YouSaid · the spoken record

James Borow

lines on the record
28
first
2015-09-18
most recent
2015-09-18
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “I think the goal is to continue building out the brand networks platform to be the largest marketing platform across social. We just added as launch partners Instagram and Pinterest. We're going to be rolling out a ton of cool stuff over the next quarter. We're fortunate to have almost 100 engineers on staff building stuff. So we're moving really fast and for me, I just want to keep on building great products and building great companies.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You definitely tell him. Transparency is the key. And the reality is that especially for these types of companies, you want people to know it's like heading indoor storm. You want everyone to know what they're facing so they can brace for it. And you want to make sure that the ones that want to be there. So I wouldn't be scared to tell the truth about anything.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Hire well. I think that's the key. So I was able to be a much, much better CEO as I surrounded myself with better people. And I think that's, you know, depending on the size of the company, we brought in a CFO, a woman named Andrea Green a couple years ago, who just totally changed the company in terms of helping us understand really how the business was performing and the decisions we had to make. I think that's a hire that people often put off because they may know someone who kind of understands finance. I would invest early on that side. And then I think if you're a product focused CEO, still hire ahead of product, our VP of product has been phenomenal over the years and he's really been able to help me. I think, again, you just have to find, be honest with yourself, find the places you're not good and tell someone, tell your co-founder or tell your”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “There's all these things we always want to do over the years, but I unfortunately, when you're running a company, you basically spend about 5% of your time actually focusing on the things that you would deem important and about 95% of the time working on things like fundraising and HR and hiring and all the things that kind of the business of doing business. So it's been a great opportunity for me to really focus and to do the things I want to do on the product side.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, so I'm now the chief product officer of the company. And so that's obviously a transition going from CEO to just focusing on product. I think there's a, you know, I think it's one of those things where you have to understand that when being acquired, you obviously there's a level of control that you once had that obviously goes away just by nature of no longer being completely in control. And I think that's something that as long as you have phenomenal partners in it, it makes it a good thing. And we've been lucky in that the brand networks team has just been great. If they ended up being bad guys, then I think I probably have a different perspective on it. But it's really been for me a good opportunity to really focus on product and to kind of help.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Couple of funds in particular like Lear Ventures and Rink on Venture Partners, just some of the best VCs slash just people I know.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Opportunity to join forces and really create this truly holistic platform has always been our goal. And so it made it just really exciting from a pure product standpoint, which is where kind of a lot of the times where my kind of perspective was. The other part is the team is just awesome. The president over there, again, Paul Falzoni, has become a great friend and a great mentor. They have phenomenal engineering team and they have offices across the world. So when we started thinking about what we could build together, it made it really, really exciting. And I think as our investors learned about what brand networks plus shift could mean for this space in becoming pretty much the largest independent player, they all got really excited as well. So definitely no clash. Our investors have been great.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “No, you know, I think we had been approached by the Brand Networks team. And as we learn more about them, it became just a really, really, I don't want to say obvious, but it made a lot of sense for a couple reasons. One is the way that they've performed over the years has been pretty impressive. They raised one round of funding. It was a $68 million round. They're backed by AEA investors, which is $6 billion private equity fund. In our space, they've just done a phenomenal job on that front. They've also built just some incredible clients as well. And the other thing that I loved about it is that they actually had focused a lot on the content side. So that's sort of the organic side of social, where we had really been incredibly strong on the paid side.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, and I also wouldn't raise money for the sake of raising money. When I say don't be short-sighted with equity with co-founders and investors, I agree with that. I also think don't be short-sighted with it in terms of raising money. I definitely learn, you know, if you're a first-time entrepreneur, do your research about preferences, understand the impacts of these rounds, understand that there's going to be bad times and that these investors are going to be there for both the good and bad ones. So I just think, you know, take it really seriously. It's fun to get the tech crunch article, but in a lot of ways it doesn't really matter. It's cool to show your friends at home, but it almost has no impact on your business. So I would just really go into it with very open eyes.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “networks together in one platform. And I think, you know, again, today as things have moved to programmatic, that thesis was definitely correct. But in the early days, people wanted you to build sort of just sort of another version of a DSP. And we really had to make sure that we found investors who believed in our vision as opposed to the vision that everyone else wanted us to have. So I think those are kind of things where you get asked a lot of great questions. We also have to make sure you stick to what you believe in because you do in a lot of ways get married to these investors and you want to make sure that you want to wake up next to them in both the good and bad days.