and this is probably good human being
advice not just entrepreneur and startup
an investor advice what I learned from
Wine Library TV is the following the
true story of Wine Library TV was the
day that I thought I was gonna start it
I thought I was gonna do something
similar to QVC and I I don’t know if you
have a QVC or Shopping Network in Europe
but QVC in America it’s a show and they
sell stuff through the TV I thought I
was gonna do the QVC of wine the first
episode of that show when that camera
went on and that light went on I
realized that this was going to be on
the internet forever and that I didn’t
want to just peddle wine I decided I
wanted to be a value to people in
learning about wine because I was scared
that if I was peddling something I
didn’t believe in that somebody would
come up to me at a party and say do you
like this and I’d say no I hate it
they’re like well you said it
was awesome a wine Liberty you’re a scam
artists I’m like no so I was very
focused on leveling up and I really
believe the one great piece of advice if
you want to take anything from this talk
as we have to start realizing that
giving and doing things in business
without expectation of return from the
other individual is probably the
greatest leverage that you could ever
deploy in your business life though it
is extremely rare in today’s business
environment and it has absolutely been
the bedrock of what has allowed me to
win all my engagement all my selfies
right over there in signing books all
the content I have nothing to sell I
have a book that I sell once
every three years for thirteen dollars
this is not about monetizing an audience
it’s about building leverage to build
brand versus sales one of the biggest
things that I see going on right now in
digital media is that we don’t have a
lot of people doing branding and
marketing we have a lot of people doing
sales the reason so many of you were
confused by the value of snapchat is
because in the digital landscape we now
think transactional everything is about
what’s the ROI of every piece of content
every single action what’s the last
attribution what’s the conversion rate
it’s all become math based and that’s
fine
because I love sales more than anybody
but I promise you these guys
Nike they need tagged me on a browser
and then we cooking me and then travel
all over the internet and pound me with
banner ads until I gave up and bought it
I bought it because they
marketed to me over the last twenty
years and I don’t even know why
I buy it and that is a very important
point because what we’re living through
is a time where people are just being
very transactional and conversion based
when everything continues to get
arbitrage another thought that I’m
curious how many people here have gone
to the life that I’ve gone to over the
last three months I no longer have a
laptop or an iPad I now only live
through my mobile device how many people
are on that level doing that raise your
hands not a lot and this is like think
about this conference I really think
that this trend I do believe that if I
came back here in two years that 50 40
30 percent of the hands in this room
would go up to that following question
and I’m completely fascinated by it and
then for everybody in the room that is
building businesses on the internet the
thought of what’s happening in your
landing page optimization or the UI and
UX of your product in a desktop
environment I think is in the beginning
stages of being disrupted and that’s
what I really spend most of my time in
which is what’s the attention arbitrage
where do I think your eyes and ears are
gonna be before you do and how do I go
in land grab and buy up that property
and how do I then deploy and build the
best houses on that property through
content that is the pattern of my career
in 2006 I thought this social media
thing was gonna be really big and in
2007 2008 I laid my foundation and by
2007 and 8 I invested in Facebook and
Tumblr and Twitter and things of that
nature and I did quite well I also used
them to tell my story sell my wine do my
thing I think this is super important to
understand because I think we also
decide that things are emerging too fast
this is not just being first mover a lot
of people like to give me credit like
you predicted all this stuff you were
sorry I just want to be on the record
forever there’s plenty of people here
record
ivenn predicted I’m not Nostradamus
what I’ve done well is I’ve moved
quickly once you actually started using
them
I didn’t predict Twitter I wasn’t right
about snapchat I was just looking at
data snapchat two years ago when I first
started talking about it I already had
tens of millions of users there was real
people using it I’m not predicting
anything I’m paying attention there’s
probably very few people in this room
that are paying as much attention to
anchor2 peach to all these platforms as
I am but I’m not putting all my content
or all my time and I’m also not crippled
by putting my time and effort into
platforms before they have a hundred or
200 million users for example how many
of you remember that five minutes four
years ago where Socialcam got big raise
Socialcam got big for three minutes
because the facebook news feed used it
and it had a lot of users and it was hot
for four months six months I used it
feverishly and used it a lot it
collapsed and meant nothing but during
that period I learned so much about
mobile video and the cadence of it and
how people interacted within that when
vine came along a year and a half later
and then Instagram video and then
snapchat I’d already put in the work and
had the learnings from human behavior
that I deployed against the next thing
there are way too many people in this
room that do not do actions because
they’re crippled by the short-term
results versus what it means in the long
