So, we just got back from a company retreat from Vermont…although retreat seems like kind of a misnomer, it was more of an attack.

We were on the offensive from the minute we got there, spurred on by Gary’s constant urgings of “let’s do something competitive!”

It’s not immediately apparent what the purpose is for members of an internet startup to bat around a ball at each other when they’ll never surpass weekend warrior status.

To find meaning in these casual competitions, you have to look at the place sports have in our culture, and why it’s important for professional athletes at the peak of their game to compete against one another.

Be warned that this is one of the only posts I write that’ll be focused on me, not on You. So if you’ve no interest in Neil Sarkar or VaynerMedia, a better use of your time would be watching one of yesterday’s Old Spice videos.

What’s the significance of that tweet? [...]

A risk-averse approach is safe in the short term and self-destructive in the long term. And not the fun kind of self-destructive. The slow, crippling, succumbing to death at 24 without realizing it until 42 self-destructive. No thanks.

Just as anybody who dedicates their life to music has at one point imagined themself as an international rockstar, anybody who willfully dedicates their life to the Internet has at one point imagined themselves being beyond a boss; being part of something magical.

Travis Porter had an avid and rapidly growing fan base, which gave us a captive audience. They were unsigned, which gave us creative license. They were innovators in a space (Hip Hop music) that was seeing huge social effectiveness with rudimentary implementations, which gave us an exciting and potentially rewarding challenge.