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think the most challenging thing, especially in the early days, was the initial hump was trying to get everyone excited about social. There were questions about what this thing really would be. The other one is that we had made a decision again early to really focus our engineering resources on LA. And at the time, you had people sort of having somewhat of the sort of Silicon Valley bias. Fast forward to today, I think that's a non-issue with people like Mark Suster and Upfrontures and Snapchat in LA. But that was definitely a challenge. And then I think also, you know, we really wanted to build our company, although we were in ad tech, our core value prop was around, in many ways, collaboration and data. So getting all the people, the stakeholders.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So he has a lot of great context there that we got in front of. And then people, you know, because we had all these great advisors, you're always getting introduced to people. So a lot of it was very organic. We weren't, you know, we were fortunate not to have to be cold calling a lot of these investors. A lot of them are just real conversations about the business we're building and do they want to be a part of it. I think overall It was actually just a really enjoyable process. It's definitely a difficult process. There's no doubt about that. But even when you get a bunch of no's, you meet just some brilliant people and it really keeps you. You never learn more about your business than going out and try to raise money. The amount of questions you get and the level of thoughtfulness that people put into when they're potentially putting in someone else's money is pretty humbling.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, so we've a couple ways. Again, another example of we're having phenomenal co-founders or advisors comes into play is investing, especially having Clark as my co-founder and as the chairman of Shift, we had just an unbelievable amount of contacts through Clark. So that was great. And he's also a very large angel investor. He's in about 60 different deals. So there's a lot of people that he has.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, without a doubt. I have a ton of really just incredible advisors and friends, not to mention an incredible co-founder and Clark. But there's absolutely no reason to reinvent the wheel on a lot of this stuff. And everyone's smart in terms of their own ability to learn these things, but you're going to waste a couple years trying to learn it. And so I would not be shy and asking questions. There's no ego in this at all in terms of yourself. Like the ego should be around making the company successful and making sure that your employees and investors do well. So I think finding advisors, finding great co-founders, not being short-sighted with things like equity, I think those are all key things to it that I would just, you know, I couldn't encourage people more to really think about.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Healthy way to think, but at the same time, there are times where you do need to burn if you want to invest in things that make sense for you the long term. So it was definitely an interesting transition to go through and still kind of, I think, takes a healthy balance. You can't sort of buy your own BS and chase the shiny object and you can't go ahead and think there's always going to be funding. But if there's something you believe in, you have to make the bet on it.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, it was definitely a process. I had just some phenomenal advisors and employees along the way. We had in the early days, and I think this is still a healthy way to think about it, but I was, you know, I was almost scared of spending money and I was scared of growing headcount. And I had an advisor who was a president of ours for a period of time, a guy named Stefano Kim, who's a great operator, one of the best sort of operators I've ever met, sat me down and explained to me that you need to invest to grow and you need to make bets if you really kind of believe in what you're doing. And it was a hugely kind of important perspective for me to gain. At the time, I was like 26 and you just didn't want to burn for the sake of burn. And I think that's still a...”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Unlike traditional big companies, these guys move really fast. When they decide they want to do something, they do it. And they tend to be pretty successful in doing it. So it's been fascinating just working with them.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “No, not at all. I mean, I think we were fortunate in that for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, pretty much every single social network ever launched. We've been a launch partner with them. And the great thing about that has been twofold. One is they're creating these new ecosystems along with us. So in a lot of ways, we feel like we're having a really big impact in helping them figure out where this all goes. And the other thing is we've been in social for relatively speaking a long time as long as a lot of these people have. And so in a lot of ways, we feel like there are peers and we've sort of grown up with them in this space. And so it's been really fun. We've seen a lot of people kind of grow to really interesting positions of these companies. The partners themselves just couldn't have been more supportive to us over the years.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “We got to the point where we had a lot of advertisers. We actually, before really even had a company formed, it was the kind of a classic cliche startup story had like checks in a shoebox under my bed. So I see like movies and like TV shows talking about startups. It kind of makes me cringe just because it strikes home pretty closely.