term and this goes to marketing and this
goes to running your business and this
comes down to what I probably want to
spend a few more minutes on right now
which is my friends there’s a lot of
people in here that are startup founders
that should not be my friends there are
a lot of people in here that work at
agencies that should not be they should
be probably switched and vice versa and
different things one of the things that
is absolutely driving me right now in my
life is the untold depression
the untold suicides to just get dark for
a second it’s not fun to talk about but
it’s important we are lacking
self-awareness in this space in a very
substantial way and there’s a lot of
people that are about to be met with a
lot of disappointment and are struggling
how many people are not tripping or in
here raise your hand you guys and gals
know this isn’t easy there’s nobody else
it’s fun to work for somebody you know
why you get to blame the boss she and he
is an asshole not you when you’re an
entrepreneur where’s nobody else behind
you it’s on you and one thing we’re not
talking about is the level of success
everybody thinks they have to build
uber everybody thinks they have
to make millions of dollars
it’s unbelievable what we’ve done and I
absolutely want to make sure that we’re
starting to have real conversations
making $100,000 a year 100 euros that’s
massively successful we need to
recalibrate what success looks like in
our space because we’re forcing through
the branding of what we’re doing very
impractical very high-risk very low
return results for so many because
everybody’s shooting for 10 billion what
guys there’s like 4 apps that big
there’s like uber and Instagram like how
many billion dollar companies do
you think there are and so I really am
passionate about starting to reframe the
conversation about the number one thing
that I have noticed in my 20 years of my
success because let me tell you
something I suck at almost
everything what I’ve done well is I’ve
deployed self-awareness around what I am
and I know what I am and there’s a lot
of things I wish I was seven years ago
as a lot of you know I had plenty of
leverage in the web 2.0 social media
movement I was one of the guys I was one
of the 20 most follow people on Twitter
I didn’t go and raise 40 million dollars
to build the next Facebook I didn’t
raise 50 million dollars to build a
platform around wine
I was self-aware enough even though I
had all the opportunity in the world to
build a product that I wasn’t gonna be
successful
70 years ago I went out and built a
boring digital agency right I built
think practical all my internet friends
a lot of the people gonna be on the
stage they made fun of me like why don’t
you go build a big company or something
grand I built what I knew I could build
I’m very proud that over the last four
years I’ve grown vaynermedia from three
to a hundred million dollars a year in
[Applause]
and cool great that’s fine and who gives
a what I’m Way more worried about
then what I’ve done is what you’re gonna
do
I implore you my friends this is fancy
first of all this is unbelievable this
is one of the nicest setups to a
conference I’ve ever seen let’s clap it
up for these guys it’s unbelievable
right there’s like there’s like
food trucks it’s like sunny and
this is awesome anyway what I
did well was I just didn’t give a
when I when I hold I’m 40 when I grew up
in in the United States like being a
good student was the big thing I was
making $3,000 a weekend selling baseball
cards and getting D’s and F’s and
everybody thought I was a loser like
that’s what the narrative was now it’s
reversed if I was in school now making
three four thousand dollars a weekend as
a 13 year old I would have been the next
big thing right I went through it and I
did not succumb to the current thing
that everybody thought in America was
the right thing which was go to the best
school you could go to I understood who
I was and I went in all in on my
strengths and I implore a lot of you to
do that there’s too many people sitting
in this room that want to be the number
one ceo/founder
but if you were the seventh employee of
a company you know I’d much rather be
number forty-one at Facebook
the number one of Facebook and so I
think we’re seeing that and so I’d like
to stand up here and I’d like to say
look there’s a lot of things that I wish
I was different at as a matter of fact
back to what let’s be very meta right
now do you know that I wish I didn’t
curse on stage do you know many people
don’t share my content don’t like me
because of it I wish I didn’t do it I
just can’t be anything that I’m not and
so I implore you don’t worry about
what’s cool right now or what we’re all
focused on or what your mama wants you
to be you need to go home from this
conference you’ll be inspired there’ll
be cool people there’s interesting
but I’m telling you with the bottom of
my heart it is fundamentally irrelevant
if you don’t know who the you are
and the quicker you can start forcing
yourself to understanding what role you
play number
number seven PR marketing product UI
everybody wants to be somebody else I
wish I was the quarterback of the New
York Jets it’s not gonna happen and so
if I can accomplish one and by the way
I’m being very realistic I’ll be very
very transparent with you this little
seven minute rant that I just came up
with I’m trying to reach one person like
I’m this is not so easy it’s hard to
have the ego and the humility at equal
ends to figure yourself out but I
promise you as I’ve looked across the
landscape and I have looked at 25 50
thousand startups at this point right I
have now spent the last four years of my
life with the Toyotas and the Pepsi’s in
the gee you know biggest brands in world
myself my inner circle the one
connection point from corporate America
