A significant high percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs go by nicknames. This is readily apparent, when you rattle off the most prominent ones like Jeff Immelt, Steve Balmer, Tim Cook, Jamie Dimon, Meg Whitman, etc. I believe that short names are potentially correlated with leadership success for the simple reason that they engender close association and camaraderie.  And that especially [...]

I live in my slide decks and financial models. I view these  materials as living documents that I tweak in real time, certainly weekly and sometimes every few days. I’ve blogged extensively about my pitch decks but haven’t written about financial forecasting. The de facto way to budget is to create a forecasted income statement and cash flow and track [...]

Branded Content I was on a panel earlier in the week and used it as an opportunity to talk about the historic roots of branded content. I used some of my favorite ads from Ogilvy and Doyle Dane. I believe strongly that branded content is old and proven, not new. In most ways, branded content is just good advertising, advertising [...]

[ORIGINALLY POSTED ON BUZZFEED BLOG] BuzzFeed Boost 2.0 is a self-service tool for seeding your content on both BuzzFeed and Facebook.  This is an extension of the self-service platform that we introduced in October.  We’re currently offering Boost in three tiers, two of which allow for campaigns (boosting multiple posts) and Facebook extension. CPMs begin at set maximum levels, and we [...]

Wendy Clark’s speach at the Adage Digital Conference touched on two core themes: measurability and branded, owned content.  (Full disclosure, Coke has advertised on Buzzfeed.) Wendy began with a common baseline: Impressions will always be the backbone of any activity that we do, because it goes horizontal across all the media. (Around the 16:20 Mark) Watch live streaming video from [...]

Below is the full interview I had with Mark Suster last week.  I really enjoyed the beginning part, where I talked about my early career and sales and writing strategies.  When I tweeted, I linked to the 37 minute jump mark, where we get into BuzzFeed.  But if you’re interested, here’s the full interview.  My big thanks to Mark for [...]

Slides From our Speakers Faris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer at MDC Partners Jordan Cooper, CoFounder/CEO Hyperpublic & Venture Partner, Lerer Ventures Tobias Peggs, CEO, One Riot Lucy Deland, Paperless Post Adam Potashnick, MediaCom, Global Media Director, ”Dell Linked-In Case Study” February NY Viral Meet Up

We have a meme that just went viral on Buzzfeed, and it seemed worthwhile to walk through it on this blog, given that some business readers might not be Internet culture junkies. Ice Cream Dude appeared on the cover of the Washington Post, yesterday morning. One of our editors (Tanner Ringerud) saw the original image posted in Tumblr, and quickly [...]

About a year ago, I blogged pulling from my experience working in local: It is not 1,000 times more challenging or costly to service a $1,000,000 a month search engine marketing budget than a $1,000 a month budget.  This makes servicing SMBs margin difficult. That’s always been my key mantra on why servicing the long tail is so inefficient, but [...]

This morning on my way to take my twenty month old to swim class at the Y, I stopped off to buy some cables for the office at Best Buy on 86th Street and 3rd Avenue.  I booted up Shopkick on my way to the register, because the discounts had appeared broad and generous in the past.  After struggling to [...]