Fireside Chat at Startup Grind New York

welcome to the startup grind how's it going Gary it's going well am I on yeah I'm on hey everyone so um thank you very much for uh for accepting our invitation here um yeah so uh so we usually like to

start off on a personal note for all of our speakers and so you know let's sort of go through like where were you born where Were You Raised sure and then maybe talk about like what was your first taste of Entrepreneurship sure about that so I was born in bellus in the former Soviet Union uh I came to the US in 1978 when I was three I spent one year in Queens New York Big Ups to Queens no not from Queens you just no totally from Queens okay good uh and then I moved to New Jersey and basically grew up in Edison New Jersey um and uh my first taste of Entrepreneurship was when I was four and a when I was five when we moved to New Jersey I started a very interesting business a lot of I see a lot of familiar faces so I think a lot of people might know the lemonade stand story but the ones that know me a little bit deeper might know the real one which is the first thing I really did was literally a week into living in this uh townhouse development Dogwood Meadows in Edison New Jersey I walked around the neighborhood on one day pulled the flowers out of people's yards and rang their doorbell and sold the flowers back to them so I'm not super proud of that but that's the first taste you know um which if you think about it was a pretty smart business model I didn't really sit on a lot of inventory the turn on cash was pretty good um so that was my first taste and then I got really serious about lemonade stands when I was six I Hado style right yeah I had six lemonade stands I literally convinced all my friends in the neighborhood to man and woman the lemonade stands all day and uh and I spent all my time ironically making signs and trying to figure out which trees and you know I was yeah I mean I still think that might be one of my Great accomplishments I mean we literally ran lemonade stands out of those 90 days of that summer between first grade and kindergarten I mean like 50 of the 90 days I had my friend standing behind a stand for like seven hours so good sales child labor BR right yeah um and the other thing too like I

wanted to talk about was uh fast forward a little bit um talk about how you had 30 grand under your bed mhm at 14 years old yeah and how you did not sell weed you promise you did not cuz you keep on saying you didn't sell weed I did not sell weed cuz you're from Jersey right so no we uh when I was 12 I don't know you know looking around the crowd there's some guys in this Stage Group baseball cards completely took over like America with like the 87 tops and you know 87 88 89 90 91 92 so I was in that age group um and I started doing baseball card shows in the malls of New Jersey and you know that was when I really learned how to become a I would tell you that I'm pretty sure that the foundation of my business success was selling baseball cards when I was 11 12 13 14 because when you sold cards at a mall or a Convention Center or a firehouse or whatever the places I did these shows you would stand behind a table for 11 hours and all you really did was read people right like I basically stood behind a table and I basically just read people and how they were looking at my cases and I would move things and you know I basically still just read people my whole life is reading people and trying to understand consumer behavior and then reverse engineer how to get your money and you know and I think that um that's what happened you know I I was making two to three $4,000 a weekend selling baseball cards when I was 12 and you know that was a great thing for me because I was failing all my classes at that point and you know it was a nice self-esteem boost to like you know when my teacher would call me up and say I'm so disappointed in you know you have so much potential but you've got like a 36 average on this class it was easy you know that felt bad and you know I'm a good guy I wasn't mad at the teacher I was mad I was I felt bad but it was easy for me like to go back to my desk and be like yeah but I made 3300 bucks this weekend and pro-rated you know I make $160,000 a year and so and I only work one or two days a you know and so yeah so like so talk about that where you had filled all your classes and you had mentioned that your uh mom's friend had tried to make you feel bad because like her son was going to my friend no my friend's mom oh friend's mom okay she was okay no it was just a story of my life when I was 15 16 17 all my friends started getting accepted to all these good schools or whatever 17 16 and there's just one story that has always stuck in my craw one of my best friends mom was proud of him you know going to Great School iy League school I get it she wasn't I don't think she was really she she's a super nice lady she wasn't trying to get me but she definitely at this day was exra feeling proud and kind of just she knew I was a [ __ ] student and uh she's like so Gary I don't know if you heard Adam's going to you know pen or what you and uh I was like yeah yeah and I just remember the way she delivered it we were standing in his driveway playing basketball and the way she delivered it was to get me and I just remember sitting there saying lady you have no [ __ ] idea your son's going to work for me one day I was going to ask you about that is he working for you no but he should be okay um so let's go

be should be okay um so let's go fast forward to 1997 where you took your dad's business and you grew it from you know 2 million to 60 million with I'm sorry 3 million my dad I want to give him his crops um and you grew that to 60 million in seven years uh talk about that like you know you had created this Wine Library TV and that sort of put you on to that was 06 I think when you my story a lot of times people think wine liary TV really drove it but really what drove ironically what drove it is much more what I actually talk about I mean like the only thing I care about is marketing and doing business in the year that we actually live in that is my true pet peeve slpv on the world it's 2014 if everything that you're trying to tell people in the world right now is not mobile first you're an idiot right like because the eyes and ears in 2014 consuming more and more on mobile like it's just the habits of the current state of the way people buy and think and are story told to in 1997 I said to myself you know listen this is 1997 I'm 22 years old at this point I've only owned my own computer for a year and a half I mean I basically had never used a computer until I was like 19 20 years old just I grew up in a different time like you know computer class was something we took you've heard what kind of student I was I don't know what the [ __ ] I was doing a computer class I still can't type right and so you know what happened was it was 1997 and I launched wine library. com I paid some guy $155,000 he ripped me off he made an HTML site that probably took him two minutes he claimed it took four weeks I've learned since then right and I launched wine library. com and I built wine library. com on the back of having an e-commerce site when nobody else did and way more importantly it was more about 1998 99 when I started an email service when nobody was doing that I mean email marketing is still being innovated As We Know right now nobody was doing it I built up a huge list at the time 50,000 customers getting open rates that were in 80% because nobody was email marketing so it wasn't spammed out yet right so people were I mean for all of you that remember 98 99 like you read every email every word right because we just that's how we dealt with email back in the day and so um yeah I mean I built it on email marketing and then Google AdWords came out nobody was thinking about that in the liquor business I was I owned the word wine for 5 cents before they bumped it to a 10-cent minimum I mean I owned wine first result for 10 cents on Google AdWords for nine and a half months before somebody bid me up people were just it was just a different world like it wasn't people were worried about buying ads in the wine spectator and direct mail and like traditional marketing is still something people very much believe in you could imagine how it was viewed in 99 and people trying to talk about what's the ROI of social media or things of that nature I mean people weren't even thinking about banner retargeting and [ __ ] like that yeah so um so I did I actually went uh