to startup to VC to personalities the
one connection point is self-awareness
once you start understanding yourself
once you start actually executing on who
you actually are versus who you wish you
were things start to change very quickly
and so the reason I’m passionate about
this is this is always very worldly
advice and has probably historically
always good things to talk about I just
feel that if any of you really paid
attention to the macroeconomic
infrastructure of what’s happening in
our space right now this Nirvana that
we’ve lived through for the last six or
seven years is about to shift it just is
it’s just the data I don’t want it I
wish it was Nirvana forever just like
everybody else during the down cycles
the people that are able to win are the
ones that are most in tune with
themselves the ones that are the most
practical so again to make this valuable
to you in this room number one if your
startup please start understanding how
you’re gonna make money as soon as
possible you’re running a business
you’re running a business businesses
need to make money especially when
there’s no money to fund you based on
your last valuation number two as a
human being sitting at this conference
this is all very encompassing
and very
but start chipping away against what you
think you want and start really looking
at what you bring to the table because
the quicker you figure that out the more
successful you will have and number
three
please start understanding how to
provide value without expectation in
return it is unbelievable to me how many
people already today we’ve seen for five
minutes seven eight people giving me
something as they think but really
expecting something in return for that
give humans can feel that it’s not the
way to go and we really need to start
thinking about that and number four
understand the following and this is
very ironic given my concerns about
where the markets going I’ll end with
this in lieu of all of that this whole
thing that we’re living through has just
started the consumer web is only twenty
years old
Windows 95 kind of started this thing
the internet thing is very new
everything that we all talked about
didn’t exist ten years ago over the next
10 years the biggest companies in the
world from Europe and Asia and us from
anywhere in the world because we are now
at scale the biggest companies in the
world are going to be created over the
next 20 years from zero there are people
sitting in this room right now that are
gonna build the next major company and
so we are also blessed that we are
actually human beings during this period
where there is so much upside so much
opportunity and so everything I’ve
talked about when you parallel on the
obnoxious opportunity and land grab an
opportunity if you’re able to wire those
two things together I think a lot of
good stuff could happen for you and I’d
like that for you I’d like that a lot thank you
advice not just entrepreneur and startup
an investor advice what I learned from
Wine Library TV is the following the
true story of Wine Library TV was the
day that I thought I was gonna start it
I thought I was gonna do something
similar to QVC and I I don’t know if you
have a QVC or Shopping Network in Europe
but QVC in America it’s a show and they
sell stuff through the TV I thought I
was gonna do the QVC of wine the first
episode of that show when that camera
went on and that light went on I
realized that this was going to be on
the internet forever and that I didn’t
want to just peddle wine I decided I
wanted to be a value to people in
learning about wine because I was scared
that if I was peddling something I
didn’t believe in that somebody would
come up to me at a party and say do you
like this and I’d say no I hate it
they’re like well you said it
was awesome a wine Liberty you’re a scam
artists I’m like no so I was very
focused on leveling up and I really
believe the one great piece of advice if
you want to take anything from this talk
as we have to start realizing that
giving and doing things in business
without expectation of return from the
other individual is probably the
greatest leverage that you could ever
deploy in your business life though it
is extremely rare in today’s business
environment and it has absolutely been
the bedrock of what has allowed me to
win all my engagement all my selfies
right over there in signing books all
the content I have nothing to sell I
have a book that I sell once
every three years for thirteen dollars
this is not about monetizing an audience
it’s about building leverage to build
brand versus sales one of the biggest
things that I see going on right now in
digital media is that we don’t have a
lot of people doing branding and
marketing we have a lot of people doing
sales the reason so many of you were
confused by the value of snapchat is
because in the digital landscape we now
think transactional everything is about
what’s the ROI of every piece of content
every single action what’s the last
attribution what’s the conversion rate
it’s all become math based and that’s
fine
because I love sales more than anybody
but I promise you these guys
Nike they need tagged me on a browser
and then we cooking me and then travel
all over the internet and pound me with
banner ads until I gave up and bought it
I bought it because they
marketed to me over the last twenty
years and I don’t even know why
I buy it and that is a very important
point because what we’re living through
is a time where people are just being
very transactional and conversion based
when everything continues to get
arbitrage another thought that I’m
curious how many people here have gone
to the life that I’ve gone to over the
last three months I no longer have a
laptop or an iPad I now only live
through my mobile device how many people
are on that level doing that raise your
