March 5, 2019 • 42 mins
We'd rate this one 5 stars: on this episode we're sitting down with the authentic, creative, and hysterical founders of The Infatuation, Chris Stang and Andrew Steinthal, for a masterclass on entrepreneurship. We learn what it takes to build a business like theirs, how they decided to become co-founders, and what growth looks like while staying true to your mission and values. The duo shares why they're becoming known in the ad industry more for the things they won't do, what it means to have good taste, how they got lucky and why they think they'll become the default for restaurant recommendations (and more?). Plus, the latest on EEEEEATSCON (LA, May 18-19) and developing their first original podcast.
This episode also marks a defining moment for the show - it's our last episode produced by our friends at Megaphone, fka Panoply. We're indebted to Jacob Weisberg, Matt Turck and Andy Bowers for giving us the opportunity to create this show and give a voice to a like-minded (advertising) community of practitioners who are also innovators, thought leaders, creators, disruptors, and more. Thank you to our Panoply colleagues and producers Laura Mayer, Cameron Drews, Laura Morris & Dana Bialek (dana.bialek@gmail.com) who helped us execute our vision. And a huge thanks to you, our listeners, who have urged us on (and the ad industry!) while joining in on the head nods and wtf's. While this is our last episode at Panoply, it is the beginning of what's next for ADLANDIA. Stay tuned to our Twitter account, @adlandiapodcast, for updates on what we're up to and where we're headed.
We'll talk to you soon, ADLANDIA. - L & A
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currenty and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:30):
This is the moment at Landia, a moment we haven't
talked about, a moment that's coming. This is our last
episode with Panoply. What do you think, Laura, I'm getting emotional.
Are you You're going to cry? It's been two years
of unbelievable conversations UM. So many incredible people that we've
(00:52):
had the opportunity to meet, meet and network with and
introduce to the community. UM. And speaking of the community,
I think it's been an unbelievable experience to get to
have conversations UM with so many listeners who have become
a part of the narrative with us and are taking
the ideas that they're hearing on the show and applying
(01:14):
it to their business and finding ways to advance the
industry forward as practitioners for practitioners and people who are
unwilling to say, yeah, just put it on the spreadsheet. Yeah,
that's just what I was told to do. The people
who are willing to question and take risk and say
(01:35):
what if, why not, but actually do it. And I
think that's kind of the magic of the Adlandia community.
While I'm getting emotional too, So with that, we have
the founders of the Infatuation, Andrew Steinthal and Chris Sang.
Andrew's obviously been on the show. They've had incredible growth
over the last year really since we spoke with him,
and it's interesting to see how their entrepreneurial spirit and
(01:57):
certainly ability to be scrappy and network and average all
of the assets that I think we value and turning
their business into a contender in the food space. What
I think that you and I find so compelling about
them and what's so different about them is what I
(02:17):
think Andrew talks a lot about is like, we're not
going to sell someone, We are actually going to partner
with people, and that means their relationships, their pitch, the
work that they end up doing is totally different. He's like,
we are idea guys that actually do things, build things,
(02:39):
make things. We execute, we know how to do it,
and that really is the spirit of I think at Landia,
the show and and the community of listeners that we have.
So with that, our last episode at the Pana Police Studios,
we'll be right back and we're back in the studio
(03:08):
with the co founders of The Infatuation Andrew Steinthal. Welcome
back to the show. Andrew. Hey, oh, thanks for having me.
We're not talking about the Knicks and what's up? Christang? Hi, Christang,
thanks for coming you guys. Why can't we talk about
the next? I love you talk about the next? All
the tweet about it a lot you do. Okay, we
don't have to talk about it. Let's just read tweets
this whole show. Yeah, that's a great idea. That could
(03:30):
be a new segment. Andrew, you came to visit us
roughly a year ago. Um, The Infatuation was in a
much different place, so much that this episode we actually
had to go through your comms team to get you
on the show. Listen, we're growing, which is a sign
that you've made it. Yeah, bureaucracy once you have breacracy
in place. That's how you know things are going really well.
We've got layers of approvals. Don't tell anyone are our
(03:53):
comms guy is also a really good friend of ours
and one of our first clients ever from a partnership
we did with Whole Foods back in the day, and
might love New Jersey more than I do. So talk
to us about what's happened since we last saw you.
You've had incredible growth, a big acquisition, some new news
coming out. Yeah so, I guess the last time you
(04:14):
were here, Andrew was pre these a GAT announcement. Yes, so, yeah,
so we bought the GAT from Google, which was an experience,
to say the least, for how much I can't talk
about He can't say that, But I do have a
question because one of the things that people didn't report
on it's like, how did you actually get it out
of the hands of Google. Like one of the things
that people were talking about was Google was sitting on
(04:35):
this asset right and no one really recognized it and
they didn't really do a lot with it. How did
you even go to have that negotiation? Like I think
listeners want to know, like what was the insight. How
did you even know Google had it? Were you just
doing research? Were you guys tracking this stuff? And then
who did you go and talk to it Google and say,
you know what, let's take it off your hands. So
(04:56):
I'd love to give myself and everybody a whole bunch
of credit about having this like savvy, like sit down
strategically and then how we're gonna go like knock on
Google's door. They emailed me on a Friday night, literally
and they said, we're going to sell this. Would you
be interested. I was in London with our team and
I just literally, you know, it's probably eleven in the
morning San Francisco time, but Friday at eight o'clock or
(05:18):
something like that at night in London, and I looked
at the email, and I was on my way and
to have dinner with our team there, and I just
like couldn't really even process it. So I just kinda
put the email down, had dinner, and then woke up
the next morning and got on the plane to come
home on Saturday and started just like thinking about, Okay,
if we did this, what would it look like and
what why would we do it? And it really over
(05:38):
time as we started talking more and more about it
just seemed like there was a big opportunity there, to
your point, to take advantage of maybe something that you know,
Google didn't take advantage of, and maybe we would be
very positioned to do something great with it just because
of our domain expertise. So how did they know about
you guys? I don't know. I think they literally like
looked me up. I'm not It was the weirdest set
(06:00):
of circumstances ever. Hi, Hi Chris. You don't know me,
but I'm Google and we own That was literally almost
word for word that you know, I'm not kidding. It
was like, hey, I think they said they found my
name in pitch book, which I still don't even know
what that is. Um, and they were like, yeah, we're
you know, we're going to sell it, and I just
thought you guys might be interested in So I actually
(06:21):
said to her, I was like, well, can I just
call you on Monday because this is way too much
for me to try and you know, digest from an email.
I mean, I don't know if she expected me to
respond back and be like yeah, well yeah right, but
uh yeah. And then so we just we just started
talking and it became apparent that they had a few
sort of priorities in mind, one of which being getting
a deal done quickly. Um, and I basically kind of
(06:42):
hit them and I was like, look, you know, Andre
and I are the board and we can get this
dawn on Friday if you want, and uh, and started
that process. But then, of course it took, you know,
six months to do the deal. So, so for our listeners,
give the high level pitch on why Infatuation was founded,
what it's mission and purposes, and how this acquisition may
(07:04):
change that. Yeah, so, I mean, what for for a
bunch of reasons. When we launched this thing in two
thousand and nine, I think what we were talking a
lot about and maybe realized, even though we didn't realize,
we realized it, was that there had been this big
shift in popular culture in the sense that people treated
dining differently, probably because of Food Network and food television,
(07:26):
probably because of early days social media like Facebook and
Twitter and people sharing photos, you know, mid let's call
it two thousand's there was this real shift in consumer
behavior around dining, where like everyone was suddenly interested in
food as a passion and not just a thing you
did before you went to a concert or whatever, you know,
and suddenly, you know, a night out with a date
or with a friend was burgers and beers and not
(07:47):
you know, French food and white tablecloths. And what we
felt like, for a variety of reasons, was that there
hadn't been a correlated shift with the sort of people
that are covering dining or you know, in restaurant discovery,
meaning that you know, The New York Times was still
kind of talking at a very high level about you know,
restaurant and the chef and the concept of the restaurant.
(08:07):
And we felt like, well, let's what if we created
something that was like, hey, I know you're trying to
figure out wheld have a first date in the Lower
East Side. Here's the best restaurant that fits into those parameters.
And so we started conceptualizing with them might look like.
And then there became this other layer about well, you know,
two thousand and nine when we started, Yelp was new
but big, and people were trying to figure that whole
(08:28):
thing out, and even then you felt like there was
just this like you know, missing major missing elements. Yeah,
people were like hated it, even though it wasn't even
that old, right, you just could tell that there was
going to be a lot of problems, you know, with
with the nature of user generated content, especially if there
weren't you know, smart ways to moderate it and smart
ways to sort of make sure that the content is
(08:48):
of a certain quality, um and then the other you know. Additionally,
there's like this whole idea of just making sense of
the fire hose, and that the Internet had produced food
blogs of all sorts of you know, shapes and sizes,
and you know, social media again was a place where
people would find opinions and see content. So we just
kind of wanted to create something that had a very
clear point of view that would help people make sense
(09:09):
of the fire hose. And then like you could agree
with us or disagree with us, but at least you
knew where we stood. And then we wanted to make
it funny and entertaining and all that other stuff. But
that was that is and was it wasn't is still
the thesis and the mission for the Infatuation is to
create situational restaurant recommendations for people and have a relatable
voice and be um, you know, have the tone that
(09:32):
sounds like you're talking to a really knowledgeable friend um,
and when we started thinking about how difficult that is
to scale, meaning that you know, you go city by
city and you hire teams of writers and editors and
you really have to you know, do your work a
certain way so that you're seeing as trustworthy and objective.