in your old videos The Wine Library TV videos and you had this one video where you're like tasting wine on snow was that you doing that with your jets per on so ug came out and my lead developer came up to me YouTube was like maybe six weeks old and he came up to me he's like Hey listen remember a year ago when you were asking me like how much it would cost if we put wine videos on the website so like a year or two earlier I came to him I was like I want to make videos on the internet I was like and then you know he ran the bandwidth cost and he was like cool if like nine people watch it it's 8 billion right it was just absurd right I was like forget it and so um he's like remember that you should check this thing out and I looked at YouTube it just felt super like holy C it felt very much like e-commerce I was like this is going to be huge right so I in early 2006 I started Wine Library TV for 19 months I did that show 5 days a week and nobody gave a [ __ ] right so like when I get emails which I get 50 of them a day for entrepreneurs of like hey like I know you always talk about patience like I've been doing this it's not working traction should I give up and do something else inevitably I'll email back and be like how long have you been doing it oh four months and I'm like [ __ ] you know like you want this to be your life and you're giving up after four months are you out of your mind so I did it for 19 months nobody cared and during that 19 months you know I was starting to understand what was you know will it blend was going on and like the Pepsi and Mentos and all that stuff and I was like what can I do and it was a huge snowstorm like yesterday in Jersey and I just went outside and taped my episode during the snow sure enough front page dig and all those things and you know I was trying to growth hack yeah you know or whatever it was I was trying to understand what would make it reach people outside of this very narrow knee ship you know hardcore wine and at that Point how many followers did you have on the show yeah I don't know one thing I made a huge mistake about four months into the show um my show was 20 minutes long and there was a video player called viddler that let you tag certain spots that YouTube didn't and I took myself off of YouTube and started using vidler because I could tag the four wines I did on each episode and if you wanted to watch the third wine you could just hit the button and watch the review of the third wine so I what I did a really I mean that's probably the most critical mistake I've made from a brand building which was not investing in YouTube all those years and could have built up a huge following I kind of Let It Go and like that's the ironic thing right like I know that I'm a poster child of like people that broke out on video and I did I mean you can go look right now I me you why not R TV because I put them on way later have a thousand or 2,000 views on YouTube I Didn't Do It on YouTube I did it on the website itself I mean you know based on the bandwidth cause and some of the stuff that Viller was showing at that point there was 25,000 a day got up to about 150,000 episode yeah nothing too crazy by today's standards but in ' 06 and 07 and 08 people weren't watching you know online videos like we do now and they were 25 minute videos but that sort of put you on the map and then you uh you wrote crush it

and that really gave you Twitter was what really changed my career Twitter came out again so YouTube came out I was like yes and like I was right about like e-commerce and sem YouTube and then I started learning about tech a little bit I started reading Tech Crunch and then I see YouTube sells for $1. 9 billion dollar and it writes about Angel Investors and like how these people made money and I was like [ __ ] that seems like a really interesting way to like I'm right about a lot of things yes it's growing like business but that guy put in 50,000 bucks and made like 90 billion doll like I like that so I promised myself that the next thing that I saw that was like that I would try to Angel invest so more about the angeling so Twitter came along and it just bless you Twitter came along everybody thought it was stupid I immediately was like completely obsessed with it um I jumped all in and you know for a long time there before Ashton came along and real people went on it you know I was in the top 30 followed people on Twitter I spent eight hours a day on it I answered everybody's questions I just completely went all in I used sam. com that later got bought by Twitter to search people bring to use Cabernet and then like 80 people said the word Cabernet on Twitter that day and I would literally reply to every one be like which one how' you like it when are you go to Napa and not trying to sell them on anything just trying to establish you know it was like a cocktail party it was like this except I'm giving a presentation now when it's over we can all talk and that's something I love and so Twitter was really the you know that was very big for me because that's when you know Kevin Rose and dig Nation called out my show and all of a sudden there was these 30 people that were like much further ahead of everybody else and followers and they were all from like tech TV and like from the world and there was like this wine guy and everybody was fascinated by it and then Conan's producers reached out and that changed my career traditional media you know K O'Brien's producers emailed me and like do you want to be on the show and I was like who's doing this in my office I was like yeah and uh sure enough a car showed up and they took me to the studio and the first time I was ever on TV I was just pushed out and did a skit with Conan yeah that's amazing my gosh um so fast

forward 2009 you're starting vayer media yes with your brother AJ mhm by the way how's it like working with your brother I have two brothers myself I mean is it one day you're like fist fight and then the next day you're like all cool is it like that no it's like yeah one day I want to kiss him on the face and the next you know my brother's my best friend and you know he's 11 years younger than me and so you know we have almost and my dad's a workaholic and not superly emotionally unbelievable he's a little bit of a different introvert kind of style so my brother you know my brother when I was 17 he was six right we have a very kind of like fatherly brotherly relationship you know we're very close I've been training him in entrepreneurship since he was like eight I mean poor guy when he was like nine he has his own Le lemonade Sands and no cuz we lived in hun County New Jersey that was all like Farm country at that point there was no cars driving by us but when he was like nine we started spending every single Saturday waking up at 4:00 in the morning to go to flea markets and garage sales and then he would post everything we flip it on eBay made some [ __ ] money too so uh so yeah we're very close it's a it's I loved working with my dad um I equally love working with my brother I hope I get a chance to work with my children family businesses if you overc communicate and you care about the other person more than you care about yourself are the single best thing you can ever do family businesses I was going to go into that but

