#AskGaryVee Episode 155: Slack, Serendipity, & YouTube Red

“environment for startups?” – I have not used Slack yet. The Vayner has used it at scale. How you guys liking Slack so far? Anybody using it? Good, solid, good? – [Voiceover] Fantastic. People love it. It’s an incredible, incredible product. I’m a huge fan of Stewart
Butterfield who’s behind the product built Flickr. Was very much a Web 2.0 hero of mine because Flickr was one of the
first sites that got me aware of this revolution that
got me into the world. I have a lot of emotional heart for Slack. I haven’t used it yet because I’ve been running around so much. I don’t think I can necessarily
answer this question, India. My lack of practitionership. What I do though is by
that quick little reaction, I don’t know if you caught it on camera, did you DRock? A little bit? – [DRock] Yeah. – People are obsessed with
this god damn product. I don’t know how much you guys. – We all use it on the team. – And? – We love it. – Yeah, so what do you think India? – Less emails because you kind of just ping in Slack and it’s easier to just ask
for something really off hand to the whole team instead
of just having to send an email and compose it and all that. – It’s kind of like the lovechild of email and GroupMe, right? – Totally, yeah. – I think there’s some
real value behind it. I haven’t jammed yet. I don’t want to necessarily
go deep into this. One of the things I adore about this show is I talk about shit I know. I’ve got my feelings as you can tell. I can give analogies like
the GroupMe email thing. I know what’s going on, I see the feedback loop, I have a lot of context
from a lot other of people, but I’m not a dead user of it. My two cents on it is I’m bullish on it. I think there’s something there.

– [Voiceover] Liana asks, “You talk a lot about serendipity. “Was there one event
that made you a believer “or a series of occurrences?” – Liana, there’s no one event. Liana, serendipity is life. It’s how things work. There was no singular event. This was so serendipitous. I’m such a big believer
in serendipity now. Serendipity is just a structural aspect of the way our world works. Chance is an absolute part of it. It’s the way it is and so no there was no event. It was clearly a series of events. That all probably started happening when I was five or six years old when I started paying attention to things. So it’s more of a collective belief. I almost think of it as
like my belief in oxygen. Like it’s just there right. It’s just real. Serendipity is real India. Shit is real. (laughter) – What about your answer yesterday about timing and talent? Do you think timing has
something to do with serendipity? – I definitely believe in serendipity and luck. Right like I believe in those things like those are real things too. But I don’t think
everything is one thing or the other. I definitely think you
can prep for opportunity. I mean these are all semantics. I mean now were nitpicking like clearly doing the right thing and getting yourself in the right places and educating yourself and testing things and setting yourself up for victory, clearly those are real things but clearly other things factor into it, right? So I’m it’s just a
combination of like science and art. I always think about or just you know. The black and white and the gray. This is literally the
thesis of everything. And it’s funny it’s like you know tastes
great less feeling. People feel like they have been like pick a spot I mean. They’re both right. So for me the question becomes actually. If you’re lucky enough to self-awareness, could you bet on one or the other.
– [India] Mmhm. – The reason I love gray so much or talk about all the things I believe in is because it’s all comes natural to me it’s where my upside lies. I believe in like taking notes and studying and all that shit it’s just not for me. I wouldn’t have the maximum upside for it.

“What’s the best way to start a business “in a space that you’re unfamiliar with, “but see massive opportunity in?” – Become educated. You know this is a great question. I’m glad you asked that. It was a question that was asked a lot of me in 2006, 7, 8, 9 that I haven’t heard while. Maybe because India is doing the picking. And so you know. I think that if you see a huge opportunity if you think eSports is
going to be a huge space like I believe. Well then maybe go intern for an eSports company, maybe get a job at an eSports company. Maybe you read absolutely everything about it. That was one of my few chapters in life. This whole Web 2.0 thing back to Flickr. I read everything on Tech Crunch. I read people’s tweets. It was one time when I actually consumed because I needed to get educated. And then once I found I had the base, then I rolled back to where I normally go. You put in the work. You know if you see a space. You become massively educated. You network in it tremendously. I believe in online video in 2006, I went to three Meetups. In the video 2.0 or the video. What was it called? Yeah Web 2.0 Video Meetup Group. DRock you have been so proud
I went to these damn things. People talking about bullshit cameras and lighting (beep) that it’s
the content (beep). It was really. You like that? It was an interesting time for me where I was soaking up information. If you see an opportunity, go soak up the information. Go become a practitioner. Go work in a company in it. Go to all the events around it. Read about it go to conferences and listen about it. Listen to the podcast like learn. – Learn mother (bleep). – Learn about it. I like that you getting feisty here. Learn about it and then you can do. But you know, if you believe in something you have to become educated in it. And then become a practitioner in it. And then execute in it. And then adjust to the realities of it.