It's hard to become a really big company, and you know,
a global company quickly. So we we knew pretty immediately
(09:56):
that we were going to have to confront you GC,
user generated content, just because that's what scales. If you
create a platform, people fill with content that can get
really big, really quickly if you do it right. So,
you know, when we started talking about that, there was
always a concern about how do you you know, connect
user generated content of some sort with you know, with
the infatuations editorial voice and not muddy the waters. Well,
(10:19):
turns out the Gap was the first ever example of
user generated content in the in the dining space back
in when you know, Tim and Nina the founders had
their friends filling out surveys. So that was really the
light bulb moment with the acquisition was can we take
there's a Gap brand, which is arguably the most successful
brand in the restaurant discovery space. That's ever existed, take
(10:40):
it back to its roots of user generated content, and
create a platform by which we could then have both.
So we have u g C and editorial content. At
some point people can cross reference both. Gives us a
bigger percentage of the market. It seemed like a good idea.
So one of the things that Laura and I hear
a lot from our listeners is people talk about doing it,
(11:02):
but they never do it. You guys were colleagues right
in the music We were friends first and then colleagues
and then colleague. We never actually worked at the same company.
We worked at the same parent company, but we never
worked together. And so when you started talking about it,
what was and I don't believe in the moment, Like
(11:22):
I don't believe in having this moment. What were the
steps into just doing it, you know and just like
moving it forward? I mean, look, the day that we met,
we looked at each other and we're like, we're going
to do ship right like like like that was how
did you know? We juste corpse lights? Actually, but you know,
(11:45):
we we had a million different business ideas over the
course of time. You know, we spent ten years trying
to figure out what it was that we were going
to do together, you know, and at first it was
gonna be a record label. And once you get in
the music business and from the years two thousand two,
you know, to that and twelve, you realize that's not
the best idea, that that wasn't the best time to
do that. Um. We had a T shirt company at
one point, we made one T shirt, had one meeting, UM,
(12:08):
and we had a bunch of other ideas, and you know,
the doing part was never going to be the problem
with us. We were we were. The thing that kind
of brought us together is that we were both big
time doers of many things. You know, we really enjoyed
whatever it was, whether it was the music, whether it
was going out to eat, whether it was traveling, all
of it, you know. And because a lot of people
(12:29):
go to meet ups and networking events to try to
find like minded partners. So even just unpacking that I
think would be helpful for our listeners who are entrepreneurs
or thinking about ideas but are looking for a business
partner to sort of move forward with. Aside from twenty
three corps lights and being doers, like, what were the
things that you looked for in one another and how
(12:51):
you complimented each other to build a business. At first,
I don't I mean we just got lucky. I mean
we Yeah, that's that's true. Actually, it really I think
we were probably I think about this a lot because
I don't know. I actually don't know. But it's funny
because that was It's sometimes when you when you tell
these stories, you sort of tend to like embellish things
and be like, oh, we just knew that we were
(13:11):
going to be business partners and and usually that's bullshit.
But actually in our case, it was a true that
we we became friends because we were somehow certain we
were going to be really successful together in business somehow,
but I don't really know that either of us could
articulate it then now looking at how things have played out,
the reason we've been successful is because we're very different,
(13:32):
but we trust each other so like I have a
totally different skill set than Ander does and vice versa.
And like if you saw our day to day at
the office, like we hardly interact with each other because
we're both kind of off of our off in our
own world. But it's so fine because we know we're
both trying to do the same things, and then ultimately
like there's no there's none of that nervousness about like, well,
what's what's he up to over there? What we know
(13:54):
is he going to do the right thing in that meeting?
There's none of that there. So if you have business
partners that have this same skill set as you do,
or that you know, even if there's like an ounce
of uncertainty or distrust, it can be really, really really
hard to even make it three steps out of the gate.
So I think he's right, Andrew's right, and that we
did get lucky for sure because we just happened to
(14:16):
have very different skill sets. I think the thing that
isn't luck is that, for whatever reason, we recognized it,
and then once we did end up starting the infatuation,
that then, as it started to play out, became really
our biggest strength. I think you just gave tons of
advice to brands and marketing teams because there's this really
interesting thing about pairing people that are actually different but
(14:40):
have the same ethos. So often, you know, cmos and
brand leaders are looking for this really cohesive team, and
they're looking at attributes that are too similar, and there's
like something they're in the tension of being different. That's brilliant. Yeah,
it's really necessary. But the thing is is the craziest
(15:01):
part about all of this is that I feel bad
for people that are just sort of having a checklist
of you know, I know the feeling we wanted to
start something and wanting to start a business, and I
understand and totally relate to that, but it's I can't
imagine having like a checklist of being like, Okay, I
need an idea, and then I need a business partner,
and I need a business plan and having to sort
of like check those things off in order, because that's
never how it happens. It's always so messy, and you know,
(15:23):
you start doing one thing, then another thing happens, and
then something else comes up and you maybe chase an
opportunity or you don't. And that's the hardest part to tell. Like,
when you give people advice about how to start a
business or how to find a co founder, you can
definitely give them fundamental pieces of advice like this, but
so much of it's just like you got to just
start doing stuff and seeing what happens. So what was
the first thing that the infatuation did. Well, there's a.
(15:45):
There's a story around this that's really funny actually, because
we've been talking for a while about doing what ended
up becoming at the time called the Maculate Infatuation, and
the really the only reason we actually pulled the trigger
was that at the time I was single, and Andrew
wrote me into doing some like New York posts like bachelor. Now.
I haven't thought about it. I just found I know,
(16:06):
I I I blocked that on my mind obviously because
I just moved and I found the newspaper. I have
a bunch of them. It's hilarious. So he Andrew was like,
oh my god, you just gotta do this, because he
was just so excited about me embarrassing myself in New
York media. But so I was like, you know what, fine,
I'll do it as long as we launched this website
thing and I'll mention it in my blurb in the
(16:26):
New York Post. And that was the catalyst as to
why we finally did it, was it was like, alright, fine,
if I'm gonna do this embarrassing thing, give me something
out of it. And that was what happened. Wait, so
what was the track like four people? I don't know,
I really don't know, but that that was it that
And that's the thing is it's always that's the hardest
step is always just saying cool or to do it.
(16:46):
Because once we started doing it, whatever whatever we got
from that New York Post thing, which was nothing, didn't matter.
What we did though, was we had this thing that
we could now put into a newsletter that Andrew put.
You know, we literally, between the two of us, put
every person we knew on this email only send it out.
And that was the beginning of the whole thing. And
we're and look at our careers in the music business
came into play in a huge way. You know, I
was a publicist, Chris was a marketing guy, and like,
(17:08):
we used our skill sets to drive this thing. Attributes
that I love most about the both of you, and
I think it comes through very clearly when you partner
with you to do business or the way you talk
about your brand is the sort of scrappiness and the
leveraging of a network and the human connection and authenticity
that you both bring to the marketplace, which is so refreshing.
(17:31):
How are like, what do those skill sets look like
for the both of you? And then how are you
bringing that into your company with the employees that you're hiring. Sure,
I mean, look, are as a pr guy in music, right, Like,
you get handed a bunch of crappy bands a lot
of the time, and you've got to hustle your ass
off to try and make do something, find it, find
something that could potentially work. But then all of a
(17:53):
sudden you get one or two good ones and you're like, oh,
this is you know you and you can feel the
audience talk back to you right like immediately, and that
and that that's the kind of thing that happened with
us where we put this out into the world that
you know, we weren't sure it could have been a
not so great band, or it could have been somebody,
you know, one that people wanted to hear more from.
And immediately we here, we you know, felt this poll.
(18:14):
And once we felt the poll from the public, we
were like, let's go and we kind of you know,
took this. We have. One of the things that attracted
each other to one another is just the drive part
of it, right. We were both really determined to be successful,
to win, to build something, to whatever it was within
our careers or whatever we were going to build. And
once we started rolling. That was that was how we
(18:36):
went and then and that really helped push us into
you know what ultimately became leaving our jobs five years
later and building a company. And I think that has
always been the fundamentals of what we are. We we
we want it badly, and we want to do it
our way, and we want to be honest and real
and transparent, and you know that's you know, I hired
(18:59):
another public assists. You know, I'm I run our sales,
I'm our c r O and whatever. I've got a
I brought another publicist in that we have worked with
in the music business. Her names Savannah, and she's crushing
and sales. She's never done sales in her life neither,
and I, you know, and so like, I don't know
what people are supposed to be doing in these roles.
I've just been figuring it out along the way and
(19:20):
being pretty real with the brands and just trying to
create real human relationships with people and expose them to
the infatuation in our audience and all this cool stuff
from culture that we can bring to the table for them.
How many brand partnerships have you done today? You know,
we've probably worked with over a hundred and fifty brands
or so. Wow, what does success look like? Success looks
(19:42):
like this, the infatuation existing forever, the inpetuition, and now's
a gap, you know, being the default for restaurant recommendations
everywhere forever and building a really sustainable successful business? What that?
What eventually evolves? And how that? How we get there?