um so why did you get out of the wine business completely you could have I mean honestly you could have created a because liquor loss lior loss because of liquor loss nothing kills entrepreneurship more than bad rules and the liquor industry has [ __ ] rules yeah the end can't ship everywhere politics you don't think it's a disruptable industry though like you know becoming of course I do it's why I did it but on the flip side I know that one day we got a letter from Texas and we couldn't ship there anymore because the retailers that we were taking business from paid the politicians and they changed the law and they gave for $30,000 in Kickbacks under the table I lost $4. 9 million in sales in one minute and after fighting it for 20 years of your life you get frustrated and so the liquor industry you can go [ __ ] yourself liquor industry okay talking about spor got she's right behind the camera too she's like come back here that was it looks really sad right like I think about it from like a net neutrality or anything else that's going on you know it's sad you know ultimately what happened was I just didn't think that I could ACC I do not want my upside or hard work or all the effort that I put in controlled by a couple of human beings and that's liquor laws prohibition came it's state by- state regulated there's a ton of shady stuff it's a completely it just ultimately sucked the energy out of me and it's the liquor industry's loss cuz I would have been a great entrepreneur and done a lot of great things for the industry and they deserve to lose so you want to get into ler business maybe think again um

what was the most single most important advice your dad gave you growing up so hands down the best piece of my advice my dad gave me was back my dad is from the old country right and I'm a Storyteller bullshitter when my dad got me at 14 I was willing to lie about everything to make a sale anything and everything in sight I would make up people would walk in I was like 15 I looked nine they're like have you had this wine I'm like yeah F awesome my case I mean whatever to right my dad was very much the other way my dad is literally on one strike policy if you lie if you embellish to my dad one time and it's not true you're out Soviet St so you have a Soviet dad I mean it's a really sad living right like he has he doesn't like anybody because everybody does it right but it was really good for me because I was the other way and it really started a course correction for me that ultimately put me to the Finish Line because of social media and the transparent world but it started with my dad and uh and I'm so grateful because you know for a lot of you here that you know don't know me as you're consuming me right now or for the ones that did and you can think back to the first time you were aware of me listen there's a you know I am very car salesman [ __ ] you know like there's a 15% of the audience that doesn't like me at first and if it wasn't for my dad those people would have stayed not liking me and the other 85 would have converted whereas because of my dad the 85% that do like me and the energy I convert the other 15% because I back up my Sizzle with my steak and that has a lot to do with the fact that I've been honest and done the right things and I really owe that to my dad you can thank to you can thank your dad right there I love you Dad let's go talk about the book okay uh jab jab jab R hook okay so

uh what is the book what inspired you to write it and why did you name it jab jab R hook uh the book's about producing content on social networks I believe that the most cost attractive way to communicate to the end user in today's world is by producing content that is native to the platforms that most people are spending their time on and so I'm a humongous fan of producing content for Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Vine if as long as you know what you're doing and who you're trying to reach and understand the nuances uh vayer media has been doing this for four years uh I feel that most people use social networks as distribution instead of platforms that natively storytelling article or want to do something or have a e-commerce site and then put a link on Twitter or Facebook or Google+ or what have you and just drive people towards it I don't believe that's the way to do it I believe is to respect the platform understand that real pictures work on Instagram infographics work on Pinterest which hashtags work on Twitter blah blah and so I one day got into a rapid hole of reading the negative reviews of crush it and thank you economy my first two books on Amazon and it got me really pissed and like L's just like I don't know I'm why I was doing this why I was pissing myself off but I was reading every one star review two star review on Amazon just getting all worked up and the basic theme was these are two great books or like if they were willing the basic theme was this is fine but these are why books why I wanted a howto why didn't he show me like I know he's winning show me Gary so I like fck I'll show you so the new book is a little bit of words and a 100 case studies of good and bad content I wanted to write a how to book that's what I set out to do with this book I feel that social media reminds me right now of where e-commerce was right before the Bubble Burst right e-commerce was happening in 9922 2001 wall street collapse all the overvalued companies collapse and everybody abandons like there was like go Google The Articles written in 2001 about the internet they're pretty funny like people having real solid arguments that the internet is dead because the stock market crashed I mean it was ludicrous but that's what I feel like about social right now it's been so hyped and so talked about for the last six or seven years and most people suck at it because all I do is push on it and I feel like there's an interesting time now to like talk about it again I think actually it's never been more interesting for me to Market on social than right now because Facebook's doing organic reach drops everybody's being cynical but the upside has never been greater I me we're converting like the clients that I work with for my businesses I'm converting greater than ever my book is sold dramatically more than my last two because of the execution I've done within social for it and so I just thought it was the right time to write this book um okay with the so because when I saw the title and then I read the book and you know the translation of the title jab jab right hook really means give give ask right you know most people are just asking for your business on social or bragging about themselves it's just very self you know and I just feel like you have to give first I mean I love the leverage of giving in life I mean it's not that a Mother Teresa I just I secretly believe it's leverage like if you're willing to and you can give first in whatever manner including like this interview right like I don't have unlimited time but you give and you gain leverage that's what I've executed in Social in 2012 on all my social channels I asked for nothing I put out content and responded to a billion people's questions in 2013 second half I started throwing Ray hooks because my book was out I converted better because I built up Equity I mean you're willing to do more for your parents or your best friends than you are for your acquaintances you're willing to do more for your acquaintance than you are for a stranger that's just how Society Works um and so that's what I did and the reason I used boxing metaphor is I think social media is a science I mean I know data things like what primary colors I should use on the bottom of left of a picture on Instagram to over index on likes like there's a science me I know what time to post on Facebook how many letters to use in a Facebook status update if I'm doing it after 6 PM that will over index on sharability it's a science to me where most people don't think social is a science it is a very scientific thing and that's why I think boxing and social media are so similar the masses just think it's like I'm eating cheese I'm walking my dog here's a picture of my kid in Halloween it's not that for me um so I like that you know give value to people first and I mean you had

