Yesterday, Startup Riot had two keynote speakers, one of which was Adam Rich. Adam is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Thrillist. I had heard of Thillist before but didn’t realize it was a city-specific daily email site with something new of note in one of four categories: eat, drink, travel, own.
Here are some notes from Adam Rich’s keynote at Startup Riot:
- Original idea came from being in Philly trying to find the coolest stuff to do
- Built a bar in dorm room for prohibition cocktails
- National men’s magazines good for an airport layover but not tactical
- Local city guides had relevance but weren’t focused on the young professional male
- Built Thrillist to have filtered, targeted city information for his guy demographic
- Idea is 10% and execution is 90%
- Daily Candy was good but light on tech and guy stuff
- Went to funders of Daily Candy and pitched it was that for guys
- Don’t reinvent the wheel, use a successful plan when you can
- Hire former athletes as they are coachable and roll up their sleeves
- Tough to transition from doing to delegating
- Manages remote teams because he has a local native for each market covered
- Still views his 200 person company as a startup
It’s always fun hearing the back story and lessons learned from a successful entrepreneur. Adam did a great job and I’m glad he came to the event.
David Cummings on Startups 
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