I don't know? But how are brands finding you? I
(20:02):
was just I just set off Mike. I was telling
a brand about you today and they're like, good, heard
of them, Please please keep doing that. Well, it takes
a look that That's how brands find us. People who
know tell people or people there is generally one person
inside an organization that's like sees the stuff we're doing
and it's like I want to work with them, or
like I spend all of my time trying to find
(20:23):
those people, unearthed those people. You know, our business is
built on integrated brand partnerships, right, Like we have a
you know what Chris was talking about, right, we have
we have this audience that we've developed a real personal
human relationship with that. You know that we feed social
capital to that. We are you know, we're credible, Like
we pay for our own meals. We can't you can't
(20:44):
buy the infatuation stamp of approval, right, and like we
are really selective with who writes for us on the
editorial side. But at the same time, and like we're
incredibly selective and proactive with what brands we work with.
You know, we only want to work with brands that
fit our brand and that our audience will feel like
there's an authentic connection to Like we can't you know,
(21:05):
we can't go work sorry McDonald's, but we can't. Like
we will we will lose the credibility and connection to
the audience. But there's another key part of this though,
which is that we're not building businesses that people who
advertise with you know, digital media companies are used to write,
So like, we don't produce content for volume sake, We
just don't do it because that's not what we're building.
(21:26):
We're not building a media company. We're building a resource
that if you need to find a restaurant on a
Saturday night, you come to and you find the restaurant,
you get and you get out, you're done. Like we don't.
It's not about getting you to consume as much content
as possible. Actually, we actually have to think about even
though we measure ourselves differently, because maybe it's not a
bad thing if somebody comes to our site, spends three
minutes on it and finds a restaurant and the leads.
The interesting thing that you're bringing up is a conversation
(21:48):
that I think is getting more attention in the marketplace.
Is the new standards or need to evolve the standards
of measurement in this industry? Right Like, we've had a
ton of conversations with different entrepreneurs and founders and media
company executives about measuring things like overnight ratings on television,
click through rate, volume of impressions. You talk about the
(22:08):
infatuation being around forever. What does that look like in
these conversations and brands are coming in, how are you
getting them to understand that the value of what our
community is bringing doesn't fit in that Excel spreadsheet. This
is why we do so many events because when you
literally put on a food festival and in New York City,
it sells out and then tickets are going for three
(22:28):
times face value on StubHub the day after it sells out,
and then people show up and there's a thousand people
outside the venue before the doors open, and they're going
nuts when they get inside. Like that's how you look
at brand partners or whoever, and you go, this is
it and that's that's the thing. Is we end up
intil get it. Yeah, it's not hard like when you
see it like we there's a famously legendary man named
(22:50):
Chef Gordon who's now one of our advisors. He's read
his book or watch his documentary it's called they called
it's called Superman's the documentary. And he's a he's basically
the man that's responsible for creating a celebrity chef. You
could do a whole podcast with him. We'll line that
up someday. But he's a legend and and he we
basically paid him to speak at our first food festival, right,
And he's this guy that literally like created Emerald and
(23:11):
that was like where it started. And then man, no,
because he the way he looks at it is he
brought he brought food culture in people's homes in a
way that it wasn't existing before, right, Julia Child, Sure,
but like you know, he did it in a different
way and and anyway, so he's this like legend and
we had basically told him. I was on a phone
call with him prepping him to come to this thing
and speak, and um. He came, and you know, he
(23:34):
was like, yeah, I get it. I think I get it.
After we were sort of talking about what we are
and all that stuff, and he came to the festival.
He hung out all day, he was talking to people
and just like having a great time. And then he
emailed me the next day. He had just gotten to
Vegas and he emailed me and he was like, I
just keep thinking about what I saw there, and I'm
so happy because it makes me realize that this still exists.
That like young people in and around the food community,
(23:57):
they're they're passionate about your thing in an ext this
and I'm so happy about that. And so, you know,
that's what that story repeats itself over and over again
when people who don't know much about us show up
in our world, especially in that sort of in real
life environment, because you just look around and you see
a really engaged community of people spending a lot of
time just hanging out with each other and sharing like
(24:19):
my you know, they're like minded people sharing experiences and um,
and the fact that we can have them lined up
around the block at you know, a stadium in Forest
Hills tells a story that's really hard to tell with
you know, stuff that fits in a spreadsheet. If you
don't know when you go to a media partner what
they do well and what they don't do well. We
want to buy the thing that is not for sale well.
(24:40):
And also and it's and it's also the truth of
what makes that company important. It makes it valuable. I
don't want right, like, don't give me the frill, give
me the meat. Just to add to that point, like so,
and this requires the industry, and I'd be curious to
know how you're going on and pitching your unique I
p you right, because so many publishers walk in and
(25:02):
the first thing that you see in a presentation is,
here's how many people we reach? Like why are you
competing on scale? Because if I want scale, there's probably
two platforms that I'm going to to get it. It's
a commodity and scales. But the thing that you don't
get to so many times in the presentation is what
is the unique thing that I can't get anywhere else
(25:25):
in the market. Sell me that. The problem is all
of this takes discipline that many companies can't afford it,
Like it's either they can't afford it because they don't
have enough money to take this sort of like you know,
we're gonna put our stake in the ground and this
is what we're gonna do, and you're gonna buy it
or not until you realize, Like we're lucky enough. We've had,
you know, investors and partners that have agreed with us
(25:45):
that you do it a certain way and build quality
over time because we say no to all kinds of things,
you know, like that we I talk about a lot
that like we're probably more defined by the stuff we
don't do than the stuff that we do. Like what's
the stuff you don't do? Digital video for the sake
of an advertiser podcast because it's a hot it's a
hot sector. You know, how many digitals, how many mistakes
have been made in digital media and publishing because people
(26:07):
start creating content for what they think advertisers want, not
because they think an end user or reader wants it.
I mean, I think we've seen the headlines for how
that ends exactly, But but we're still there because the
brands are still r fpeeing about, Hey, we want, while
we want our video views, well you know that, like
most of those are bullshit, so cool. You can have them,
not with us, but you can probably get them somewhere.
But do you want to actually watch someone and interact
(26:29):
with your product in a meaningful way. If you do,
we can talk. We're marketing partners and executors. We don't
fit in the spreadsheet at all. We can play in
the spreadsheet, but if you don't know who we are
and you just look at the spreadsheet, you're not going
to understand why to work with. There's no context. There's
no context. So for us, we are very proactive working
trying to work brand direct right. So we work with
(26:49):
American Express, we work with Don Julio over Ago, we
work with smart Water, inside a Coca Cola and some
of the other brands there, um and and we're super
proactive with building long term partnerships with brands that align
well to our values and that are trying to reach
our audience. You know, the kind of audience that we reach,
(27:10):
which is the you know, young influencer, but real influencer,
not like nonsense marketing term influencer. People in their circles
who are influential right, the first ones in who really care,
Because ultimately, if you care and you spend the time
figuring out where you're gonna eat, right, you also care
about what you're wearing, what car you're driving, what you're
(27:32):
listening to. Literally everything good taste is good taste. And
you know we are we we have an audience full
of people with good taste, and you know, it's really
hard to reach those people too, and so much of
what we do is bringing those people out into real life.
Last year we did sixty five events across all across
the country and you know, into the world in London
as well, and you know we're we are able to
(27:54):
cultivate localized audiences in a lot of different pockets that
brand can interact with. Brands have goals, they have a
whole narrative they want to ladder up to. We can
be a great partner to help them do that. But
it's a lot easier for us to do that on
the front side of the RFP than on the back.
You've got a couple of announcements we've heard that you
want to share on the show. Yeah, sure, so, um
(28:17):
we do a food festival. I'm not sure if everyone's
aware but now you are called eats Con and it
it happens in both New York and Los Angeles. Um.
The Los Angeles Festival is coming up this year on
May eighth and nineteen, and the most important part of
that little phrase, there's the end. Uh. This will be
the first time we're doing two days. UM. So we're
(28:39):
scaling it up in Los Angeles, which is really really
exciting and UM just sort of you know, building on
what we started two years ago in that market, which
is the whole concept is really that you know, as
we built this massive audience of young people around the
brand and around the content, we realized that our audience
and really probably an even larger audience of young pool
(29:00):
who are social media savvy and you know, the people
that walk around this planet between the age of twenty
and you know, thirty five, they're not going to like
the New York City Food and Wine Festival because that's
just not how they live their lives and it's not
what necessarily what they're looking to do, which is dropping
eight hundred fifty dollars for a weekend past to go
like eat a little tiny bite of pursudo and you know,
(29:20):
catch a celebrity chef, you know, for thirty seconds. So
we wanted to build something that felt more community driven,
that felt more uh focused around the restaurants. We talked
about it being like a music festival, but were the
restaurants of the headliners. Um, And we programmed with with
speakers and we have bands and it's an awesome day
and now two days. But it's really an interesting part
of our business that's growing. And it was a you know,
(29:43):
an example of us moving into another space that's adjacent
to us but feels very related to what we do.
We just saw big white space and there's other spaces
like that that I think we're gonna move in too
soon as well, but um, potentially someday. But there's stuff
in the food food space that's still wide open that
we want to go gobble up. But there are other
(30:04):
sort of lifestyle things out there that are not being
as well addressed. I think we'll probably chase those things
down first. There's a big hole in travel. I don't
know that we're going to jump right into travel, but
there's a big, massive hole there. We know that for
a fact because we get people hitting us up all
the time being like hey, I read the Rome recommendations,
but where do I stay? Text tracks are texting platform.