said this give value people to F uh give your users value and then guilt them to to buy from you right I mean listen if you give a ton and a ton and a ton you're in a better position to ask right but I think one thing I want to clarify because I think some people that when I hear this thesis of mine can get real cynical you know I think the cynical view is like oh you're just doing good things to get something in return for me it's you give and it gives you permission to ask for me as a business especially startup you know I do a lot of Angel messing you know meeting people I think we're clearly living through [ __ ] entrepreneurs right now everybody thinks they're an entrepreneur I promise you you're not you know and that doesn't mean you but like I mean the mass amount of people that aren't you know cuz zux goes to Harvard and builds Facebook now every single IV League kid everyone thinks they're an entrepreneur where meanly you if you look you know from my point of view they're just kids that figured out how to work the school system right and so I'm living through a world right now where I'm see I've never seen anything like what we're living through now which is literally everybody thinks they're an entrepreneur and there's this entitlement that comes along with it that has been stunning to me I've always lived my life under the notion of the customer's always right I deserve nothing and I have to overd deliver in our startup ecosystem in this room in this Vibe there's this stunning kind of entitlement that I started a startup and like I should have customers like it's insane to me and I think there's a huge entitlement and so to me by giving a lot it just gives you the ability to ask doesn't mean you get and so I think that's something people have to learn I mean if you do not bring value your product will not succeed and the amount of products that are being built right now that do not provide any value they're features and we have a real issue at hand so actually this is good because um this is a good segue to

the value of hard work in social media because uh over and over you say that you know back in the 80s everything was scalable right email marketing banner ads SEO now we're going more into a unscalable uh marketing technique right which is the whole jab jab interact give give what we're referring to is I've been on this big kick I think we got tricked by digital media you know if you look at what first happened with the internet everything was so scalable email marketing really scaled it was I mean I went from listen when your family business does what we did and then in a couple years it's doing four times that and the way you're doing it is by pressing a button after you write a couple things and all the come in you don't even know how to breathe right like the way I used to do business was on Saturday when retail got busy I would stand on the floor for 14 hours and if I sold you an extra case of wine every person like boom like that's how I like 30% up now all of a sudden there's this email thing and I'm just Gathering all this data and I'm writing like Opus One now available $29. 99 press a button 80% open rates nobody else doing it and like we're doing like $80,000 in sales in an hour it was just like right and then SEO and sem with search right I mean you buy the keywords and you're just getting customer after customer and you're not doing anything except being smart strategically but once you set it up it does its thing and then landing page conversion and then Banner [ __ ] everything is quite scalable and then the internet matures and this social media thing comes along and it's predicated on actually being human it actually is a throwback it's actually you have to try you actually have to read somebody's thing and be like no p no R and like you have to like really work and it's throwing everybody off because all the best email marketers or landing page conversion guys and gals or you know sem or all this we used to being smart and converting and now you know the Market's changing slash there's this other thing and everybody poo poos it because it doesn't do as well it's not as easy because it's human and that's it's storying you know what it's awesome to me I think it's great I think it's awesome I think you should work hard I think all great things are worth you know hard work well I mean this is sort of like your argument with the entitlement culture and you know sort of everybody wants to be spoonfed and you know I deserve this business and you're saying no you have

to earn it you have to jab jab and you have to do the right hook the Market's the market right like sorry that like somebody came along and priced like I have Vine agency right now I have an agency with a partner where we represent 20 of the 30 top Vine celebrities right and my partner comes into my office today and goes ah there's these guys that are undercutting prices we should be getting five times more for these Vine videos and I'm like sorry like you know like okay like you know the Market's the market like if they're offering it and the clients think it's worth it and it's you know equal of value then we can't be five times more I mean the Market's the market like I hate when people cry about things like that right like sorry that innovation's coming listen Innovation doesn't give a [ __ ] about you me or anybody in this room if you do not ride it will crush your face and that's it like I wish my emails would get open at 80% and 61% clickthrough I wish but guess what everybody else figured out that email marketing worked and now there's 9ine billion liquor stores that do it and it's not as interesting like it's just you have to evolve okay um I'm just like I know that a lot of

