So, not long ago I spoke with Mike Rothman, 31, fromf Thrillist, the men’s lifestyle brand that offers recommendations and deals for young men in areas of entertainement, food, fashion and more.
Rothman initally built the ad sales team for Thrillist, and recently built the e-commerce property, Thrillist Rewards. He is now GM of Thrillist Rewards.
We talked about his experience being an entrepreneur, his time with Thrillist, and what being an entrepreneur really means to him. My chat with him helped me understand the challenges in being an entrepreneur, and also why they are so important. Below is our Q&A. I hope you’ll find it as insightful as I did.
Q. How would you define an entrepreneur? Everyone has their own kind of definition and their own kind of picture in their head of what a successful entrepreneur looks like. What is that for you?
A. I guess to simplify it, an entrepreneur is someone who see’s a problem and thinks that they have the tool kit to solve it, or is able to marshal the necessary resources to go out and solve it however possible.
Q. Tell me about Thrillist. If you were to describe it to someone who had no idea what it was, how would you describe it?
A. So the definition of what Thrillist offers has evolved over the years. Right now Thrillist has the definition of being a platform for reaching kind of young, professional guys, online, offline, locally and nationally. So we have three separate business units that operate together on behalf of national marketers. So what that means is we have Thrillist, the product, which is a city guide for guys locally in about 19 markets, with also national additions, providing recognition for new bars, restaurants, products, services and other sort of lifestyle items for this particular demographic. It’s free to subscribe and it’s monetized primarily through national advertisers.
Q. I’ve been hearing more about Thrillist rewards, what’s that about?
A. Thrillist rewards is a local e-commerce property where we put together custom offers and custom experiences for our audience in New York, L.A, and San Francisco, each week. Where they can transact through us, for experiences and offers that they can’t get anywhere else, custom-making them with the top local merchant partners.
Q. In your opinion, why do you think the company has been as successful as it has been?
A. A couple of reasons. Initially when we launched, we launched because we were trying to create content for an audience that was being locally underserved. So there was not really a market, seven years ago, specifically providing the authority that national men’s magazines did with the kind of local, kind of inside information city guide, that specifically spoke to men. There was Daily Candy for women, but there was really nothing for men. So we kind of took that initiative and saw that as a problem we could solve by coming up with Thrillist, an editorial property that’s monetized through national advertising. So we filled a need.
And also with JackThreads, (a private shopping community offered on Thrillist), back in like 2007, Thrillist was getting very, very popular, but there was nothing really serving the needs of young guys with an interest in street wear, with an interest in slightly more formal, contemporary stuff, and JackThreads really effectively, specifically spoke to guys. It had a sense of cool that didn’t seem manufactured or developed by some corporate V.I.P. on behalf of a young male demographic.
And with Thrillist Rewards we’ve been successful because when all these daily deal places cropped up, they also, maybe weren’t serving guys. And so we were successful by being able to come up with a point of differentiation, which was an answer to another problem we solved in the marketplace.
Q. Have you guys ran into any big problems, where you’ve had to quote on quote “Pivot,” your mission either with rewards or with the company in general?
A. We haven’t really had to pivot dramatically like companies like Fab, that had a pretty big market pivot. What we’ve done is we’ve kind of seen the opportunities as they’ve come up. Initially our investors kind of enforced with us that we only focus on building an audience for Thrillist and targeting that audience through advertising. JackThreads was actually our smallest advertiser, and they were looking for some kind of partnership opportunity, so that’s a relationship that evolved pretty naturally. So that was a pivot that was us sort of taking a deeper dive with a company that we were already working with.
Thrillist rewards, that was us also seizing an opportunity that existed to sort of solve a problem. So it has evolved, I don’t think it’s necessarily pivots, and now the company is evolving even further because now we have these three companies, and we’ve recently brought these three companies under the engine of Thrillist Media Group, which is sort of the latest defnition of Thrillist where we can take local commerce, and national commerce, local editorial and national editorial and package it really effectiviely for marketers who operate online, offline, locally and nationally
Q. What do you like most about being an entrepreneur?
A. No two days are the same, that everyday is manic and intense. While the challenges we face now don’t feel existential the way they did the first year of the business, are we going to be able to pay our bills? Even though the problems aren’t as existential they still feel just as pressing and urgent as they did that first year. And so while it can be completely draining, as it’s multiplied over seven years, it’s also completely invigorating. And it’s a really amazing way to spend your time, especially when you’re working with other really great people that motivate you, that bring unique skill sets to the table that compliment the skills that you have or the skills that you don’t have.
Q. What would your best advice be to someone thinking of becoming an entrepreneur? Is the risk of failure even really worth it anymore?
A. Totally. The only objection that I have to how entrepreneurship is taught is that it’s often romanticized. I think lately, certainly the last couple of years, being an entrepreneur has become very romanticized in popular culture. There’s the Bill Gates’, the Steve Jobs and your Zuckerbergs, and these are incredible people who’ve done really remarkable things, but I think that’s created like a cultic personality, where people want to become entrepreneurs, that’s what they sort of think of being an entrepreneur. But obviously small businesses are the engine for economic growth and we want to encourage that as much as possible, but I think when you’re teaching it as an academic subject its important that first and foremost there’s an idea, there’s some kind of problem that motivates you, attracts you, or that keeps you up at night.
I think that being an entrepreneur really starts with identifying problems that you are best equipped to solve, or insist on solving by marshaling the resources necessary to find the solution, to help not just yourself, but other people that might have that same problem.
Q. So it doesn’t really make sense to just decide, “I’m going to be an entrepreneur, I have no idea what I’m going to create,”?
A. No it’s not necessarily a good idea. Saying you’re going to come up with the next widget, I really do think it’s a very easy recipe for failure, to start a business for the sake of starting a business, rather than finding a problem first.
Everything has risks, and ya know I think everyone should be encouraged to be as proactive as they can in solving the world’s problems, starting with problems that they see directly in front of them on a daily or weekly basis. And I think with people thinking that way, than there’s more people looking to be proactive, rather than just kind of sitting on their couches complaining, “I wish the world were this way.”
Successful entrepreneurship comes down to the focus. Focus and dedication, but focus more specifically onto this very discrete problem, taking something that’s very large and complex and breaking that down into a series of solvable problems.
What's an Entrepreneur?? 