We could ask all kinds of questions that have nothing
to do with restaurants inside of that platform because people
(30:25):
trust us, so they'll start asking us, yeah, dating, what
should I watch? I mean people literally hit up that
platform and ask us what should they be watching while
they order delivery or something like that. So there's there's
a bunch of interesting stuff. Is I want someday for
us to be able to serve people in the way
that we do around restaurant recommendations with and help them
make other decisions. I don't really know what that means yet,
maybe a recommendation brand as opposed to brand. It's like
(30:49):
a little bit of it just down to helping people
make decisions, you know, Like we use this we talk
about social capital, right, there's that there's a great deal
of social capital and being the person in your group
of friends or in your family who can pick a
great rest staurant or great bottle of wine, order a
bottle of wine off wine list, all of those things,
so you know, and that's what's actually way more powerful
than just being like, yeah, we give people restaurant advice.
(31:10):
We give them the social capital that makes them more
important in the office, better at dating, all these things
that are really important to people in their lives. So
you guys had a pretty good investment from someone in Hollywood.
We did, and I assume that everything you're talking about
kind of head nods to a vision that you guys
have that they bought off on. Can you talk about
(31:32):
that at all? Yeah, um so, yeah, we we just
raised a bunch of money from Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had
the movie executive best known for his uh role in
founding dream Works. But um, he's obviously a visionary and
you know, he has done a lot of amazing stuff
in his career. Um. But one thing that apparently he
wanted to do is to raise a big venture fund
(31:53):
and to start investing in businesses. Um. So he built
a team which was for us very interesting and felt
are in line with the kind of business of the
world building which is the main partners. They're kind of
split between content and media executives from DreamWorks and Disney.
This woman and Daily who ran DreamWorks next to Jeffrey
for a very long time. Um, and they have an
(32:14):
l a office of some other people that are just
brilliant and come from that world. And then there's a
team in San Francisco that is UM, led by a
guy named Suja Joshua who was the CFO at drop Box,
and a bunch of other drop Box people and sort
of a more tech focused UM point of view. So
those two things together felt very relevant to what we're building,
which is, you know, a great product with great content
(32:35):
inside of it UM. But it was also for us
exciting to think about partnering with some of that understands
culture and understands how to storytell and understands how brands
matter and how you know, what we're building ultimately is
a big brand that people need to trust UM and
need to find useful and indispensable to their daily lives.
So we've been this is our third round raising money,
(32:55):
and we've been very fortunate, you know, throughout the past
of having rate investors that you know, really understood our
vision and understood the timeline and understood that we were
gonna do things a different way than maybe conventional wisdom
says we should, based on whatever bucket you want to
put us in. But UM, so this bigger round, the
series A, we were pretty nervous, like can you find
those same kind of people with that same kind of
(33:17):
patience and that same outlook on the world when they're
writing a really big check. And I don't know that
the answer would have been yes, have we not found
wonder Co which is the name of the fund and
Jeffrey Nan and suj So it's early days. We just
closed the deal in August, and you know, are starting
off a big, ambitious year together. But so far it's
been great and we have exciting plans and they definitely,
(33:40):
you know, that was the thing is every time we'd
sit down and talk, they definitely agreed and believed in
the same things we did, which is, let's go out,
let's build a really big business, but let's build it
the right way and understand that these things take time.
That you can't just build something that can change culture
within two years. It's gonna take ten. So Andrew, you're
gonna tell us about a big partnership that you guys
(34:01):
are doing and that you're super excited. We're really excited
we're doing We are We US and T Brand Studio
from the New York Times UM collaboratively are doing a
podcast with BMW. I know, you know, look, we were
the infatuation as a brand has never done a podcast before,
(34:21):
original content, original content, not at and a story about
cities and looking through the lens of restaurants and how
they impact the culture and how you know they drive
different parts of different cities. Um. And it's it's just
been a really really interesting experience, definitely a unique experience
to work alongside the Times to do this, you know,
(34:44):
a leap of faith by BMW to do something different.
You know, that's all came from from them being very
interested in having partners collaboratively come to them with ideas.
What's the name of the show, it's called the Special.
What was your role in in the in the concert Upton,
in the production, like what was the infatuations for all?
You know, The New York Times is definitely leading the
charge on the production of the podcast, right, that is
(35:07):
what they do. Um. So they're they're they're driving that.
But you know, we were very instrumental in the whole
like conceptualizing of the idea. And then we have a
whole plan that we're rolling out that has some really
interesting content on top of Instagram. Using BMW's with our
writers in different markets. We're producing a big event in
(35:27):
l A. That is going to be really fun that
you know, that's part of our part of the deal.
So very cool, interesting party, be fun to see how
it plays out. Before we let you go, since we
are recording here in New York, must go to restaurant
off the top of your head, go I still for Charles.
(35:48):
If people haven't been there yet, that place there, it's
it's hard to get into. It's in the West Village.
But can we say we know you. It doesn't work,
it doesn't. We don't pull those we don't pull those levers. Yeah,
there's we don't have relations, Chris. There's a great Vietnamese
restaurant green Point called D and D that's really amazing
(36:11):
and just like one of my favorite spots right now
before we go is our game killed by d I y,
can it all be Knicks related? Come on, come on,
I'm so over it. I would definitely buy them somehow.
I always see your tweets because my entire Twitter existence
is is sports Twitter. That's what I must have no
(36:31):
life because you're always at the top of my feed
because you engage, you just don't don't like them, then
you won't see so you're buying the Knicks. I'm gonna
buy the Knicks. I'm gonna kill the traditional media agency model.
Um more on that another time. Yeah, And what am
I doing now buying things? No? Doing yourself? Builds a
(36:54):
printer that actually works. I hate printers and like every
time I need one, it just doesn't work. They all break.
I know the first time playing, first time playing is exciting.
Kill What would you kill? Twitter? Ahead? What's because of
your next It's because literally I'm just getting to this
point where like I literally cannot just watch people take
(37:14):
hot Sideline takes on like every topic in the world
and always be wrong and always be just like riling people.
Like it's We've got to find a better way to
have discourse. Because it's a great platform. I think it's awesome,
but like that, there's some crazy ship going on on
Twitter that we could probably just like do without. Do
you see the Jack Harris Swisher live tweet interview and
tried to follow it, But it's like one of those
(37:35):
things that I'm like, now my blood pressure is high
and I need to go like have a glass of
wine to just calm down, Like I swear, maybe I'll
just kill my phone. Maybe it's just my phone. I
don't want to kill in another company. I'll just kill
my phone, all right, all right, good? What would you
buy another phone? What would you do yourself? Um? Doing myself?
I would love to build something that actually like actually
build something with my hand, like build a piece of
(37:57):
furniture or something. What would you make I don't know,
like a I mean, based on the amount of money
that like Scandinavian style chairs seemed to sell for. I'd
probably throw some sheep skin on a modern piece of
wood and start a whole new business or something time
within reach. If you don't know about the infatuation, go
check it out after listening to this show, Andrew Chris,
(38:19):
always a pleasure. Congratulations on all your success. If people
want to build an event, a partnership, or just figure
out where they need to go eat tomorrow night, how
did they get in touch with you? Andrew? H M
O E Y bring it on. I won't see you.
You will never see it because he won't have a phone.
He's on t he's on his way to buy any one. Alright, guys,
thank you, thank you. So I could go like forever
(38:46):
that That conversation I think left me thinking about some
of the key insights that Chris particularly was hitting on
around social capital and not being willing to comprom mise
your core values for add dollars and being comfortable and
saying like you want to come and engage a community
(39:07):
and create an experience that is going to drive lifetime
value or long lasting relationships with our audience. Let's talk. However,
if you're looking for scale and some sort of commoditized format,
like we're not for you, And I think what that
will do for their business is indicative of where they're
headed and the acquisitions they're making, the investments that they're taking,
(39:29):
and thinking about how it stands up in the current marketplace.
And I think what we've seen over the last few
months is that people were chasing scale, which he was like,
it's a myth. One thing we didn't ask that we
should have asked again, we could have gone on for
four hours, was how long is your pipeline? Like how
long how long does it take to get someone to
actually buy and do an activation and how long does
(39:50):
it take for them to get comfortable with that sale?
Which I think you know, so many people are quick
to close the sale, but it as you get into
the weeds, of the project, you start to realize that
maybe there's not a whole lot of alignment here. I
think that's a great point, Laura, and I think that Uh.
Andrew also, what he was saying is like, we do
(40:12):
it in front, in the process, in front of the work.
The process in front of the work is like, let's
get to know each other. I want to understand you.
What are you really trying to do, who are you
really trying to speak with? And what are you what's
your equity? Right? And those details are not in an RFP,
(40:33):
not in the standard RFP right. And they even said, yeah,
we get our FPS, but the way they are handling that,
the way they think about the RFP, totally different. Infatuation.
They're going places and so are we? So are we? So?