people want to get some really just like juicy Tech techniques and so let's talk about the storytelling um having the content respecting the context right so this is sort of your whole book is about this um you had said that you sold your wine at Cost I did but you sold your store story at a premium yes and this is how we should approach marketing all of us right sell our stor I mean you should do whatever you want here's something I believe in if something's a commodity and everybody has it becomes a price game right so like every wine that I knew that everybody else had I just sold it at Cost dead cost invoice cost I don't mean like how much my labor cost on top of it I'm talking I paid $799 on the invoice for it you paid $7. 99 because Jersey was a place where you couldn't sell below cost by law that pretty much gave us the best prices thus that brought people in and then when they came in to buy Kendall Jackson or Santa Margarita or silver oak or Joseph Phelps Insignia I would grab them and tell them the romantic story of the dog that ran around this Vineyard in Paso and theyd be like oh that's so cool and they buy a case of that and that one was predicated on my storytelling ability and you know picking good wine and that one I made money on and to me at some level in all of your businesses you have to understand what's the commodity and what's not is where you need to story tell because that's your biggest up okay so let's get let's get it right into an example here so I am um start up okay selling you know Uber for uh for home cleaning services um I want to do I want to start doing the jet right so start creating the micro content as you always say micro content I set up a WordPress blog right start creating topics or writing topics like becoming a media company as you said right all this have to sort of be a media company so let's let step through this like make word make a WordPress blog well let's take big let's take a big step back right if you're clean if you first you have to know who you're reaching right really think about who you're trying to get to so you have to start demoing out your business okay so you know if it's 25 year olds to 32 year olds that are single that live you have to start really understanding who you're trying to reach okay to me if you're a startup if you've gotten any funding you start buying to me the first place to go is to buy Facebook ads and to buy the actual customer this is where people are confused about the value of Facebook I think it's smart to buy your target audience to follow you because not to offer anything not to offer $20 for free because then you'll get I mean that but let me explain why because at least on Facebook here is great I think it's brilliant but in a Facebook world you're going to get the lowest common denominator fan that's going to follow you just for the offer right and so what you want to do is just get people that want to follow you just for what you have right and then once you get them in you start marketing to them I mean doing content marketing on WordPress is great but you're running a marathon right and so for startups it's scary because you start getting dividends a year or two in you might not be in business so I think there's a lot of things I would do the first thing I would do is go to every single apartment rental kind of anything that could segue young professionals blogging Network and offer to blog you know now I know Matt came out and said no more guest blogging or what have you but you know I would guest blog I would you've got to get yourself out in the community I mean the other thing is Twitter search I think the quickest way to traction is Twitter search I would literally search people that say like my like people literally tweet my apartment's a mess it's probably a good person to like talk to right so in that case like would you like search for a hashtag no I would search for the real word real words okay yeah the real world search I mean to me that's a great way to go one-on-one but it's you know to me there's a lot of ways to go about it but you've got to find your unique place but I would say here's a good one I would tell you an incredibly interesting place would be Pinterest and make infographics about like the cleaning part of it and things of that nature it's just storytelling you've got to reach consumers U so yeah that's this

is what I wanted to the format you know WordPress you know talk about a topic that your demographics interested and then tweet right have sort of like the value proposition pointing back to your blog yeah but before you tweet if you're tweeting to nobody it doesn't give nobody gives a [ __ ] right so you have to actually build a community and so like again listen here's what's great about social if you don't have a lot of money it's incredible social is the great equalizer to money if you raise $1 million we [ __ ] buy ads and convert right and by the way always do both it's a mix but to get a community you've got to first go to Twitter search I mean if you start your get starts an a Twitter Community has 19 people following it because it's like friends and family you can't like it's not going to do anything I mean when I my Twitter profile I literally spent nine hours a day on semis it's how I got my followers you know I got it by answering people's questions about what red wine to drink or they were going to Napa and slowly but surely those 100 those 200 become your base and they start retweeting by hand back then and all that so I think the first thing you have to do is grab your first 500 person audience and the only way to do that is through sweat and blood and you know bling yeah so the content in context like you had said Tumblr in the past animated guests will probably be good on the Tumblr uh Pinterest high quality professional picturers right so a nice house uh that you know women probably want to like pin it because they want

their apartment to look like that you know in Instagram you said info infographics Instagram is more real life pictures infographics for Pinterest oh Pinterest right sorry uh and then uh Facebook yes Facebook you can really do anything you want the truth is I mean obviously animated gifts don't work on that platform but for Facebook you can do a whole lot of things I mean listen I don't know how many of you guys are using Facebook dark posts right now but if any of you have ad dollars to spend Facebook dark posts how many people are familiar with that term great so great this makes me pumped so Facebook right now has a product called Dark posts I think the official term is unpublished posts you can literally Target anybody on Facebook you can literally right now even if they're fans of your page or not Target people that are 21 to 24 that are fans of this that [ __ ] ate cheeseburgers on Wednesday I mean the data goes deep right and I would tell you right now that's probably so for example you know if you're thinking about cleaning apartment is that what we're talking about cleaning apartments I didn't catch it over there over cleaning apartments right so like to me that's really interesting because you could really Target people that live in New York City that literally graduated from college in may like you can get so granular to people that you would think need to get their apartment cleaned you can go older if you want and the messaging is different right like if you're going to put a picture about your cleaning service to 31 to 40 year old Upper East Side moms you're going to have a different story to tell them than 22 to 24 year old dudes in Brooklyn you know like you can go with different and you can Target even if they're fans or not fans of your site that has been the biggest conversion funnel Facebook dark posts with the proper content contextual to who you're targeting has been the biggest conversion funnel ads for me since Google AdWords 2002 wow I mean Seth Goen gave me a great quote for my book right wrote up a nice blog post I immediately had my designer create a little picture with Seth beautiful bald head with a little quote from it and with you know that's the picture and the link was and here's Gary's book on Amazon with a link and I ran that picture against people that were fans of Seth Goden on Facebook it dismantled it killed I me the conversion was ludicrous like in two minutes my book went this before came out like from a thousand on Amazon to like 98 right so that's going to work anyway um so what sort of tools can we use you know there's a lot of stups here what sort of tools can we use right now so I'll Rite off some maybe you'll you're familiar with some of them 33 across brand watch uh hoot site Google analytics buffer local

response uh Salesforce Market marketing Cloud bringing a bill here no yeah I've heard you know here's what I think about tools right I really don't know how to use a power drill right does it work yes but you know the ROI of a piano to me is zero because I don't know how to play one the ROI of a piano to Billy Joel has been over a billion dollars so tools are great but everybody wants to sit around and be like oh we're going to get hug site or buddy Media or Wildfire right and it's going to be awesome I mean Google analytics if you spend your whole life on it from an e-commerce standpoint is like the most unbelievable thing you've ever seen Google analytics not because we're in this building is absurd it [ __ ] works but you have to spend 10 hours a day going through all that data testing doing all the variable things that you have to and people are lazy and they don't got that Google so to me all these tools are fine but if you don't use them properly and very honestly most of these platforms Facebook Twitter what have you use them natively they're just fine whoot site lets you blast out to all the networks the same stuff completely against what I believe in because you're not making content that's contextual to the platform so you know yep