hands not a lot and this is like think
about this conference I really think
that this trend I do believe that if I
came back here in two years that 50 40
30 percent of the hands in this room
would go up to that following question
and I’m completely fascinated by it and
then for everybody in the room that is
building businesses on the internet the
thought of what’s happening in your
landing page optimization or the UI and
UX of your product in a desktop
environment I think is in the beginning
stages of being disrupted and that’s
what I really spend most of my time in
which is what’s the attention arbitrage
where do I think your eyes and ears are
gonna be before you do and how do I go
in land grab and buy up that property
and how do I then deploy and build the
best houses on that property through
content that is the pattern of my career
in 2006 I thought this social media
thing was gonna be really big and in
2007 2008 I laid my foundation and by
2007 and 8 I invested in Facebook and
Tumblr and Twitter and things of that
nature and I did quite well I also used
them to tell my story sell my wine do my
thing I think this is super important to
understand because I think we also
decide that things are emerging too fast
this is not just being first mover a lot
of people like to give me credit like
you predicted all this stuff you were
sorry I just want to be on the record
forever there’s plenty of people here
record
ivenn predicted I’m not Nostradamus
what I’ve done well is I’ve moved
quickly once you actually started using
them
I didn’t predict Twitter I wasn’t right
about snapchat I was just looking at
data snapchat two years ago when I first
started talking about it I already had
tens of millions of users there was real
people using it I’m not predicting
anything I’m paying attention there’s
probably very few people in this room
that are paying as much attention to
anchor2 peach to all these platforms as
I am but I’m not putting all my content
or all my time and I’m also not crippled
by putting my time and effort into
platforms before they have a hundred or
200 million users for example how many
of you remember that five minutes four
years ago where Socialcam got big raise
Socialcam got big for three minutes
because the facebook news feed used it
and it had a lot of users and it was hot
for four months six months I used it
feverishly and used it a lot it
collapsed and meant nothing but during
that period I learned so much about
mobile video and the cadence of it and
how people interacted within that when
vine came along a year and a half later
and then Instagram video and then
snapchat I’d already put in the work and
had the learnings from human behavior
that I deployed against the next thing
there are way too many people in this
room that do not do actions because
they’re crippled by the short-term
results versus what it means in the long
term and this goes to marketing and this
goes to running your business and this
comes down to what I probably want to
spend a few more minutes on right now
which is my friends there’s a lot of
people in here that are startup founders
that should not be my friends there are
a lot of people in here that work at
agencies that should not be they should
be probably switched and vice versa and
different things one of the things that
is absolutely driving me right now in my
life is the untold depression
the untold suicides to just get dark for
a second it’s not fun to talk about but
it’s important we are lacking
self-awareness in this space in a very
substantial way and there’s a lot of
people that are about to be met with a
lot of disappointment and are struggling
how many people are not tripping or in
here raise your hand you guys and gals
know this isn’t easy there’s nobody else
it’s fun to work for somebody you know
why you get to blame the boss she and he
is an asshole not you when you’re an
entrepreneur where’s nobody else behind
you it’s on you and one thing we’re not
talking about is the level of success
everybody thinks they have to build
uber everybody thinks they have
to make millions of dollars
it’s unbelievable what we’ve done and I
absolutely want to make sure that we’re
starting to have real conversations
making $100,000 a year 100 euros that’s
massively successful we need to
recalibrate what success looks like in
our space because we’re forcing through
the branding of what we’re doing very
impractical very high-risk very low
return results for so many because
everybody’s shooting for 10 billion what
guys there’s like 4 apps that big
there’s like uber and Instagram like how
many billion dollar companies do
you think there are and so I really am
passionate about starting to reframe the
conversation about the number one thing
that I have noticed in my 20 years of my
success because let me tell you
something I suck at almost
everything what I’ve done well is I’ve
deployed self-awareness around what I am
and I know what I am and there’s a lot
of things I wish I was seven years ago
as a lot of you know I had plenty of
leverage in the web 2.0 social media
movement I was one of the guys I was one
of the 20 most follow people on Twitter
I didn’t go and raise 40 million dollars
to build the next Facebook I didn’t
raise 50 million dollars to build a
platform around wine
I was self-aware enough even though I
had all the opportunity in the world to
build a product that I wasn’t gonna be
successful
70 years ago I went out and built a
boring digital agency right I built
think practical all my internet friends
a lot of the people gonna be on the
stage they made fun of me like why don’t
you go build a big company or something
grand I built what I knew I could build
I’m very proud that over the last four
years I’ve grown vaynermedia from three
to a hundred million dollars a year in
[Applause]