Speaking of that, we are going to take a brief
hiatus and we will be announcing shortly on our Twitter
(40:54):
at Atlantia podcast where we will be set up next
and how you can join us. We must thank all
of our friends and family at Panically for giving us
this incredible platform and opportunity, in particular Jacob Weisberg, Matt Turk,
Andy Bauer. We have to thank our most incredible production
partners who have stuck with us to make the show
(41:16):
what it is. So big. Thank you to Laura Mayor,
Cameron Drew's, Laura Morris, and our own Dana Bolic. The
producers we've worked with and we've had the opportunity to
get to know are phenomenal. You guys should reach out
to them because they know what's happening in the audio space.
They can come in, they can help your brand, they
can liaise with the studios. They're amazing, and we are
(41:39):
even going to give you Dana's email in the description
of the show so you can get a hold of
her because she is one of the best so Atlantia.
We will be back, not in two weeks, but soon enough.
Thank you so much for sticking with us. We can't
wait to share what's next. See you saying full disclosure,
(42:00):
Our opinions are our own.
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currenty and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:30):
This is the moment at Landia, a moment we haven't
talked about, a moment that's coming. This is our last
episode with Panoply. What do you think, Laura, I'm getting emotional.
Are you You're going to cry? It's been two years
of unbelievable conversations UM. So many incredible people that we've
(00:52):
had the opportunity to meet, meet and network with and
introduce to the community. UM. And speaking of the community,
I think it's been an unbelievable experience to get to
have conversations UM with so many listeners who have become
a part of the narrative with us and are taking
the ideas that they're hearing on the show and applying
(01:14):
it to their business and finding ways to advance the
industry forward as practitioners for practitioners and people who are
unwilling to say, yeah, just put it on the spreadsheet. Yeah,
that's just what I was told to do. The people
who are willing to question and take risk and say
(01:35):
what if, why not, but actually do it. And I
think that's kind of the magic of the Adlandia community.
While I'm getting emotional too, So with that, we have
the founders of the Infatuation, Andrew Steinthal and Chris Sang.
Andrew's obviously been on the show. They've had incredible growth
over the last year really since we spoke with him,
and it's interesting to see how their entrepreneurial spirit and
(01:57):
certainly ability to be scrappy and network and average all
of the assets that I think we value and turning
their business into a contender in the food space. What
I think that you and I find so compelling about
them and what's so different about them is what I
(02:17):
think Andrew talks a lot about is like, we're not
going to sell someone, We are actually going to partner
with people, and that means their relationships, their pitch, the
work that they end up doing is totally different. He's like,
we are idea guys that actually do things, build things,
(02:39):
make things. We execute, we know how to do it,
and that really is the spirit of I think at Landia,
the show and and the community of listeners that we have.
So with that, our last episode at the Pana Police Studios,
we'll be right back and we're back in the studio
(03:08):
with the co founders of The Infatuation Andrew Steinthal. Welcome
back to the show. Andrew. Hey, oh, thanks for having me.
We're not talking about the Knicks and what's up? Christang? Hi, Christang,
thanks for coming you guys. Why can't we talk about
the next? I love you talk about the next? All
the tweet about it a lot you do. Okay, we
don't have to talk about it. Let's just read tweets
this whole show. Yeah, that's a great idea. That could
(03:30):
be a new segment. Andrew, you came to visit us
roughly a year ago. Um, The Infatuation was in a
much different place, so much that this episode we actually
had to go through your comms team to get you
on the show. Listen, we're growing, which is a sign
that you've made it. Yeah, bureaucracy once you have breacracy
in place. That's how you know things are going really well.
We've got layers of approvals. Don't tell anyone are our
(03:53):
comms guy is also a really good friend of ours
and one of our first clients ever from a partnership
we did with Whole Foods back in the day, and
might love New Jersey more than I do. So talk
to us about what's happened since we last saw you.
You've had incredible growth, a big acquisition, some new news
coming out. Yeah so, I guess the last time you
(04:14):
were here, Andrew was pre these a GAT announcement. Yes, so, yeah,
so we bought the GAT from Google, which was an experience,
to say the least, for how much I can't talk
about He can't say that, But I do have a
question because one of the things that people didn't report
on it's like, how did you actually get it out
of the hands of Google. Like one of the things
that people were talking about was Google was sitting on
(04:35):
this asset right and no one really recognized it and
they didn't really do a lot with it. How did
you even go to have that negotiation? Like I think
listeners want to know, like what was the insight. How
did you even know Google had it? Were you just
doing research? Were you guys tracking this stuff? And then
who did you go and talk to it Google and say,
you know what, let's take it off your hands. So
(04:56):
I'd love to give myself and everybody a whole bunch
of credit about having this like savvy, like sit down
strategically and then how we're gonna go like knock on
Google's door. They emailed me on a Friday night, literally
and they said, we're going to sell this. Would you
be interested. I was in London with our team and
I just literally, you know, it's probably eleven in the
morning San Francisco time, but Friday at eight o'clock or
(05:18):
something like that at night in London, and I looked
at the email, and I was on my way and
to have dinner with our team there, and I just
like couldn't really even process it. So I just kinda
put the email down, had dinner, and then woke up
the next morning and got on the plane to come
home on Saturday and started just like thinking about, Okay,
if we did this, what would it look like and
what why would we do it? And it really over
(05:38):
time as we started talking more and more about it
just seemed like there was a big opportunity there, to
your point, to take advantage of maybe something that you know,
Google didn't take advantage of, and maybe we would be
very positioned to do something great with it just because
of our domain expertise. So how did they know about
you guys? I don't know. I think they literally like
looked me up. I'm not It was the weirdest set
(06:00):
of circumstances ever. Hi, Hi Chris. You don't know me,
but I'm Google and we own That was literally almost
word for word that you know, I'm not kidding. It
was like, hey, I think they said they found my
name in pitch book, which I still don't even know
what that is. Um, and they were like, yeah, we're
you know, we're going to sell it, and I just
thought you guys might be interested in So I actually
(06:21):
said to her, I was like, well, can I just
call you on Monday because this is way too much
for me to try and you know, digest from an email.
I mean, I don't know if she expected me to
respond back and be like yeah, well yeah right, but
uh yeah. And then so we just we just started
talking and it became apparent that they had a few
sort of priorities in mind, one of which being getting
a deal done quickly. Um, and I basically kind of
(06:42):
hit them and I was like, look, you know, Andre
and I are the board and we can get this
dawn on Friday if you want, and uh, and started
that process. But then, of course it took, you know,
six months to do the deal. So, so for our listeners,
give the high level pitch on why Infatuation was founded,
what it's mission and purposes, and how this acquisition may
(07:04):
change that. Yeah, so, I mean, what for for a
bunch of reasons. When we launched this thing in two
thousand and nine, I think what we were talking a
lot about and maybe realized, even though we didn't realize,
we realized it, was that there had been this big
shift in popular culture in the sense that people treated
dining differently, probably because of Food Network and food television,
(07:26):
probably because of early days social media like Facebook and
Twitter and people sharing photos, you know, mid let's call
it two thousand's there was this real shift in consumer
behavior around dining, where like everyone was suddenly interested in
food as a passion and not just a thing you
did before you went to a concert or whatever, you know,
and suddenly, you know, a night out with a date
or with a friend was burgers and beers and not
(07:47):
you know, French food and white tablecloths. And what we
felt like, for a variety of reasons, was that there
hadn't been a correlated shift with the sort of people
that are covering dining or you know, in restaurant discovery,
meaning that you know, The New York Times was still
kind of talking at a very high level about you know,
restaurant and the chef and the concept of the restaurant.
(08:07):
And we felt like, well, let's what if we created
something that was like, hey, I know you're trying to
figure out wheld have a first date in the Lower
East Side. Here's the best restaurant that fits into those parameters.
And so we started conceptualizing with them might look like.
And then there became this other layer about well, you know,
two thousand and nine when we started, Yelp was new
but big, and people were trying to figure that whole
(08:28):
thing out, and even then you felt like there was
just this like you know, missing major missing elements. Yeah,
people were like hated it, even though it wasn't even
that old, right, you just could tell that there was
going to be a lot of problems, you know, with
with the nature of user generated content, especially if there
weren't you know, smart ways to moderate it and smart
ways to sort of make sure that the content is
(08:48):
of a certain quality, um and then the other you know. Additionally,
there's like this whole idea of just making sense of
the fire hose, and that the Internet had produced food
blogs of all sorts of you know, shapes and sizes,
and you know, social media again was a place where
people would find opinions and see content. So we just
kind of wanted to create something that had a very
clear point of view that would help people make sense
(09:09):
of the fire hose. And then like you could agree
with us or disagree with us, but at least you
knew where we stood. And then we wanted to make
it funny and entertaining and all that other stuff. But
that was that is and was it wasn't is still
the thesis and the mission for the Infatuation is to
create situational restaurant recommendations for people and have a relatable
voice and be um, you know, have the tone that
(09:32):
sounds like you're talking to a really knowledgeable friend um,
and when we started thinking about how difficult that is
to scale, meaning that you know, you go city by
city and you hire teams of writers and editors and
you really have to you know, do your work a
certain way so that you're seeing as trustworthy and objective.
It's hard to become a really big company, and you know,
a global company quickly. So we we knew pretty immediately
(09:56):
that we were going to have to confront you GC,
user generated content, just because that's what scales. If you
create a platform, people fill with content that can get
really big, really quickly if you do it right. So,
you know, when we started talking about that, there was
always a concern about how do you you know, connect
user generated content of some sort with you know, with
the infatuations editorial voice and not muddy the waters. Well,
(10:19):
turns out the Gap was the first ever example of
user generated content in the in the dining space back
in when you know, Tim and Nina the founders had
their friends filling out surveys. So that was really the
light bulb moment with the acquisition was can we take
there's a Gap brand, which is arguably the most successful
brand in the restaurant discovery space. That's ever existed, take
(10:40):
it back to its roots of user generated content, and
create a platform by which we could then have both.