yep um could you talk about the um in the book yep something that you wanted to write but you didn't I don't know what this is from oh so what there's a lot of [ __ ] that I didn't write no uh what what kind of Point did you want to uh that you wish you wrote In the book that I don't know what interview you're digging from I really don't remember okay I apologize okay I mean like here are some of the things I didn't write about like I you know I wish the book timing was a little bit different for example LinkedIn has massively changed as a platform since I finished the book right um you know and has become dramatically more valuable and where they're going with company pages is really interesting to me and if you understand a psychology of a CFO when they're on LinkedIn and you know how to story tell to them even if you're selling wine or cleaning or whatever it may be so LinkedIn would have been interesting for me to go a little bit further on um you know there's a lot you know it's tough to write a book about current events because everything's shifting so quickly right Facebook organic reach has dipped since the book has come out I mean there's a lot going on okay well let me ask you a better question um what was your favorite um case study in the book my favorite was probably the Lil Wayne Facebook post where I said congratulations Wheezy you're the first person to turn Facebook into Myspace you know because he was just spamming the living [ __ ] out of his community the reason it's my favorite is I remember when I was writing in it I was like oh man I hope Birdman doesn't kill me sorry little hip-hop joke okay um so um let's go fast forward

here like uh your Angel Investing um because I'm sure there's a lot of people very interested in that I mean you got some really amazing um Dill flow when you had started you you were one of the investors in Twitter and Facebook is that correct 2008 in Twitter I bought the uh original CFOs stock blame cook when he left the company okay so that was 2007 okay which was good yeah Facebook was 2009 I made a video in 2008 on Gary vri. com that said Facebook should be worried about this thing called Twitter it went viral in Facebook they invited me to fly out and I spoke in front of the whole company Zuck liked what I said we became friendly and I in 2009 I bought my Facebook stock from Mark's parents so that was good uh 2009 I invested in Tumblr right that was really good well so this is so I want to just kind of rattle off some of your Investments but uh starting for 2009 simp simply goo which got bought out by Urban Air Airship ACU hire I lost money oh he did okay goala and Karma with Facebook goala was an acq hire I broke even okay Karma was great because that was Facebook uh you guys remember Karma the gift app love that thing that was bought by Facebook that was very good right and then wildfire which probably Wildfire was a big win that was bought by Google cash all cash right all milk too was milk the same way cuz milk got bought out by Google made a little bit of money okay all right um reportive with LinkedIn and Birchbox and path so my question would be to you is what sort of like what is your favorite invest you know investment themes you know going forward entrepreneurs I bet on the

jockey not the horse every time so if you're going to write a $50,000 check today what would that startup look like I don't give [ __ ] just how do I feel about the Hustler got it so you have to meet the founder you have to shake his hand see the fire in his belly or her hand favorite investment Bar None is Birchbox they got a bunch of nose I sat in a coffee shop at Starbucks somewhere in Midtown I sat down with ktia and Haley and four seconds I was like I'm in and they got all emotional excited and they were like we got so many NOS in a row Gary you don't know how much this means and I walked home that day it was a summer day it was like 40 blocks from home was like let me get some exercise in and somewhere around 20 blocks in I was like why the [ __ ] did they get so many NOS this is so obvious and it was the first time I was ever like on this female entrepreneurial show I was like you know I wonder if it was two ugly dudes if they would have got yeses right and it was just interesting you know because my mom is my hero my daughter is my life you know and so you know I'm a wildfire as Victoria Ransom like I've done ex I'm probably two of my I mean my female entrepreneur Le Investments are at the top of my Roi H awesome um so let's talk about predictions because you had predicted that um Facebook was going to buy Instagram that happened um so let's talk about more predictions what do you have uh who do you think is Pinterest going to be bought out um no I think that ship sale I think Pinterest I always thought that Google would consider Pinterest is very Google yeah you know it's intent to buy if you think about what makes Google AdWords a great business is search not always but has a lot of intent to buy Pinterest is intent to buy when I look at the data of like what females pin it's either what they want to buy or what they wish they could buy you know there's other things but there's a lot of it in there um I think it's going to be a very very big company very I think it's going be way bigger than everybody in this room thinks so they probably going to IPO and I think if the economy stays well I don't [ __ ] with Wall Street but if the economy stays well that to me feels like an IPO company cuz it's already raised at such a I mean we're already now three billion on that thing these things are getting so big um so I don't know I think I think Uber is g to go I think that's close to IP like I think in a year or two that's gonna be a huge one that's a real cash business um what about Force Square I think Dennis and team have to really figure out how to make it a business bus and so um but I think they will I'm a big fan of Dennis I hope so I was never a four square user um even though I believe in the check-in concept I think check-in is a passive game I don't think we want to do it I think we're going to want our device to do it for us um but I think um because I think privacy is overrated yeah and so um will'll be interesting to see what happens with those guys I think that what I'm you know I'm not great at predicting here's why I predicted Instagram I just know that pictures are the killer app right and I think I just assumed that Facebook knew that as well and um I'm just a fan of I think Mark's a grossly underestimated CEO I think he'll play out to be one of the great CEOs I think he really gets it I was hoping he can give us some good predictions but I'll make this one easy what do you who's gonna who's going to be the uh the winner of the Super Bowl you know what's so funny about this I'm probably going to get it wrong one of two teams here's what I can definitely say I'm so [ __ ] happy it's not the Patriots you can't even imagine um I hope the Broncos win because one of my best friends is a Broncos fan but I think SE I don't know I you I'll go with Seattle okay that's great