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, the early days really was about reaching just a whole new audience. That was kind of, I would say, kind of day one of where the value proposition was. As things evolved and even where they sit today as part of brand networks, the value proposition is that it's one marketing platform for you to manage all of your paid, owned, and earned and have all your stakeholders work together and to advertise across every single social network. So it's evolved dramatically from where it was on day one, but I think on day one, we were trying to make it as simple as possible if people understand. And again, this is five, six years ago. The marketing teams at Microsoft were still kind of confused about why the hell they should advertise on this Facebook thing. It was a bunch of college kids. So definitely interesting experience.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “them why they should advertise on social. Kind of fast forward to today, it's kind of funny how little convincing you have to do about why advertising on Facebook makes sense. But back then, we not only had to convince them to work with us, but we had to convince them to move budget from other places to social. So I think when you're entering in a new market, the hardest aspects of it is the fact that it's a new market.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, so we were making a lot of phone calls. At the time, we had, we didn't have any funding. We had basically a beta product. And the kind of interesting thing about how Shift got started, it ended up becoming a social ads business. But originally, there weren't even social ads yet. So what we were doing is we built ad technology to go inside Facebook applications. So when you're playing games on Facebook, we were actually serving ads there because you couldn't programmatically serve ads directly on Facebook yet. And so we were calling brands like Microsoft and original clients were like Jamba Juice, companies like that saying, listen, we can go ahead and help you advertise within this Facebook ecosystem in a programmatic way. The alternative is no targeting, things like that. And we had a really explained.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, it was great. It was cool. It was actually the first Facebook Connect website pretty much ever. And so that's part of the reason why we got so involved in the Facebook ecosystem is that when the Connect platform came out, we built this site and the whole premise behind the site was that only females could get in. So we used our Facebook identity as a way to ensure that only females get in, males couldn't. We adopted the platform 100%, meaning you couldn't use anything other than Facebook, which today is not differentiated at all, but back then was a really lucky Facebook, when they featured the Connect platform, they would feature it with, you know, they would talk about, I think at the time, Dig and Huffbow and CNN Money and Girls Guide too.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah. But no, the reality is, even if you today, back then it was, I guess, harder. But today, I mean, there's freelancers all over the place. Every person you know has a friend who works at Tech or can write some basic code. So, you know, if there's a will, there's a way. I was really fortunate though for two reasons. One is I got to work at a startup that had a bunch of engineers. Obviously that was great. And then I became really good friends with a bunch of engineers. And the first company we ever started, this is far before shift, was actually a company that the original CTO of Shift, myself and my sister started, which was called Girls Guide 2. And the name obviously sounds ridiculous, but it was basically a buzz feed for females before BuzzFeed.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's hard to, you know, there's always cases that work either way, but I think in general, I think, you know, like anything, you just really don't know what sort of these businesses really are until you start doing them. So I think just sort of cutting the cord immediately is really, really tough. You know, I think it's like anything. It's like diving straight into law school. I think probably would have been unwise as well. It was great for me to go get that exposure working for a startup. And so I think likewise, if you want to go ahead and start something, start it. It's incredibly easy to start something. It sounds ridiculous, but it is really easy to start something. So do it in your free time. And I think it's really hard to go back. And it's also just mentally exhausting to go back. So I think learn as much as you can about what you're doing and then go back to it if you want to.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “In Santa Monica. And since then have just been completely focused to sort of learning how to start companies and eventually went on to co-found Shift. And that's where we are today.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Though in the process, I was going to go to law school at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and I called the dean and I said, listen, I really, really liking this internet stuff, but I'm not quite sure if I really don't want to go to law school. And she said, I'll hold your spot as long as you want. So she ended up giving me five years of deferments, which basically meant that I could do take the entrepreneur track, but really kind of have a lot more appetite for risk than most people because the reality was that I had law school waiting for me. So that was a huge advantage and incredibly thankful that they did that for me. And while working out here, I actually met Clark Landry, who became my co-founder in Shift, and I went to go work with him at a company called Minesman.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yeah, absolutely. So I went to college in Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was going to be a lawyer originally. I was pretty dead set on that. I was going to go to law school. And after I graduated Vanderbilt, I decided to take off a year before getting to law school just to figure out what kind of law I wanted to practice. And I ended up getting an opportunity to work for a company that was founded by the CEO of Shopping.com out in California. And so I moved out to California just to go work sort of in the internet, whatever that meant, and fell in love with what sort of the internet represented and in particular what social networks could do. And so the original plan was to spend a year out in California. I'm now in my ninth year out here. I got really lucky.”

    2015-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · FF 013: 'Make Bets And Believe In What You Are Doing' with James Borow @ Shift & Brand Networks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source