Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as GaryVeemade his fortune and reputation thanks to his prescience.
He invested in Facebook and Twitter in their early days, predicted the rise of e-commerce, and built an audience on YouTube in the early 2000s, when it was still a new and growing platform.
Through his many businesses, including VaynerMedia, the 49-year-old has become a digital media whisperer for Fortune 500 companies like JP Morgan and PepsiCo as they navigate the frontiers of the web.
He has also attracted 50 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and X, with users eager to learn from his business acumen.
The media personality’s current passions include AI and the member’s only Flyfish Club, which he opened in September on the Lower East Side with $14 million in funding from members’ NFT sales.
“AI changed my life; it’s now my co-pilot,” he told the Post, noting that he uses it to research everything from politics to movie trends to why more people are wearing hats than ever. “He is my partner in my strategic anthropology work, and I am even more precise and efficient with clearer data and faster than a year ago.”
The Flyfish Club is another addition to his already vast empire, which also includes co-founding dining app company Resy and wine brand Empathy Wines.
Another current passion is live shopping which is taking over TikTok.
“QVC and HSN still generate billions in revenue,” and now TikTok has used the same business model, he explained.
“I I implore you all to go see what’s happening on the TikTok store,” he enthused. “Last week, TikTok hosted an event here for 100 people who were doing livestream shopping at scale, making hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars a year selling live on TikTok.”
His large social media following helps him stay on top of the latest trends, relay ideas, and create a flywheel effect that allows him to both test ideas and create demand.
“Most things fail because they can’t create demand…I have infrastructure that can create demand,” he said of his supporters.
Although disparate, Vaynerchuk’s activities all feed off each other.
But what makes it unique is its ability to analyze the impact of technology in a way that contextualizes it for people and then pushes them to adopt it, like starting to use Uber or AI.
Part of the reason people are so receptive to his vision is due to his own struggles.
He was born in the former Soviet Union (now Belarus) and immigrated to New York with his family when he was 3 years old. Growing up in Queenshe sold lemonade, traded baseball cards and worked at the family liquor store, packing ice for $2 an hour when he was 14.
After attending Mount Ida College in Massachusetts, he returned to New York. At age 31, he began making daily YouTube videos focused on his family’s wine business. They would be part of his Wine Library TV.
After five years of posting videos almost daily and accumulating about a million followers on YouTube, he managed to turn his family’s wine business – initially called Shopper’s Discount Liquor – into about $3 million in annual revenue for Wine Library. Thanks to an increase in traffic, the thriving e-commerce business reached $60 million in revenue.
Eventually, he gave up management of this company to concentrate exclusively on his own projects. He developed a YouTube channel after creating content on business and entrepreneurship.
An early video warning that Facebook’s business model was generating online buzz led to an invitation to speak from Mark Zuckerberg – and ultimately an opportunity to invest in Facebook (now known as Meta).
In 2009, he launched VaynerMedia, a digital marketing agency. In 2017, it became just a subsidiary of a larger umbrella company, Vayner
The combination of early recognition of smart investments and his ability to build an audience and leverage it to market products has become Vaynerchuk’s signature approach.
But it’s the context and honesty he gives his audience – something he says is lacking in the wider media – that makes people obsess over his opinions.
“Fifty years ago, a grandfather’s point of view carried a lot of weight,” he explains. “We have become enamored with youth culture, we look younger and we act younger. We’re coming out of an era of hundreds of years where elders were respected, and now they don’t have any. »
And now that he’s becoming less of an upstart and more of an elder statesman, it’s become a central part of his videos. He gives a tough love approach that one typically hears from a parent or pastor.
For example, he insisted that not adopting AI will harm a person’s ability to succeed.
“The answer is to use this opportunity as a weapon instead of crying,” he said. “Fifteen years ago, I did the same interview on social networks. What happened was that either people used it to achieve their goals, or they were disrupted by those who did.
“So the real question is: Are you going to grab a surfboard and ride that wave or are you going to stick your head in the sand and let the surf kill you? »
He believes that New York City has played a central role in both his success and his belief that anything is possible.
“Concretely, what makes New York special is the opportunity… it’s not very complicated,” he regrets. “And for some of us who need to grow, who need to build, who need to provide, who need to play, who need to, well, this is the best field.”
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series which highlights New York City’s innovation across all sectors, as well as the individuals who are leading the way.