um and um who do you think I mean have you been following some of the social media uh like marketing for the Super Bowl ads so who do you think will be a winner you know I think after last year's Oreo tweet that just like change I mean that was that CH when that happened before it started getting hyped I literally emailed my entire company and said our business is about to change and it did I mean that's what we do for a living we do real-time content I think everybody's gonna be waiting I mean I think you're going to see a lot of bad [ __ ] I think you're to see every brand trying to do something about what just happened on the play before it went to commercial everybody's G to be reaching and trying to replicate I don't think it's about that I mean I'm sure plenty Brands will do well I'm sure 80 of my brands are I'm sure my teams are sitting in the office right now strategizing but I think we'll see some average work at best I'm not I you know I don't know I mean I think that's the one place Super Bowl is the one time I think it's worth running a TV commercial so I'm a little bit more curious what happens there because people are actually paying attention to the commercials as sport right yeah absolutely um so we're going to open up to Q& A uh and so before I open this up uh what so this is sort of like the last question there's going to be another last question after the Q& A but if you were 15 years ago sitting in front of a badass thought leader author um what sort of advice would you have want to hear from that guy nothing okay I'm very weird that way honestly my biggest flaw is I'm just completely all and consumed in my own brain I I've read like four after I write two more books I'm GNA write as many books as I've read my biggest strength and weakness is my lack of Education I have too much ego like I don't want advice from anybody I have zero mentors I'm just in my own brain I'd much rather look at the front screen of every one of your iPhones or Android devices I'd rather see the front screen of everybody's phone in here than get advice from anybody I don't give a [ __ ] about advice I want to see Behavior okay and you

have sort of um a 10 book deal with Harper Collins right that's what was reported when I wrote it what I mean it wasn't going to go into that's true but what the contract said was if crush it hit a certain threshold I was able to op out which it did okay so if you ever look if you if any of you are so awesome and you have all three of them you'll see the first one it says Harper Studios but the last two have been Harper business okay so um I don't I do have to write one more jab right hook I signed a two book deal yeah so I do have to write one more I've been actually thinking about writing a book called crushed it I have like I have literally like 5,000 emails that I've saved of people that read the book and have had awesome things happen to them so I feel kind of lazy and I'm like [ __ ] it I can just interview these 5,000 people and just bang it out I'm actually really gonna do that I think okay uh we'll open up for Q& A so

um all right jack here you go thanks U you said that uh privacy is overrated and with your social presence very clear that you're very much about reaching out to everyone and anyone do you have a platform that you just connect with an inner circle yes path is the only place my wife lets me post pictures of our children so like I think privacy is overrated but my wife doesn't and thus if she doesn't want our children everywhere then they're not going to be right and so here's what I mean by just so I clarify privacy is overrated we in our actions prove that we don't care that much about privacy we just do it every day it's what we do and the reason we don't is actually something that I find massively fascinating I believe the reason that we don't care that much about privacy is because of three things number one it's about what happens right the things we really care about is the health and well-being of our friends and family and ourselves and our money right how many people here have been hit by credit card fraud raise your hand now raise it high okay about 30% of the room right if when you were hit by credit card fraud you didn't get your money back we'd really give a [ __ ] about privacy right but since you do get it back yeah you may be inconvenience but all the convenience that comes we care about our time and our convenience more than our privacy because the truth is when Myspace came out everybody's like don't let your kids on MySpace cuz they're going to get raped at the mall right like I don't know if you guys remember that was like literally the conversation meanwhile since over the last 10 years if you look at the data we've got much safer because every one of us is a media company we all have phones on us it's harder to kidnap somebody in the middle of the day right because everybody can take out their phone and take a picture and make a video I mean that's just the truth you know and so what what's interesting to me is that I think people are the most underrated brand in the world I think the human being is the number one underrated brand here's why mainstream media for the last 80 years on the news has reported and story told to us about the bottom 0. 00001% of our society the people that kill and do all these wrong things meanwhile when you look think about the damage that we can all do to each other right now is scary but we just don't do it and that's why I think inherently we know that and I think that that's why our actions are I'll value my time over my privacy because I really can't get hurt and of course it happens but you

know question so there's a 100 different social media platforms that are out there right and you're new to it say where do you start where you start based on what you're trying to accomplish okay so like I would ask you what you're trying to accomplish because if you're starting and you sell a new sneaker that you've invented to 12 to 18 year olds you start on Vine Snapchat and Instagram like but if you're starting and you're selling to 42y Old females you go on Pinterest and Facebook you start what who you want to get to is and that's you reverse engineer

it got it yeah next question hi uh I was wondering uh how close to saturation do you think Facebook is Facebook of email was for yeah I mean email open rates have collapsed over the last 36 months I mean Facebook Facebook's got its own headaches I mean listen I think Facebook dropping reach on everybody is the best thing Facebook could do it's why we still like it to some degree I know that 22 and under doesn't I get that but here's how I think about Facebook you know how when you're and a lot of you are still in a young demo but like when you're 18 to 28 30 whatever you want to call it in your younger years maybe before you're married your number one job is to go to like all the new restaurants and the new clubs you're an adventure you go to all these different things when you get older especially when you get married you start going to your favorite places right you go look at a 40-year-old's habits now they've got their four restaurants right and so that's what I think Facebook is I'm trying to figure out what the age is but there's some age and I'm going to call it somewhere between 28 and 33 that those people are not going anywhere because I mean your 42-year-old aunt is not leaving Facebook anytime soon right because all everything's been mapped and so I think it's close but what Facebook has a huge advantage of is targeting right like and if they just figure out I mean I think the most brilliant I mean listen thing Facebook is doing is having Edge rank I think Twitter needs it Twitter's a huge fire hose I mean if you look at the data on what Twitter's doing and what Facebook's doing Twitter's noisier right because we don't cut the people we follow it's a habit that we don't do so Facebook's doing it for us we could all benefit from Twitter looking at the data and unfollowing for us the people that we haven't favored it retweeted or reped to in the last year you would all like Twitter better and so I'm not sure you know to really answer you it will I mean the last line of This Book Is everything I just talked about will be ruined by marketers it's what we do so Facebook's been ruined by markets Instagram's going to be ruined by market I mean jelly comes out in 2 minutes and I put GE on jelly in one second my client and articles are like Jelly's ruined I mean things are getting ruined in 20 minutes now right I mean so I think that um I think it's still much more viable than people think I'm actually pumped that everybody's right I mean every article now like the kids don't like Facebook right meanwhile I go to all these Brands and they're like we don't like Facebook we need the people that buy it's like there's just sinicism from both sides right like one side they're talking about the kids aren't on it on the other side you know the habits that I see between 355 and 55 year olds on Facebook is extraordinary the buying habits are extraordinary I don't know when it depletes it will but do I think Facebook disappears I don't not to mention Facebook owns Instagram which is the new Facebook the wine entrepr you

