A Nemonics New York Recap

(at the Daylife headquarters in Soho)

I just wrapped up a whirlwind week in New York, footing around the city and having meetings and mingling with some truly remarkable people. Here’s a recap of who I met with and what they had to say:

I sat down with Pete Dorogoff, the VP of Digital and Social Media at Thomson Reuters, one of the largest media entities in the world. My remarkable friend Maura McGreevy set up the meeting in the glimmering tower of 3 Times Square. I showed Pete our QuoteTh.is demo; he loved it and offered up some great feedback and suggestions as well. He asked if I wanted to pitch QuoteTh.is to the Thomson Reuters product team while I was in town. I said we weren’t ready! But better believe I’ll be back soon.

I met with Ken Rother, the VP of Interactive Media at Discovery Communications. Ken works with Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger.com and a member of the Nemonics Media board. Graham and Ken have done something incredible and signed a letter of intent to test QuoteTh.is on TreeHugger, a site with 5.5 million uniques per month. Needless to say, this is a colossal opportunity and I can’t wait to get started.

Before heading to New York this time, I asked Graham Hill who I should meet with. He said Upendra Shardanand is one of the smartest people he knows. Upendra happily booked a meeting, so I came down to the Daylife HQ in Soho. If you’re not familiar with the profound cleverness of Daylife, check it out. Upendra, the founder and CEO, is an MIT grad who was the director of technology at AOL and Time Warner before launching Daylife. He was generous with his time as we chatted in a little conference space in the midst of the company’s beautiful top-floor loft offices.

I showed Upendra QuoteTh.is and he got it right away. It’s been incredibly important to run the product past people outside of Nashville. So far the feedback has been super validating. Feeling tempted and inspired by the NY tech scene, I asked Upendra for his read of the scene, and how important he thinks it is to be based there.

He said that the NY tech scene is somewhat overhyped. It’s growing, but not as jumping as some people would want you to believe. As for being based in the city, he recounted a story from a previous startup he founded: Apple was acting pretty serious about buying the company, so Upendra sat down with Steve Jobs. “So why are you in New York?,” asked Jobs. “Because this is where the media companies are, this is where the talent is, this is where big deals happen,” Upendra replied. “No it’s not,” said Jobs. “You’re here because it’s fun. Admit it.” After some hemming and hawing, Upendra finally had to confess: it’s because it’s fun to live in New York. From that point on, Upendra says he’s honest with himself about why he’s there.

My cousin Daniel Gossels is managing director at Mesa Global, a NY firm that handles deals between media companies. I’ve started checking in with him and grown to learn that he gives some of the most blunt and direct advice of anyone I know.

We had lunch as Mesa Grill (Bobby Flay’s place) and I pulled out my MacBook and showed him QuoteTh.is in action (thank you Mr. Flay for the open wifi). Daniel got it, but was quick to ask if QuoteTh.is is a company or more of a feature. We proceeded to talk about how QuoteTh.is could morph into something much larger, a very big play, and he drew some helpful analogies to several companies that Mesa is working with.
As for the location questions, Daniel said spending the summer in the Valley is a great idea, but that trying to run a startup from Nashville is nuts. As I said, blunt and fantastic.

Daniel emailed the next day saying he wanted me to meet with Jacob Brody, a young entrepreneur working at Mesa Global to  coach early-stage companies. We met in the conference room at Mesa’s gorgeous offices near Union Square and I pitched the product. Jacob is loud and fast and swears like a sailor. He’s amazing. 

I told him that David Tisch sent an email recently encouraging me to update my TechStars application. I told him I was applying to Tech Stars NY but was probably still planning on spending the summer in the Valley. “If you get in to TechStars and you don’t go you’re a fucking idiot. It’s more selective than Harvard.” 

Brody also made a great observation about the startup environments of New York and Silicon Valley. The Valley, he said, is a place where large amounts of money are invested in tech-intensive ventures with the hope that if you build something great and huge, the monetization will come along eventually. In New York, startups are more design-centric (think Tumblr), less tech-intensive, and they typically try to monetize sooner. Furthermore, Nemonics is a media company, our big clients will likely be publishers like Hearst, Conde Naste, NY Times, etc., and brushing shoulders with those folks is priceless. 

He also gave some great advice on how to relentlessly track down the people you want involved in your company (investors, mentors, star employees), and pointed me to a post he wrote recently on the art of almost stalking. He also reminded me of a TechStars mixer that night near NYU, then jumped on his computer to chat Matt Meeker, co-founder of Meetup.com and honcho down at Dogpatch Labs and set up a meeting on the spot. Nice.

That evening I cut out early on my sister’s Phi Beta Kappa ceremony at NYU to hit the TechStars mixer at the Apple Bombar. It’s tough walking into a bar crammed with people, none of whom you know, and get your mingle on. But after a couple Brooklyn Lagers, things warmed right up. 

A lovely blonde with some cryptic tattoos broke the ice, actually, when she walked up and handed me a small black card that said “We’ll laugh about this a year from now.” The woman was Lori Cheek, and her company is Cheek’d, a flirtation 2.0 service based around little cards with provocative phrases on them. Cheek’d won the TechStars Startup Madness Tournament. I’m well aware that I was just being beta-tested on, but I’ll take it anyway ;-)

Lastly, I waded through the crowd to talk to a somewhat beleaguered but chipper David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars. I waited my turn to give David a card and put a face with a name. Then I called it a night.

The next day I went down to Dogpatch Labs to meet with Matt Meeker. I gave him a product demo (something I’m getting much more used to at this point) and asked for his feedback. He said it looked great and that I shouldn’t be so modest about it (Nathan and I built it in 8 weeks and very much consider it our minimum viable product, still quite rough around the edges). It was nice to get some perspective from a true pro.

Meeker also gave some great advice on how to navigate a two-sided platform, as our’s is. QuoteTh.is serves publishers (who pay to use it on their content), and readers, who use it for free. And it’s important to be clear about whose feedback to listen to first. Both are going to want different things and you have to prioritize. His suggestion was to focus relentlessly on the readers, make it sparkle for them, and let the feedback speak for itself when you pitch it to publishers. Love it: I’d never quite thought of it that way.

Side note, Dogpatch is an amazing environment. Within 30 seconds of sitting down, Matthew Rosenberg ran up and introduced himself, told me about FastSociety, his startup, and introduced me to the founder of Artsicle sitting on the next couch over. 

So it was a big week. I even had someone step forward with a serious interest in investing (and I wasn’t even asking anyone for money!). I’m glad I kept my schedule open for all the unplanned meetings and didn’t spent two solid days on the tattoo table as I had originally planned. I then had the pleasure of seeing my little sister graduate from NYU, where Bill Clinton give the commencement address at Yankee Stadium. He talked about how borders in the modern world are more like nets than walls. Seems like a fitting capstone.

Lessons learned:

• Keep your schedule open so you can take meeting at the last minute.
• Show up and mingle. It’s worth it.
• Hone the art of persistence and “almost stalking.”
• Think about who you listen to first, customers or users.
• Design is one of the New York startup scene’s strengths.