and cool great that’s fine and who gives
a what I’m Way more worried about
then what I’ve done is what you’re gonna
do
I implore you my friends this is fancy
first of all this is unbelievable this
is one of the nicest setups to a
conference I’ve ever seen let’s clap it
up for these guys it’s unbelievable
right there’s like there’s like
food trucks it’s like sunny and
this is awesome anyway what I
did well was I just didn’t give a
when I when I hold I’m 40 when I grew up
in in the United States like being a
good student was the big thing I was
making $3,000 a weekend selling baseball
cards and getting D’s and F’s and
everybody thought I was a loser like
that’s what the narrative was now it’s
reversed if I was in school now making
three four thousand dollars a weekend as
a 13 year old I would have been the next
big thing right I went through it and I
did not succumb to the current thing
that everybody thought in America was
the right thing which was go to the best
school you could go to I understood who
I was and I went in all in on my
strengths and I implore a lot of you to
do that there’s too many people sitting
in this room that want to be the number
one ceo/founder
but if you were the seventh employee of
a company you know I’d much rather be
number forty-one at Facebook
the number one of Facebook and so I
think we’re seeing that and so I’d like
to stand up here and I’d like to say
look there’s a lot of things that I wish
I was different at as a matter of fact
back to what let’s be very meta right
now do you know that I wish I didn’t
curse on stage do you know many people
don’t share my content don’t like me
because of it I wish I didn’t do it I
just can’t be anything that I’m not and
so I implore you don’t worry about
what’s cool right now or what we’re all
focused on or what your mama wants you
to be you need to go home from this
conference you’ll be inspired there’ll
be cool people there’s interesting
but I’m telling you with the bottom of
my heart it is fundamentally irrelevant
if you don’t know who the you are
and the quicker you can start forcing
yourself to understanding what role you
play number
number seven PR marketing product UI
everybody wants to be somebody else I
wish I was the quarterback of the New
York Jets it’s not gonna happen and so
if I can accomplish one and by the way
I’m being very realistic I’ll be very
very transparent with you this little
seven minute rant that I just came up
with I’m trying to reach one person like
I’m this is not so easy it’s hard to
have the ego and the humility at equal
ends to figure yourself out but I
promise you as I’ve looked across the
landscape and I have looked at 25 50
thousand startups at this point right I
have now spent the last four years of my
life with the Toyotas and the Pepsi’s in
the gee you know biggest brands in world
myself my inner circle the one
connection point from corporate America
to startup to VC to personalities the
one connection point is self-awareness
once you start understanding yourself
once you start actually executing on who
you actually are versus who you wish you
were things start to change very quickly
and so the reason I’m passionate about
this is this is always very worldly
advice and has probably historically
always good things to talk about I just
feel that if any of you really paid
attention to the macroeconomic
infrastructure of what’s happening in
our space right now this Nirvana that
we’ve lived through for the last six or
seven years is about to shift it just is
it’s just the data I don’t want it I
wish it was Nirvana forever just like
everybody else during the down cycles
the people that are able to win are the
ones that are most in tune with
themselves the ones that are the most
practical so again to make this valuable
to you in this room number one if your
startup please start understanding how
you’re gonna make money as soon as
possible you’re running a business
you’re running a business businesses
need to make money especially when
there’s no money to fund you based on
your last valuation number two as a
human being sitting at this conference
this is all very encompassing
and very
but start chipping away against what you
think you want and start really looking
at what you bring to the table because
the quicker you figure that out the more
successful you will have and number
three
please start understanding how to
provide value without expectation in
return it is unbelievable to me how many
people already today we’ve seen for five
minutes seven eight people giving me
something as they think but really
expecting something in return for that
give humans can feel that it’s not the
way to go and we really need to start
thinking about that and number four
understand the following and this is
very ironic given my concerns about
where the markets going I’ll end with
this in lieu of all of that this whole
thing that we’re living through has just
started the consumer web is only twenty
years old
Windows 95 kind of started this thing
the internet thing is very new
everything that we all talked about
didn’t exist ten years ago over the next
10 years the biggest companies in the
world from Europe and Asia and us from
anywhere in the world because we are now
at scale the biggest companies in the
world are going to be created over the
next 20 years from zero there are people
sitting in this room right now that are
gonna build the next major company and
so we are also blessed that we are
actually human beings during this period
where there is so much upside so much
opportunity and so everything I’ve
talked about when you parallel on the
obnoxious opportunity and land grab an
opportunity if you’re able to wire those
two things together I think a lot of
good stuff could happen for you and I’d
like that for you I’d like that a lot thank you
Please follow and like us: