Andrew Zarick
In high school I started my first company, a home brew project with the goal of turning the Xbox into a DVR. We were featured on the front page of Slashdot (like the modern day ProductHunt). We built a working prototype, raised an angel round, and then never shipped. This was my first foray into not only running a team, but also managing a community of passionate enthusiasts in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and forums. Around this time I was also incredibly active as a community manager in a number of underground IRC music channels, akin to what would nowadays be modern day Discord groups.
Thus began a passion for building products and communities.
I’ve since worked with some of the first digital agencies in the world where I ran SEO, media buys, affiliate marketing, and social campaigns. I’ve been a founder multiple times over, first with Digital DUMBO and then StereoGrid.
Digital DUMBO started as a networking event for the creative & tech community in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The organization grew to over 20,000 members with events in four countries and seven cities around the world. We had sponsors and speakers like Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Facebook, but also notable Brooklyn companies like Etsy, Drop.io (acquired), Outside.in (acquired), Huge, Big Spaceship, Work & Co. Carrot, VICE and countless others. Many of our speakers went on to become incredibly successful on their own accord (Jen Rubio - AWAY, Andrew Kortina - Venmo, Jesse Israel - The Big Quiet, Sam Lessin - Facebook & VC).
Through Digital DUMBO, I’ve also worked with many government agencies to attract companies and talent, both in the U.S. and internationally, specifically in Ireland, the UK, Belgium & Costa Rica. This led to at one time being a mentor for the Mayor of London’s International Business Program.
My second startup, StereoGrid, was born while working as one of the earliest members of WeWork at the company’s first location on Grand Street in Soho. StereoGrid was a platform that allowed emerging musicians to easily disseminate their music to music bloggers and press via an embeddable media player that tracked analytics in real-time. Basically, if SoundCloud had a media player that was sent to bloggers and press that not only reported analytics, but also captured fan email addresses, this was StereoGrid. Then, Spotify came along and made this largely unnecessary.
This collision of unique experiences led to consulting work with digital agencies and CEOs alike, blending strategic marketing with events, technology, placemaking and community building. Two notable projects include working with the CEO of one of the largest cinematography rental houses in the U.S. to build their book of business amongst large advertising and digital marketing agencies through PR, acquisition marketing & smartly curated events. Another project involved working with an incredibly successful real estate developer to attract the creative class to take on flexible office space at a 130 acre former naval shipyard near Jersey City. Both of these projects standout as expanding my perspective and pushing into new domains.
More recently, I’ve been a key team member of Verizon’s 5G Lab team, the team within Verizon tasked with ushering in a 5G powered world. In my time with Verizon I’ve led nearly every function - ecosystem development through event production and running accelerator programs, serving as an Operator/General Manager for the NYC Lab including managing a multi-million dollar Lab refresh, being an active stakeholder in working with global design firm Gensler to launch the newly opened Boston Innovation Center, managing, executing and leading executive briefings for Fortune 10 CEOs, and finally, driving tech incubation and go-to-market strategies for new 5G enabled solutions that lead to direct revenue for Verizon.
My primary focus over the past couple of years as I transitioned from New York to the 5G Los Angeles Lab has been all things media & entertainment - AR, VR, volumetric capture, motion capture, virtual production, virtualizing production workflows, creator tools, and producing next gen entertainment experiences. A recent production with Capitol Music Group, AWS and Twitch featured a fully live XR music show with real-time interactivity from Twitch Chat allowing remote viewers to control the show, enabled by 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength (near cloud). Some might call this type of work metaverse infrastructure technology. In this realm, my team has worked with Pandora, Capitol Music Group, Twitch, AWS, & others.
Nowadays, I think quite a bit about these unique experiences and where emerging tech like Metaverse, Web3, and NFTs are heading, but through practical use cases. I’m incredibly interested in new commerce opportunities around things like digital real estate, digital fashion, VR event production & staffing, NFT utility in the real world through live events & retail, and areas like AI entertainment enabled by game engines and streaming.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d enjoy speaking with you!
(for my resume you can visit LinkedIn).