Posts Tagged ‘Matt Cohler’
What’s Your Six Degrees of Separation to Start-Ups?
My Personal Six Degrees of Separation From The Social Networks
I started singing at 13 and was working with local producers in Massachusetts that later went on with their career to discover many of the boy bands and teen artists of the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. At the time NSYNC was popular, I had interviewed Justin Timberlake at the Billboard Music Awards while I worked for an internet start-up called Teen.com. Little did I know Justin would later portray Sean Parker in the movie, The Social Network, who developed Napster, Plaxo, and partnered with Facebook making millions at early age. However, it was Mark Zuckerberg that was lured by Sean to move to Silicon Valley after he was crafting something down the street close to my home on the Harvard campus that impacted people across the world.
Keri Singer's Six Degrees of Separation to Social Networks
A couple years go by where I had an opportunity to meet Ben Mezrich at a Boston bar and I had overheard from others his success writing Bringing Down the House. Last year, I came to find out about his follow up book called the Accidental Billionaires. This book is what The Social Network was used to create the screenplay for the movie. A few weeks ago on the Friday after the film’s premiere, I just happen to sit next to Ben and his friends at the Loews theatre in Boston to share the experience with him in the same aisle as my friends!
There were many parallels in the movie The Social Network that hit home between my personal experiences working at an internet start-up in my early twenties to my ability to grow the popularity of the site that was later sold to Alloy Media + Marketing. In the past, I’ve been fortunate to meet and interview many celebrities, as well as be the leader to help develop new creative ways to attract audiences and promote some of the top artists in the music business at that time. It was through my hard efforts socializing with entertainment and consumer good companies to creatively partner with Teen.com that helped the site to stand out to eventually be sold.
In 2006, I had reached out personally to Facebook in hopes to learn of a future position that fit my background. I received a personal response via email below from their early product developer Matt Cohler, who had been instrumental at LinkedIN. Sounds familiar 
Keri,
Thanks for your note. Your experience is great but unfortunately we don’t have any openings for anyone with your background. But we’ll definitely keep your information on file for the future.
Best wishes and happy new year,
Matt
SCVNGR: The Rise of Social Location Base Services
About a year ago in 2009, I met Seth Priebatsch, the founder of SCVNGR and his partner Michael Hagan when I learned about their new business in Boston. Seth had just participated in an organization where my friend is one of the managing partners at DreamIt Ventures. Seth had impressed them with a new concept in mobile gaming and later received funding from another local venture capitalist firm at Highland Capital. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to pitch some of my marketing ideas (ironically which included Justin Timberlake in my marketing proposal with his involvement producing the MTV scavenger hunt series The Phone and working with college campuses) in a cattle call interview session in their South End offices. It was a mixture of marketing professionals and students to “audition” with our proposals in hopes to earn the position. I knew the idea to create-your-own and/or participate in a scavenger hunt using your mobile phone would gain popularity as more people adopted the technology. Needless to say this past summer, SCVNGR was proud to partner with Facebook Places and is growing with their collaboration.
The New American Idols
I’ve been fortunate to come into contact with others early on in their careers to have a chance to meet, greet, and interview. Early on, I’ve learned of new technology, a new entertainer, or business idea on the horizon that coincidently becomes a success story. I’ve also blogged about things a year or two ago that are coming to fruition today. It’s been happening quite a bit in my life to discover talent, notice trends and make connections with those that I’ve crossed paths. Some others that I’ve met before they were STARS include Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Mark Wahlberg, NKOTB, Christina Aguilera and numerous others in show business. Whether it was the teen musical artists of ‘NSYNC, the people involved with Facebook early on, to now the days of SCVNGR making the headlines. I feel fortunate to have had those encounters and build quite a network of my own over the years. Hopefully, they will continue to be favorable when putting my own talents and innovation into action.
The new American idols aren’t just the celebrities as we’ve come to known, but as with the story of The Social Network, the new rock stars are the young people down the street with their talented programming skills, the neighbor developing an app, the social maven who is gaining a following, or the software developer that sells his/her ideas to become a success.
The “New Dorks” are today’s rocks stars of tomorrow. Check out this great video and presentation to have a good laugh. Today, I’m more interested to learn about the celebrities in our own backyard. The entrepreneurs and others at start-ups leading the path to making changes in their community and hopefully across the country, as the new stars are changing how we do business in the future.