So we have u g C and editorial content. At
some point people can cross reference both. Gives us a
bigger percentage of the market. It seemed like a good idea.
So one of the things that Laura and I hear
a lot from our listeners is people talk about doing it,
(11:02):
but they never do it. You guys were colleagues right
in the music We were friends first and then colleagues
and then colleague. We never actually worked at the same company.
We worked at the same parent company, but we never
worked together. And so when you started talking about it,
what was and I don't believe in the moment, Like
(11:22):
I don't believe in having this moment. What were the
steps into just doing it, you know and just like
moving it forward? I mean, look, the day that we met,
we looked at each other and we're like, we're going
to do ship right like like like that was how
did you know? We juste corpse lights? Actually, but you know,
(11:45):
we we had a million different business ideas over the
course of time. You know, we spent ten years trying
to figure out what it was that we were going
to do together, you know, and at first it was
gonna be a record label. And once you get in
the music business and from the years two thousand two,
you know, to that and twelve, you realize that's not
the best idea, that that wasn't the best time to
do that. Um. We had a T shirt company at
one point, we made one T shirt, had one meeting, UM,
(12:08):
and we had a bunch of other ideas, and you know,
the doing part was never going to be the problem
with us. We were we were. The thing that kind
of brought us together is that we were both big
time doers of many things. You know, we really enjoyed
whatever it was, whether it was the music, whether it
was going out to eat, whether it was traveling, all
of it, you know. And because a lot of people
(12:29):
go to meet ups and networking events to try to
find like minded partners. So even just unpacking that I
think would be helpful for our listeners who are entrepreneurs
or thinking about ideas but are looking for a business
partner to sort of move forward with. Aside from twenty
three corps lights and being doers, like, what were the
things that you looked for in one another and how
(12:51):
you complimented each other to build a business. At first,
I don't I mean we just got lucky. I mean
we Yeah, that's that's true. Actually, it really I think
we were probably I think about this a lot because
I don't know. I actually don't know. But it's funny
because that was It's sometimes when you when you tell
these stories, you sort of tend to like embellish things
and be like, oh, we just knew that we were
(13:11):
going to be business partners and and usually that's bullshit.
But actually in our case, it was a true that
we we became friends because we were somehow certain we
were going to be really successful together in business somehow,
but I don't really know that either of us could
articulate it then now looking at how things have played out,
the reason we've been successful is because we're very different,
(13:32):
but we trust each other so like I have a
totally different skill set than Ander does and vice versa.
And like if you saw our day to day at
the office, like we hardly interact with each other because
we're both kind of off of our off in our
own world. But it's so fine because we know we're
both trying to do the same things, and then ultimately
like there's no there's none of that nervousness about like, well,
what's what's he up to over there? What we know
(13:54):
is he going to do the right thing in that meeting?
There's none of that there. So if you have business
partners that have this same skill set as you do,
or that you know, even if there's like an ounce
of uncertainty or distrust, it can be really, really really
hard to even make it three steps out of the gate.
So I think he's right, Andrew's right, and that we
did get lucky for sure because we just happened to
(14:16):
have very different skill sets. I think the thing that
isn't luck is that, for whatever reason, we recognized it,
and then once we did end up starting the infatuation,
that then, as it started to play out, became really
our biggest strength. I think you just gave tons of
advice to brands and marketing teams because there's this really
interesting thing about pairing people that are actually different but
(14:40):
have the same ethos. So often, you know, cmos and
brand leaders are looking for this really cohesive team, and
they're looking at attributes that are too similar, and there's
like something they're in the tension of being different. That's brilliant. Yeah,
it's really necessary. But the thing is is the craziest
(15:01):
part about all of this is that I feel bad
for people that are just sort of having a checklist
of you know, I know the feeling we wanted to
start something and wanting to start a business, and I
understand and totally relate to that, but it's I can't
imagine having like a checklist of being like, Okay, I
need an idea, and then I need a business partner,
and I need a business plan and having to sort
of like check those things off in order, because that's
never how it happens. It's always so messy, and you know,
(15:23):
you start doing one thing, then another thing happens, and
then something else comes up and you maybe chase an
opportunity or you don't. And that's the hardest part to tell. Like,
when you give people advice about how to start a
business or how to find a co founder, you can
definitely give them fundamental pieces of advice like this, but
so much of it's just like you got to just
start doing stuff and seeing what happens. So what was
the first thing that the infatuation did. Well, there's a.
(15:45):
There's a story around this that's really funny actually, because
we've been talking for a while about doing what ended
up becoming at the time called the Maculate Infatuation, and
the really the only reason we actually pulled the trigger
was that at the time I was single, and Andrew
wrote me into doing some like New York posts like bachelor. Now.
I haven't thought about it. I just found I know,
(16:06):
I I I blocked that on my mind obviously because
I just moved and I found the newspaper. I have
a bunch of them. It's hilarious. So he Andrew was like,
oh my god, you just gotta do this, because he
was just so excited about me embarrassing myself in New
York media. But so I was like, you know what, fine,
I'll do it as long as we launched this website
thing and I'll mention it in my blurb in the
(16:26):
New York Post. And that was the catalyst as to
why we finally did it, was it was like, alright, fine,
if I'm gonna do this embarrassing thing, give me something
out of it. And that was what happened. Wait, so
what was the track like four people? I don't know,
I really don't know, but that that was it that
And that's the thing is it's always that's the hardest
step is always just saying cool or to do it.
(16:46):
Because once we started doing it, whatever whatever we got
from that New York Post thing, which was nothing, didn't matter.
What we did though, was we had this thing that
we could now put into a newsletter that Andrew put.
You know, we literally, between the two of us, put
every person we knew on this email only send it out.
And that was the beginning of the whole thing. And
we're and look at our careers in the music business
came into play in a huge way. You know, I
was a publicist, Chris was a marketing guy, and like,
(17:08):
we used our skill sets to drive this thing. Attributes
that I love most about the both of you, and
I think it comes through very clearly when you partner
with you to do business or the way you talk
about your brand is the sort of scrappiness and the
leveraging of a network and the human connection and authenticity
that you both bring to the marketplace, which is so refreshing.
(17:31):
How are like, what do those skill sets look like
for the both of you? And then how are you
bringing that into your company with the employees that you're hiring. Sure,
I mean, look, are as a pr guy in music, right, Like,
you get handed a bunch of crappy bands a lot
of the time, and you've got to hustle your ass
off to try and make do something, find it, find
something that could potentially work. But then all of a
(17:53):
sudden you get one or two good ones and you're like, oh,
this is you know you and you can feel the
audience talk back to you right like immediately, and that
and that that's the kind of thing that happened with
us where we put this out into the world that
you know, we weren't sure it could have been a
not so great band, or it could have been somebody,
you know, one that people wanted to hear more from.
And immediately we here, we you know, felt this poll.
(18:14):
And once we felt the poll from the public, we
were like, let's go and we kind of you know,
took this. We have. One of the things that attracted
each other to one another is just the drive part
of it, right. We were both really determined to be successful,
to win, to build something, to whatever it was within
our careers or whatever we were going to build. And
once we started rolling. That was that was how we
(18:36):
went and then and that really helped push us into
you know what ultimately became leaving our jobs five years
later and building a company. And I think that has
always been the fundamentals of what we are. We we
we want it badly, and we want to do it
our way, and we want to be honest and real
and transparent, and you know that's you know, I hired
(18:59):
another public assists. You know, I'm I run our sales,
I'm our c r O and whatever. I've got a
I brought another publicist in that we have worked with
in the music business. Her names Savannah, and she's crushing
and sales. She's never done sales in her life neither,
and I, you know, and so like, I don't know
what people are supposed to be doing in these roles.
I've just been figuring it out along the way and
(19:20):
being pretty real with the brands and just trying to
create real human relationships with people and expose them to
the infatuation in our audience and all this cool stuff
from culture that we can bring to the table for them.
How many brand partnerships have you done today? You know,
we've probably worked with over a hundred and fifty brands
or so. Wow, what does success look like? Success looks
(19:42):
like this, the infatuation existing forever, the inpetuition, and now's
a gap, you know, being the default for restaurant recommendations
everywhere forever and building a really sustainable successful business? What that?
What eventually evolves? And how that? How we get there?
I don't know? But how are brands finding you? I
(20:02):
was just I just set off Mike. I was telling
a brand about you today and they're like, good, heard
of them, Please please keep doing that. Well, it takes
a look that That's how brands find us. People who
know tell people or people there is generally one person
inside an organization that's like sees the stuff we're doing
and it's like I want to work with them, or
like I spend all of my time trying to find
(20:23):
those people, unearthed those people. You know, our business is
built on integrated brand partnerships, right, Like we have a
you know what Chris was talking about, right, we have
we have this audience that we've developed a real personal
human relationship with that. You know that we feed social
capital to that. We are you know, we're credible, Like
we pay for our own meals. We can't you can't
(20:44):
buy the infatuation stamp of approval, right, and like we
are really selective with who writes for us on the
editorial side. But at the same time, and like we're
incredibly selective and proactive with what brands we work with.
