Story in a Bottle

  Kate Lee is a Senior Editor at Medium.com ; a role which is the perfect culmination of the career path that precedes it. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania , she started her career as a reporter for US Weekly . However, at a time when the internet had not yet entrenched the magazine world, Kate still turned to it, and the early world of blogs for inspiration. It was in her next...

Lockhart Steele has spent his life taking a revolutionary approach to publishing. Even as an eight year old, his passion was well established as he spent his free time breaking local school news stories (by way of a typewriter and photocopier) with two of his friends. However, without many options to explore an academic career in journalism, he majored in history at Brown University , but quickly...

Katie Welch is the Executive Vice President of Global Brands at Weber Shandwick which is a hefty title and even more hefty responsibility. As a self-described steward of brands, she is responsible for how major companies communicate with their customers on a daily basis. This role requires both a strategic and creative mind, as well as a sound awareness of all of the intricacies of consumer engage...

While it creates exceptional opportunities for growth, one of the biggest challenges in tech is helping older media embrace them, especially TV. Enter Gavin Purcell. As Producer of the Emmy-winning team behind the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon , and before that, Late Night, bringing innovation and maintaining relevance across platforms is a charge he continues to lead. In fact, he and Jimmy h...

Lara Crystal is a founder amongst founders, and frankly, our hero. As one of the brains behind Minibar, she is bridging the gap of all things hot in tech startups at the moment -- mobile, on demand services ... and alcohol. That’s right, Minibar is a platform she developed alongside her partner, another former Wharton grad, to help connect users with their local liquor stores to help solve for the...

Rafat Ali is best known for his coverage of the New York tech scene -- which he’d done since the dot-com boom went bust. However, what’s amazing is that he began his working life as a computer engineer, pre-internet in India and found his way into the industry at large by way of a Masters Degree from Indiana University and a personal blog. It’s because of these experiences that he found himself hu...

As we’ve learned about the tech industry thus far, the road to success is usually unpaved. This week we learn that becoming a VC is not dissimilar. Ellie Wheeler is a principal at Greycroft Partners , where she is a seed investor and has been investing in the tech industry for almost four years. However, getting here was not an easy or clear path, in fact, one that she didn’t even know existed. Wh...

Early in his career, David Kassan lead a double life: interactive art director by day and painter by night. While designing and quickly rising through the ranks of one of the world's largest consulting companies, iXL , and later at an indie music startup during dot-com 1.0, he was simply “paying the bills.” It was when things went awry in the dot com burst, that David made the bold move to pursue...

Spoiler alert: Caroline McCarthy ended up in tech despite her best efforts to avoid it. It’s true. After sitting down over Pine Barrens whiskey she shared her story of having an innate interest in tech, but after experiencing the isolating and stereotyping that comes with being “that kid” in school, repressed it in favor of just about anything. Not without accolades, of course, this Princeton Univ...

One of the biggest, and often overlooked, challenges in product and brand building is that of identifying your audience, but beyond that, is reaching that audience. As technology advances and “touch points” are exponentially increasing, as consumers become more savvy, and as companies are being held accountable for their communications, the ecosystem only becomes more and more complex. This week w...

It’s our opinion that the best entrepreneurs, very simply, are greater than the sum of their experiences, and have found the best ways to extract value from each. Case in point: Caroline Waxler. In her career, Caroline has spanned many industries and roles, starting in the mailroom at Newsweek and using it as a springboard, she ultimately rose through the ranks of the publishing world, working for...

In the ecosystem of the startup and tech world, VCs play a vital role to keep the community vital and flourishing; with the ability to coach along the best and brightest into the future, they help to cultivate innovation in many ways. Amongst them, Steve Schlafman is a natural leader. Steve is a Principal at RRE Ventures , focusing on early stage companies in mobile services, hardware, and marketp...

Christina Wallace is a tried-and-true “jack of all trades.” A self-prescribed generalist, she’s made the successful leap through many different industries and roles; from degrees in mathematics and theater from Emory , to “diva management” at the opera, to Harvard Business School and founding her first company, Quincy . And while her path was winding, it’s very much by design. Refusing to focus, s...

