Secret Academy Episode - Frank GruberAbout:
As serial entrepreneurs, not all of us are privileged to live in the mecca of startups known as Silicon Valley. While there are more and more areas prominent for startups such as Santa Monica, Chicago, NYC, or even New Orleans, it can often be hard to know what is going on elsewhere. Frank Gruber saw this as an opportunity to create an online news publication regarding tech and startups but also to host local events nationwide. For nearly 3 years, Frank worked on Tech Cocktail non stop to bring his idea to life while working a 9-5. After getting funding of $2.5 mil, Frank has grown Tech Cocktail in over 30 states offline but also has a viewership base of over 300,000 visitors a month.
Lesson's in Today's Interview:
- Why it's important to find your niche and why Frank targets the hyper local market
- How Tech Cocktail brings the online model offline and the online model offline as one big circle
- The rise and fall of Frank's personal blog that grew to several 100k visitors before he let it go
- Why working for large companies like AOL can be good since they support your projects
- How Frank got the attention of Tony Hsieh and a $2.5 mil investment
- Different ways of generating revenue with a media company
- How to drive over 300k unique visitors per month with content and email marketing
- How the dynamics of a company changes once you go from bootstrapped to funding
- The reason why Frank other businesses failed but Tech Cocktail succeeded
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