You know, we only want to work with brands that
fit our brand and that our audience will feel like
there's an authentic connection to Like we can't you know,
(21:05):
we can't go work sorry McDonald's, but we can't. Like
we will we will lose the credibility and connection to
the audience. But there's another key part of this though,
which is that we're not building businesses that people who
advertise with you know, digital media companies are used to write,
So like, we don't produce content for volume sake, We
just don't do it because that's not what we're building.
(21:26):
We're not building a media company. We're building a resource
that if you need to find a restaurant on a
Saturday night, you come to and you find the restaurant,
you get and you get out, you're done. Like we don't.
It's not about getting you to consume as much content
as possible. Actually, we actually have to think about even
though we measure ourselves differently, because maybe it's not a
bad thing if somebody comes to our site, spends three
minutes on it and finds a restaurant and the leads.
The interesting thing that you're bringing up is a conversation
(21:48):
that I think is getting more attention in the marketplace.
Is the new standards or need to evolve the standards
of measurement in this industry? Right Like, we've had a
ton of conversations with different entrepreneurs and founders and media
company executives about measuring things like overnight ratings on television,
click through rate, volume of impressions. You talk about the
(22:08):
infatuation being around forever. What does that look like in
these conversations and brands are coming in, how are you
getting them to understand that the value of what our
community is bringing doesn't fit in that Excel spreadsheet. This
is why we do so many events because when you
literally put on a food festival and in New York City,
it sells out and then tickets are going for three
(22:28):
times face value on StubHub the day after it sells out,
and then people show up and there's a thousand people
outside the venue before the doors open, and they're going
nuts when they get inside. Like that's how you look
at brand partners or whoever, and you go, this is
it and that's that's the thing. Is we end up
intil get it. Yeah, it's not hard like when you
see it like we there's a famously legendary man named
(22:50):
Chef Gordon who's now one of our advisors. He's read
his book or watch his documentary it's called they called
it's called Superman's the documentary. And he's a he's basically
the man that's responsible for creating a celebrity chef. You
could do a whole podcast with him. We'll line that
up someday. But he's a legend and and he we
basically paid him to speak at our first food festival, right,
And he's this guy that literally like created Emerald and
(23:11):
that was like where it started. And then man, no,
because he the way he looks at it is he
brought he brought food culture in people's homes in a
way that it wasn't existing before, right, Julia Child, Sure,
but like you know, he did it in a different
way and and anyway, so he's this like legend and
we had basically told him. I was on a phone
call with him prepping him to come to this thing
and speak, and um. He came, and you know, he
(23:34):
was like, yeah, I get it. I think I get it.
After we were sort of talking about what we are
and all that stuff, and he came to the festival.
He hung out all day, he was talking to people
and just like having a great time. And then he
emailed me the next day. He had just gotten to
Vegas and he emailed me and he was like, I
just keep thinking about what I saw there, and I'm
so happy because it makes me realize that this still exists.
That like young people in and around the food community,
(23:57):
they're they're passionate about your thing in an ext this
and I'm so happy about that. And so, you know,
that's what that story repeats itself over and over again
when people who don't know much about us show up
in our world, especially in that sort of in real
life environment, because you just look around and you see
a really engaged community of people spending a lot of
time just hanging out with each other and sharing like
(24:19):
my you know, they're like minded people sharing experiences and um,
and the fact that we can have them lined up
around the block at you know, a stadium in Forest
Hills tells a story that's really hard to tell with
you know, stuff that fits in a spreadsheet. If you
don't know when you go to a media partner what
they do well and what they don't do well. We
want to buy the thing that is not for sale well.
(24:40):
And also and it's and it's also the truth of
what makes that company important. It makes it valuable. I
don't want right, like, don't give me the frill, give
me the meat. Just to add to that point, like so,
and this requires the industry, and I'd be curious to
know how you're going on and pitching your unique I
p you right, because so many publishers walk in and
(25:02):
the first thing that you see in a presentation is,
here's how many people we reach? Like why are you
competing on scale? Because if I want scale, there's probably
two platforms that I'm going to to get it. It's
a commodity and scales. But the thing that you don't
get to so many times in the presentation is what
is the unique thing that I can't get anywhere else
(25:25):
in the market. Sell me that. The problem is all
of this takes discipline that many companies can't afford it,
Like it's either they can't afford it because they don't
have enough money to take this sort of like you know,
we're gonna put our stake in the ground and this
is what we're gonna do, and you're gonna buy it
or not until you realize, Like we're lucky enough. We've had,
you know, investors and partners that have agreed with us
(25:45):
that you do it a certain way and build quality
over time because we say no to all kinds of things,
you know, like that we I talk about a lot
that like we're probably more defined by the stuff we
don't do than the stuff that we do. Like what's
the stuff you don't do? Digital video for the sake
of an advertiser podcast because it's a hot it's a
hot sector. You know, how many digitals, how many mistakes
have been made in digital media and publishing because people
(26:07):
start creating content for what they think advertisers want, not
because they think an end user or reader wants it.
I mean, I think we've seen the headlines for how
that ends exactly, But but we're still there because the
brands are still r fpeeing about, Hey, we want, while
we want our video views, well you know that, like
most of those are bullshit, so cool. You can have them,
not with us, but you can probably get them somewhere.
But do you want to actually watch someone and interact
(26:29):
with your product in a meaningful way. If you do,
we can talk. We're marketing partners and executors. We don't
fit in the spreadsheet at all. We can play in
the spreadsheet, but if you don't know who we are
and you just look at the spreadsheet, you're not going
to understand why to work with. There's no context. There's
no context. So for us, we are very proactive working
trying to work brand direct right. So we work with
(26:49):
American Express, we work with Don Julio over Ago, we
work with smart Water, inside a Coca Cola and some
of the other brands there, um and and we're super
proactive with building long term partnerships with brands that align
well to our values and that are trying to reach
our audience. You know, the kind of audience that we reach,
(27:10):
which is the you know, young influencer, but real influencer,
not like nonsense marketing term influencer. People in their circles
who are influential right, the first ones in who really care,
Because ultimately, if you care and you spend the time
figuring out where you're gonna eat, right, you also care
about what you're wearing, what car you're driving, what you're
(27:32):
listening to. Literally everything good taste is good taste. And
you know we are we we have an audience full
of people with good taste, and you know, it's really
hard to reach those people too, and so much of
what we do is bringing those people out into real life.
Last year we did sixty five events across all across
the country and you know, into the world in London
as well, and you know we're we are able to
(27:54):
cultivate localized audiences in a lot of different pockets that
brand can interact with. Brands have goals, they have a
whole narrative they want to ladder up to. We can
be a great partner to help them do that. But
it's a lot easier for us to do that on
the front side of the RFP than on the back.
You've got a couple of announcements we've heard that you
want to share on the show. Yeah, sure, so, um
(28:17):
we do a food festival. I'm not sure if everyone's
aware but now you are called eats Con and it
it happens in both New York and Los Angeles. Um.
The Los Angeles Festival is coming up this year on
May eighth and nineteen, and the most important part of
that little phrase, there's the end. Uh. This will be
the first time we're doing two days. UM. So we're
(28:39):
scaling it up in Los Angeles, which is really really
exciting and UM just sort of you know, building on
what we started two years ago in that market, which
is the whole concept is really that you know, as
we built this massive audience of young people around the
brand and around the content, we realized that our audience
and really probably an even larger audience of young pool
(29:00):
who are social media savvy and you know, the people
that walk around this planet between the age of twenty
and you know, thirty five, they're not going to like
the New York City Food and Wine Festival because that's
just not how they live their lives and it's not
what necessarily what they're looking to do, which is dropping
eight hundred fifty dollars for a weekend past to go
like eat a little tiny bite of pursudo and you know,
(29:20):
catch a celebrity chef, you know, for thirty seconds. So
we wanted to build something that felt more community driven,
that felt more uh focused around the restaurants. We talked
about it being like a music festival, but were the
restaurants of the headliners. Um, And we programmed with with
speakers and we have bands and it's an awesome day
and now two days. But it's really an interesting part
of our business that's growing. And it was a you know,
(29:43):
an example of us moving into another space that's adjacent
to us but feels very related to what we do.
We just saw big white space and there's other spaces
like that that I think we're gonna move in too
soon as well, but um, potentially someday. But there's stuff
in the food food space that's still wide open that
we want to go gobble up. But there are other
(30:04):
sort of lifestyle things out there that are not being
as well addressed. I think we'll probably chase those things
down first. There's a big hole in travel. I don't
know that we're going to jump right into travel, but
there's a big, massive hole there. We know that for
a fact because we get people hitting us up all
the time being like hey, I read the Rome recommendations,
but where do I stay? Text tracks are texting platform.
We could ask all kinds of questions that have nothing
to do with restaurants inside of that platform because people
(30:25):
trust us, so they'll start asking us, yeah, dating, what
should I watch? I mean people literally hit up that
platform and ask us what should they be watching while
they order delivery or something like that. So there's there's
a bunch of interesting stuff. Is I want someday for
us to be able to serve people in the way
that we do around restaurant recommendations with and help them
make other decisions. I don't really know what that means yet,
maybe a recommendation brand as opposed to brand. It's like
(30:49):
a little bit of it just down to helping people
make decisions, you know, Like we use this we talk
about social capital, right, there's that there's a great deal
of social capital and being the person in your group
of friends or in your family who can pick a
great rest staurant or great bottle of wine, order a
bottle of wine off wine list, all of those things,
so you know, and that's what's actually way more powerful
than just being like, yeah, we give people restaurant advice.