Matt Lee is currently a Senior Usability Researcher for Booking.com , but in his remarkable career, he has played many other roles: a Business Administration graduate, a field researcher representing companies like Cannon… and Vicodin, a Usability Engineer for the first Xbox live and Amazon , and User Researcher Manager at Zappos . More than that, however, he is a true advocate for the betterment...

This week is another first for Story in a Bottle; for the first time we are hearing the point of view of the arguably unfairly named redheaded stepchild of the internet, social media. (We’ll pause while you process that.) But seriously, who better to represent it than one of the internet’s most beloved redheads, Lindsay Kaplan ?   Lindsay joined us for Glenmorangie scotch and shared her experience...

Last week we met with Steve Martocci and heard about the challenges of being a first time founder in the early stages of a tech startup. This week, he continues his story (as he and Dan finish the bottle Angel’s Envy bourbon) about the evolution of GroupMe from $850K to $10MM and what that growth meant. This is when it gets real.   He walks us through their growth, utilizing groundbreaking PR tact...

Steve Martocci is the co-founder of Splice , a technology platform for music creators which streamlines the fragmented process of creating and sharing music, freeing musicians to spend their time and energy on the creative process. Previously he was a co-founder of GroupMe , a group messaging service that in August 2011 was acquired by Skype , which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in Octobe...

It’s said that true innovation is the reduction of complexity, and if that’s the case, Naama Bloom is an innovator amongst innovators. Most recently acclaimed as the woman who brought  the period to virality status , she has made a business of taking the often overly complex conversations of women’s health and milestone moments (which were reserved for whispers or clinical jargon) to the tens of m...

We at SIAB call  Gene DeRose  the “O.G. of the New York Tech Scene.” In his 25 year career here, he’s surely seen and been a part of his fair share of the evolution of the industry. Hailing from Westchester and going to school in Virginia, he landed back in NYC originally in the pursuit of journalism. However, as the tides shifted, he steered a new course (well, with a brief stint as a bartender)...

Kristen Hawley has one of the most diverse and inspirational stories we’ve heard to date. With a journalism degree, background in media, love of epicurean culture and experience dabbling in the tech world, she’s created a path for herself which only begins at the intersection of these things. However, her agility and strategic perspective has lead her to create Chefs + Tech , offering an interesti...

This week's episode features our friend Soraya Darabi , the co-founder of Zady. Zady is the online destination for conscious consumers. They source and sell and make stylish apparel for men and women, and detail the stories and origins of the items produced. Much more than a fashion startup, her company is a brand and a movement towards responsible manufacturing, global sustainability, and human r...

Rex Sorgatz is a jack-of-all-trades; self-described as a media collector, product strategist, creative technologist, culture hacker, writer, designer, advisor, and consultant, but who is currently spending his time as the Founder & Partner of Kinda Sorta Media .   He joined us for homemade cider, which he made and provided (a SIAB first), and told us about his very fascinating path; from starting...

Christina Mercando is the founder of Ringly , a wearable technology company based in Brooklyn, New York which launched in June of this year. However, with 10+ years in the technology industry, Christina has taken quite the interesting path to get here.   She joined us for sparkling wine and shared her early experiences in tech; helping her dad manufacture medical CD roms in their home in Irving, N...

Tom Clifton is co-founder and head of B2B at Animoto , a subscription-based web and mobile platform that enables businesses and consumers to create dynamic, professional videos. Launched in 2007, Animoto has grown through several rounds of funding to over 10 million users and has won every major industry award, including two Webbys , a Crunchie , and a SXSW Interactive Award , as well as being cho...

Amanda Peyton is the co-founder of Grand St. , a marketplace for creative technology that was recently acquired by Etsy . Peyton is a technologist at heart and has worked at the intersection of technology and design for her entire career. She is an alum of MIT Sloan , Northwestern & Y Combinator and currently lives in New York City. But that’s just scratching the surface.   Amanda “classed it up”...