told off earlier she has a question awesome um what advice would you give women in like in Tech or male dominated industry I mean could you be more specific I mean I think the advice you know listen here's what I know the TR is undefeated right like if you're asking from a business standpoint if you build a good business people aren going to care if you're an alien right um so you know I think all these issues minorities you know women in Tech minorities in Tech is something I have a lot of hard for especially like where I go and speak I do a lot of pro bono in certain places of that

nature those are hackers upstairs they're pissed that's the white man angry at this answer um I think I just want to finish this I think you know for me I'm completely color and gender blind when it comes to business I don't I just love capitalism so much I think you know everything's hard you know everybody has challenges I I'm very heightened aware the women in my life my mom sister daughter and you know wife I mean that is my crew I love AJ and my dad but like I'm very heightened to that conversation um four of my five best friends that were groomsmen at my wedding are minorities I'm heightened to I was an immigrant that didn't speak English I'm heightened to a lot of these things but the truth is you're also talking to somebody who loves the clim right I hate winning by the way I hate it I almost think that I left wine I gave you an answer to why I left wine I'm not so sure that I'm being so truthful I left wine when I felt like I was the guy in Wine Not only had the biggest store but had the biggest presents I love the climb I actually think that you know I like the underdog status you know and so I think whether you're a white dude or a minority female the actual answer to this question is to execute you got to execute nobody's going to care if you can actually make it happen period we got we we'll take two more

questions so you have any thoughts on bcoin you know what's funny about Bitcoin I really wish I had thoughts on bitcoin let me explain I'm just not m ma atically smart I can't even figure out like people like you know it's like real currency I'm like no I don't I have no [ __ ] idea what you're talking about I do not know what a central bank is I have no [ __ ] clue so I want to desperately have thoughts on bitcoin I'm just not smart enough I really do I want it bad I just don't get it sounds great right like neutral like yeah I mean it sounds right like I mean but it's so weird right like [ __ ] I'm like I like go to one of my guys I'm like I need to set up a server to mine for Bitcoin he's like if you can tell me anything of what you just said in practicality we'll do it I'm like I can't do it you know like you know we

got one last question from the world hi I a five minutes sit down with you five minutes to sit down with me what's the real okay if you can beat me in rock paper scissors right now I'll give you five rock paper you know this game yeah cool if you win I'll give you five minutes if you lose now we should have to give you $5 or something no no I'll just go one two three and then this okay one two three one two three I are you saying said you I do like losing but I don't have five minutes I'm pissed right now okay so uh Gary I have one well two last questions okay if you could add one key player to your jets in the NFL who would that be oh we desperately need a wide receiver yeah but who would like who um well Megatron you know like if I could just pick I'll take Calvin Johnson you know I mean being realistic knowing who the free agents sure I would take maybe Sanders when the Steelers is going to be free agent maybe Decker I don't want Jud I don't want Edelman that [ __ ] he's a patriot about Nick scares me he seems like he's weirdly finished at 26 and um so uh do you have sort of a timeline of when you're going to be buying the Jets because you always I mean say you're going to do that yeah I you know I don't think of it that way you know I think I'm going to do it I really do and I know that it's like laughable I get it but like it's going to make for such a great story like when I do it I'm like I'm so P oh you're going to do it no I can tell you know I'd like to be 60 I'm 22 years I'm 38 I'd love to get it at 60 you know I don't want to be [ __ ] 90 right like you know I'd like to be 60 you know Woody Johnson's at an age where he's you know not going to sell it hopefully he stays nice I want what he say nice and healthy for many reasons being a good human and the fact that I'd like him to own for another you know my big fear is that he sells it anywhere in the next decade because that's going to then put me in a tough spot okay sure um so I have a better value proposition for you okay um I heard you actually posted this on Facebook that you were actually a bigger Yankees fan back in the day T mad like right yeah I mean I grew up a huge would you like to why don't you go for something higher like you know try to buy them out back to the good point there once the Yankees started winning all those I mean the Yankees spent 430 guys baseball is not a sport baseball is a business the New York Yankees spent $435 million this off season you know the Kansas City Royals are going to spend that in the next 40 years baseball's a [ __ ] up sport I hate it for that I hate that it's not pure um and but I like B I mean I want to love baseball I love Fantasy Baseball I'm all about fantasy baseball I don't play see football like most normal people because I love the Jets too much and I could never just like pick anybody else so I was thinking about what would be a good gift for you and I was thinking well hey let's get him a Jet's Jersey obviously I looked it up and someone already got you a Jet's Jersy Jersey I've got all those well has anyone give you given you a uh Yankee that's awesome no that's awesome I love it thank you number three that's bab R so gentlemen Gary check thank you guys so much okay great