From Israel to Silicon Valley, Niv Dror's Journey To Conquer Social Media
Season Two of Ambition Today is happy to welcome Niv Dror, head of social media for Product Hunt. Niv boasts in impressive resume in both startups and finance, stemming from his education at UC Santa Barbara.
Niv Dror, Shrug Capital
Season Two of Ambition Today is happy to welcome Niv Dror, head of social media for Product Hunt. Niv boasts an impressive resume in both startups and finance, stemming from his education at UC Santa Barbara. After moving to Silicon Valley at a very young age, Niv had surprisingly little involvement in the tech world. It surrounded him entirely and thus he never noticed it, as water to a fish. However, after auditing a few hedge funds and VC funds as a CPA, he knew where his skills truly belonged.
Niv Dror’s taste of the tech community flourished very quickly, landing non-engineering jobs at DataFox, Meerkat, and Product Hunt. He aspired to add value without asking anything in return, and was rewarded with the experience and skills to climb the ranks at multiple organizations, currently aiding the curation of the world's most cutting-edge technology on Product Hunt. Kevin and Niv explore what's behind this drive, the man he gives credit to involuntarily kickstarting his success, and much more:
Growing up in Israel and moving to the U.S. at a young age.
Pursuing a finance degree and applying it to the startup world.
Getting exposure to the tech industry by auditing a successful VC.
Building an engaging community around a product.
What changes we can see in social in 2017.
The war of pronunciation for “gif”.
We why all love gifs and how Twitter is the perfect platform.
Ambition Today Question of the Day™:
"Should people optimize for learning or for earning?"
Quote Of The Episode:
"Community is everything. Without the community, Product Hunt wouldn't work."
Links from this episode:
Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…
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Ambition Today: Adam Besvinick Teaches The Art of Hustle and How To Break Into Your Dream Role
Venture Capitalist Adam Besvinick explains the value of pure hustle in pursuing his dreams of breaking into the Startup and Venture Capital industry. Recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30, Adam has invested in several startup companies as Principal at Deep Fork Capital.
Adam Besvinick, Principal VENTURE CAPITALIST aT Deep Fork Capital
Venture Capitalist Adam Besvinick explains the value of pure hustle in pursuing his dreams of breaking into the Startup and Venture Capital industry. Recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30, Adam has invested in several startup companies as Principal at Deep Fork Capital.
In episode 14 we explore where Adam came from and how that connects to where he is now. Adam started blogging on VentureMinded.Me years ago and created his own track record through taking ownership of his brand. He has always strived to be continually helpful and add value to others. Through that hustle he previously worked his way into a role at Lowercase Capital to learn from Chris Sacca. Afterword Adam was one of the early employees at Gumroad while going to Harvard Business School. Now Adam is Principal at Deep Fork Capital and has invested in several companies across the country, with a focus on New York City and Silicon Valley. We go over what he looks for in great startups, how he used self-marketing to break into venture capital, and also cover:
The influences of growing up around entrepreneurship.
The value of experiencing life abroad.
How to demonstrate your expertise in a given field.
Why self-marketing is important.
How Twitter can create real world connections.
How constantly being helpful to others, leads to opportunity.
His experience at Duke and Harvard.
The differences between Silicon Valley and New York City.
How being an Investor in New York City is beneficial.
What Adam looks for in startups today.
Exploring some of the Deep Fork Capital portfolio companies.
Ambition Today Question of the Day:
How important is networking?
Links from this episode:
Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…
Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS and on Stitcher for Android.
Listen to this episode now:
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How To Be As Famous As Taylor Swift, Casey Neistat, and Tim Ferriss
Want to know how to be famous? How famous is Taylor Swift? How famous is Casey Neistat? How famous is Tim Ferris? How many online mentions do you need everyday to achieve fame? We'll lets find out how to be famous.
I would like to thank Michal Sadowski, a mentor for the Founder Institute New York and the founder of Brand 24. Michal was kind enough to show me how to use his Brand 24's platform for monitoring your online presence.
How many online mentions do you need everyday to achieve fame? How can you be as famous as Taylor Swift. Lets find out how to be famous.
To start analyzing this I used Brand 24's platform to start monitoring the online presence of a few celebrities which were at different stages of fame. I first looked at Tim Ferriss, a 3x New York Times best selling author, famous blogger, and podcaster. Second I analyzed Casey Neistat, a HBO and mainstream film maker who is recently working on a daily vlogging project he publishes to YouTube. Last but not least I looked at the data for Taylor Swift, one of the most famous musicians and people on the planet.
The key metric in determining popularity and fame we will be using is "daily mentions" when looking at the Brand 24 data. This data includes mentions on the open internet across blogs, forums, news, video, photo, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and more. So lets look at each of these celebrities to see their number of daily mentions in the last 30 days and estimated social reach.
Tim Ferriss - 1,311 mentions across 30 days
How famous is Tim Ferriss? The case of Tim Ferriss is interesting because he has such a unique and loyal fan following as a New York Times bestseller, blogger, and podcaster. Tim Averaged between 25-75 mentions on the open web per day which creates in the tens of thousands for estimated audience size. Comparing the blue scale bar of mentions on the left, 0 - 100, to the green scale bar on the right of estimated social reach, 0 - 600k, it is very interesting to see how a small number of mentions can quickly multiply to a large audience.
Casey Neistat - 3,237 mentions across 30 days
How famous is Casey Neistat? Casey's main platform is YouTube. He is also an avid SnapChatter, which unfortunately this analysis does not account for as it is privately scene in app on mobile devices. Across the open internet though Casey averaged about 50-100 mentions per day. These mentions generate an average estimated audience of 30 to 40 thousand people. This is on top of the almost 400,000 people who watch his new vlog everyday on YouTube.
Taylor Swift - 122,647 mentions across 30 days
How famous is Taylor Swift? In order to be as famous as Taylor Swift you would need 122,647 mentions in 30 days. See that spike in the number of mentions for Taylor around August 30th. That was the day after the MTV Video Music Awards. Between the awards she won, her crew that she brought along with her, and Kanye West eccentric acceptance speech the amount of people talking about Taylor Swift on a daily basis shot up to 6,000 mentions per day with an estimated social reach of 155,837,304 people.
So in conclusion you can see that in order to be a famous as Taylor Swift you need to have on average about 4,000 online mentions every single day, which will generate you on average around 40 million person audience. Pretty incredible when you think about it. When is the last time that many people mentioned you on the internet in one day?