When I was at F.ounders in November celebrity portrait photographer Kevin Abosch shot this picture of me. Can you tell I’ve been up and partying for days?
So Phil and I are doing this series with BetaBeat called “The Pitch” and our episode went up today. It is sort of a faked “pitch” to Lerer Ventures and a wider discussion of New York start ups. It is a little weird to watch this. Actually a lot of it is super weird. And then there is an unfortunate bit with turkey jerky. Thoughts?
A Nice Birthday Surprise: The Pitch Debuts Today
Phil and I are one of ten start ups being featured in BetaBeat’s “The Pitch.”
It all starts with the pitch. Thousands of new tech startups will be founded in New York this year. Hundreds will be funded. Only a few will persevere to create a lasting business.
To get funding, a company has to catch an investor’s eye. The format for finding those backers, more often than not, is the pitch, an impassioned act of sales that explains why your company is the next big thing and you are the right person to pull it off.
Good venture capitalists, like baseball players, pick the right pitch to swing at. Just as a top slugger hits .300, the best VCs typically back three winning companies out of every ten tries. The elite have a higher average, and few home runs along the way.
We sifted through hundreds of eager applicants to find some of New York’s top prospects. This series profiles them and captures the process as they pitch Lerer Ventures face-to-face.
Want to know more about the companies involved? Check out our founder’s guide, here.
This is a nice birthday present to have it go up today! Speaking of which I am celebrating tonight at Whiskey Tavern so come have a shot with me and maybe toast playAPI coming into the world. And please spread the world (i.e reblog this puppy) as we are excited to be featured. The New York tech scene is coming into its own and we are proud to be based here with our second company.
So this happened today...
All I can say is… Julie Fredrickson is amazing and knows a thing or two about sending bloggers to fashion week.
Awww shucks. I want to reiterate what I say on my personal blog in no way indicates an official statement or opinion from my employer. I’ve noticed quite a few tweets and more blog posts taking it as a statement or opinion from my employer which just isn’t the case. Please stop. As an entrepreneur with a track record in the fashion content space I like to think that I somewhat qualified to have an opinion on these issues independent of my own brand experience with the platform.
My boy Jason Trost. In Dublin. At the Westbury. Uploaded this photo at his request.
Those are my legs. Encased in Gucci.
GPOYW
One of our favorite trends on Tumblr, Ann Taylor’s blog platform, is the popular Gratuitous Photo Of Yourself Wednesday posts. Like Twitter’s “Follow Friday” or “Music Monday” hashtags, GPOYW is a fun way to share in a community discussion on Tumblr while still making it just a bit about yourself. Yesterday Julie, our Manager of Digital and Social Marketing had head shots taken for our corporate directory. We thought the photo of her with photographer Marcus made for a perfect GPOYW.
Getting headshots taken is really weird. I really hope I don’t hate them all.
How Social Media Has Changed Fashion Week
Lauren pinged me a little over a week ago saying she was doing a piece on the history of social media at fashion week for Mashable. I was the first person she chatted with so my little personal history and narrative for fashion week ended up setting the tone for the piece which was neat. I also don’t sound stupid in any of my quotes. I think. Which is a real relief since I generally think I must sound like an idiot on the phone.
Fredrickson adds, “Fashion Week is a brands’ opportunity to tell a coherent narrative for their season. Whether it’s Tumblr, Facebook, or YouTube, they’re going to use whatever makes most sense to present their vision for this season, to tell their story in the fullest possible way. Fashion is all about storytelling.”
Another not stupid sounding quote!
Fashion bloggers have also dramatically improved the quality of the content around Fashion Week, Fredrickson claims. Blogs and mainstream media alike must now not only compete to be first, but to secure an interesting angle. “Instead of having a generic, two-paragraph writeup, you can now go to any number of sites that cover all kinds of minutiae, from where someone sat to what the runway music was like. It made everyone really up their games,” Frederickson says.
I’m learning to play with color this summer. My makeup is the basics (lipstick, green eyeliner, incredible seahorse fancy blush thing) from MAC’s “To The Beach Collection” and my dress is this coral color thing from where else but LOFT. And yes I realize it isn’t Wednesday so its not a proper GPOYW but I was so impressed with how this color treatment came out I wanted to share.
New haircut! Went for the Egon Schiele/Aeon Flux look.