– Jake that’s such a good question because my parents peer
pressured me into that bullshit. There was just no option. It was back in 1992, 3, 4.
You know like they expected it would
have been embarrassing had I not gone. That was just the truth. Like I had by the way, the reason I end up at
Mount Ida College is because I had no plans
of going to college. I didn’t go to see my guidance counselor. I don’t even know my
guidance counselor’s name. I think I saw her once in four years. Right so like. I went because my parents wanted me to go. Like it’s really so my mom just didn’t I don’t think she would have known how to answer the question
of like why didn’t he there was so much social peer pressure at that point that if you did not go you were
such a fundamental loser. And it’s so different now. Probably why I have so much passion for it because if you don’t think that I think that I would be further along and happier. And happier. Look I made some great friends and some great times but like four years. Damn it. 1994, 5, 6 and 7. During the Web 1.0 bubble. (mouth noise) – This is a video from Richard.

I’m developing a short film about you. – About me? – As a child and your entrepreneurial chops. – Oh, ok. – My question for you is
at what age did you decide that you wanted to buy the New York Jets? – Richard great question. I think the age when I really
decided I wanted by the Jets was somewhere around. I don’t know exactly Richard
to be honest with you so I think it’s somewhere around fourth, fifth, sixth grade. When I realized that I was
more likely to buy them than to play for them, Started seeing other kids growing. Little bit faster than I was growing. Being a little bit faster. Wakeil Shaw. Fifth grade Wakeil Shaw. I think gave me one of my first previews into being owner not player because he was a beast and he ran over me in backyard football. So I think a lot of old school references By the way, made that Oded Weinstock reference with Peter yesterday. A friend of mine from middle school hit me up and he’s like oh my god Oded Weinstock, so that was kind of fun. Wakeil anybody went to Martin Luther King 1982 to 85 Edison, New Jersey Martin
Luther King Elementary School knows the name Wakeil Shaw. If you know Wakeil Shaw, find him and say actually so easy
just search on Facebook. It’s so ridiculous. He moved I think the Baltimore area. Anyway yeah Richard that’s the answer. I think, to make this more of an
interesting answer for everybody who’s watching. Which I’m going to start doing more of. One thing I’m going to start
doing India’s when these answers are the fun question what have you I’m going to
trying to go a little bit broad. If you were lucky enough right now to have a younger sibling, a niece or nephew, a cousin. Or if you’re the parent of a child of that is as early as six,
seven, eight, nine, 10 years old really starts talking about what they want to do for a living. Please, please, please think about how to put them in the
best position to succeed. The kids. The children our future India. – True.
– They’re our future. And so I think. You know. And that. Should I want to be a baseball player and you may not think
their athletic enough and I get that. And then so the question becomes do you send them to baseball camp? Or do you actually look at them and say look you know me and mom are 5’4″. You’re not going to come
a baseball player one day. But can you start showing them other parts of baseball, right? Can they become a future
amazing G.M. or manager things of that nature. I think we need to do
better jobs at really reverse engineering the
child that over indexes in disproportionate passion
not the flavor of the month but has shown two, three, four years of consistent conversation
around a hobby or your subject matter. There’s so much we could
be doing with them. In those years where
they have a lot of time, impressionable moldable, that can be very powerful so
please take it on yourself to be responsible to
sniff out the young me’s of the world who really never wavered and we’re all in didn’t pivot, didn’t change their passions. And try to put them in that position. – That’s good.
– Thank you.