(31:10):
We give them the social capital that makes them more
important in the office, better at dating, all these things
that are really important to people in their lives. So
you guys had a pretty good investment from someone in Hollywood.
We did, and I assume that everything you're talking about
kind of head nods to a vision that you guys
have that they bought off on. Can you talk about
(31:32):
that at all? Yeah, um so, yeah, we we just
raised a bunch of money from Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had
the movie executive best known for his uh role in
founding dream Works. But um, he's obviously a visionary and
you know, he has done a lot of amazing stuff
in his career. Um. But one thing that apparently he
wanted to do is to raise a big venture fund
(31:53):
and to start investing in businesses. Um. So he built
a team which was for us very interesting and felt
are in line with the kind of business of the
world building which is the main partners. They're kind of
split between content and media executives from DreamWorks and Disney.
This woman and Daily who ran DreamWorks next to Jeffrey
for a very long time. Um, and they have an
(32:14):
l a office of some other people that are just
brilliant and come from that world. And then there's a
team in San Francisco that is UM, led by a
guy named Suja Joshua who was the CFO at drop Box,
and a bunch of other drop Box people and sort
of a more tech focused UM point of view. So
those two things together felt very relevant to what we're building,
which is, you know, a great product with great content
(32:35):
inside of it UM. But it was also for us
exciting to think about partnering with some of that understands
culture and understands how to storytell and understands how brands
matter and how you know, what we're building ultimately is
a big brand that people need to trust UM and
need to find useful and indispensable to their daily lives.
So we've been this is our third round raising money,
(32:55):
and we've been very fortunate, you know, throughout the past
of having rate investors that you know, really understood our
vision and understood the timeline and understood that we were
gonna do things a different way than maybe conventional wisdom
says we should, based on whatever bucket you want to
put us in. But UM, so this bigger round, the
series A, we were pretty nervous, like can you find
those same kind of people with that same kind of
(33:17):
patience and that same outlook on the world when they're
writing a really big check. And I don't know that
the answer would have been yes, have we not found
wonder Co which is the name of the fund and
Jeffrey Nan and suj So it's early days. We just
closed the deal in August, and you know, are starting
off a big, ambitious year together. But so far it's
been great and we have exciting plans and they definitely,
(33:40):
you know, that was the thing is every time we'd
sit down and talk, they definitely agreed and believed in
the same things we did, which is, let's go out,
let's build a really big business, but let's build it
the right way and understand that these things take time.
That you can't just build something that can change culture
within two years. It's gonna take ten. So Andrew, you're
gonna tell us about a big partnership that you guys
(34:01):
are doing and that you're super excited. We're really excited
we're doing We are We US and T Brand Studio
from the New York Times UM collaboratively are doing a
podcast with BMW. I know, you know, look, we were
the infatuation as a brand has never done a podcast before,
(34:21):
original content, original content, not at and a story about
cities and looking through the lens of restaurants and how
they impact the culture and how you know they drive
different parts of different cities. Um. And it's it's just
been a really really interesting experience, definitely a unique experience
to work alongside the Times to do this, you know,
(34:44):
a leap of faith by BMW to do something different.
You know, that's all came from from them being very
interested in having partners collaboratively come to them with ideas.
What's the name of the show, it's called the Special.
What was your role in in the in the concert Upton,
in the production, like what was the infatuations for all?
You know, The New York Times is definitely leading the
charge on the production of the podcast, right, that is
(35:07):
what they do. Um. So they're they're they're driving that.
But you know, we were very instrumental in the whole
like conceptualizing of the idea. And then we have a
whole plan that we're rolling out that has some really
interesting content on top of Instagram. Using BMW's with our
writers in different markets. We're producing a big event in
(35:27):
l A. That is going to be really fun that
you know, that's part of our part of the deal.
So very cool, interesting party, be fun to see how
it plays out. Before we let you go, since we
are recording here in New York, must go to restaurant
off the top of your head, go I still for Charles.
(35:48):
If people haven't been there yet, that place there, it's
it's hard to get into. It's in the West Village.
But can we say we know you. It doesn't work,
it doesn't. We don't pull those we don't pull those levers. Yeah,
there's we don't have relations, Chris. There's a great Vietnamese
restaurant green Point called D and D that's really amazing
(36:11):
and just like one of my favorite spots right now
before we go is our game killed by d I y,
can it all be Knicks related? Come on, come on,
I'm so over it. I would definitely buy them somehow.
I always see your tweets because my entire Twitter existence
is is sports Twitter. That's what I must have no
(36:31):
life because you're always at the top of my feed
because you engage, you just don't don't like them, then
you won't see so you're buying the Knicks. I'm gonna
buy the Knicks. I'm gonna kill the traditional media agency model.
Um more on that another time. Yeah, And what am
I doing now buying things? No? Doing yourself? Builds a
(36:54):
printer that actually works. I hate printers and like every
time I need one, it just doesn't work. They all break.
I know the first time playing, first time playing is exciting.
Kill What would you kill? Twitter? Ahead? What's because of
your next It's because literally I'm just getting to this
point where like I literally cannot just watch people take
(37:14):
hot Sideline takes on like every topic in the world
and always be wrong and always be just like riling people.
Like it's We've got to find a better way to
have discourse. Because it's a great platform. I think it's awesome,
but like that, there's some crazy ship going on on
Twitter that we could probably just like do without. Do
you see the Jack Harris Swisher live tweet interview and
tried to follow it, But it's like one of those
(37:35):
things that I'm like, now my blood pressure is high
and I need to go like have a glass of
wine to just calm down, Like I swear, maybe I'll
just kill my phone. Maybe it's just my phone. I
don't want to kill in another company. I'll just kill
my phone, all right, all right, good? What would you
buy another phone? What would you do yourself? Um? Doing myself?
I would love to build something that actually like actually
build something with my hand, like build a piece of
(37:57):
furniture or something. What would you make I don't know,
like a I mean, based on the amount of money
that like Scandinavian style chairs seemed to sell for. I'd
probably throw some sheep skin on a modern piece of
wood and start a whole new business or something time
within reach. If you don't know about the infatuation, go
check it out after listening to this show, Andrew Chris,
(38:19):
always a pleasure. Congratulations on all your success. If people
want to build an event, a partnership, or just figure
out where they need to go eat tomorrow night, how
did they get in touch with you? Andrew? H M
O E Y bring it on. I won't see you.
You will never see it because he won't have a phone.
He's on t he's on his way to buy any one. Alright, guys,
thank you, thank you. So I could go like forever
(38:46):
that That conversation I think left me thinking about some
of the key insights that Chris particularly was hitting on
around social capital and not being willing to comprom mise
your core values for add dollars and being comfortable and
saying like you want to come and engage a community
(39:07):
and create an experience that is going to drive lifetime
value or long lasting relationships with our audience. Let's talk. However,
if you're looking for scale and some sort of commoditized format,
like we're not for you, And I think what that
will do for their business is indicative of where they're
headed and the acquisitions they're making, the investments that they're taking,
(39:29):
and thinking about how it stands up in the current marketplace.
And I think what we've seen over the last few
months is that people were chasing scale, which he was like,
it's a myth. One thing we didn't ask that we
should have asked again, we could have gone on for
four hours, was how long is your pipeline? Like how
long how long does it take to get someone to
actually buy and do an activation and how long does
(39:50):
it take for them to get comfortable with that sale?
Which I think you know, so many people are quick
to close the sale, but it as you get into
the weeds, of the project, you start to realize that
maybe there's not a whole lot of alignment here. I
think that's a great point, Laura, and I think that Uh.
Andrew also, what he was saying is like, we do
(40:12):
it in front, in the process, in front of the work.
The process in front of the work is like, let's
get to know each other. I want to understand you.
What are you really trying to do, who are you
really trying to speak with? And what are you what's
your equity? Right? And those details are not in an RFP,
(40:33):
not in the standard RFP right. And they even said, yeah,
we get our FPS, but the way they are handling that,
the way they think about the RFP, totally different. Infatuation.
They're going places and so are we? So are we? So?
Speaking of that, we are going to take a brief
hiatus and we will be announcing shortly on our Twitter
(40:54):
at Atlantia podcast where we will be set up next
and how you can join us. We must thank all
of our friends and family at Panically for giving us
this incredible platform and opportunity, in particular Jacob Weisberg, Matt Turk,
Andy Bauer. We have to thank our most incredible production
partners who have stuck with us to make the show
(41:16):
what it is. So big. Thank you to Laura Mayor,
Cameron Drew's, Laura Morris, and our own Dana Bolic. The
producers we've worked with and we've had the opportunity to
get to know are phenomenal. You guys should reach out
to them because they know what's happening in the audio space.
They can come in, they can help your brand, they
can liaise with the studios. They're amazing, and we are
(41:39):
even going to give you Dana's email in the description
of the show so you can get a hold of
her because she is one of the best so Atlantia.
We will be back, not in two weeks, but soon enough.
Thank you so much for sticking with us. We can't
wait to share what's next. See you saying full disclosure,
(42:00):
Our opinions are our own.
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