsberg from the Rockwater team.