Startup Grind's Q&A with WatchMojo Founder Ash Karbasfrooshan
This Q&A was conducted in Montreal on October 9 2019 between Ernst & Young's Cedric Tawil and WatchMojo founder Ashkan Karbasfrooshan. It was originally posted on the Startup Grind channel & republished here with permission. If you haven't had a chance to read Ash's third book "The 10-Year Overnight Success: An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto: How WatchMojo Built The Most Successful Media Brand On YouTube," this Q&A serves as a great oral history of WatchMojo. You can get the book here: https://amzn.to/2FesORi
Here are shortcuts:
0:56 - Background, upbringing and roots
3:05 - College & Career
5:28 - Entering startup world: Mamma, AskMen
13:40 - WatchMojo
16:15 - Character, courage and confidence: The FOX lawsuit
19:45 - Editorial origins: horizontal
20:20 - Defining Vertical: the turning point in 2012
23:16 - Recognizing a need to change: a fateful chat in Madison Square Park on day in 2012
25:00 - How geek culture became pop culture
28:00 - The blast-off
30:50 - A contrarian HR playbook
31:15 - The paradox of Scale
32:10 - Two options: have fun or make money (early on)
33:50 - Values & Principles: Scale in Tech v Scale in Content
36:50 - Balancing Healthy Paranoia
39:00 - Montreal vs NYC or Los Angeles
41:30 - CEOs who lose focus & Conference Culture
43:00 - Media is Changing & The Internet Exposes the Entitled
44:24 - My Best Decision
45:30 - My Worst Decisions & Managing Regrets
48:00 - Advising Others: Why is everyone a life coach?
50:05 - How to Get Coverage in TechCrunch & Industry Publications
53:15 - Being a Challenge with Venture Capitalists
53:53 - The Future of WatchMojo
Audience Q&A
57:30 - How to Use YouTube to Drive Traffic Back to your Website?
1:01:12 - Origins of the WatchMojo name
1:03:18 - Cash flow management, aka not running out of money
1:05:25 - Recruiting and Retaining Co-founders and Employees - a very Contrarian take on HR
1:09:00 - Attrition
1:11:55 - How to Maintain Quality and Consistency as You Scale Content Production
1:16:00 - Are Top 10 Lists the Golden Goose of Publishing?
1:19:00 - The Role and Responsibility of Platforms when Democracy is Under Assault
1:23:05 - Top 10 lessons for Entrepreneurs
1:24:25 - What No One Tells You About Entrepreneurship
Startup Grind: / @startupgrindlocal
Original URL of the interview: • Startup Grind Montreal hosts Ashkan Karbas...