My guest today is Jason Stein, a general partner at Steins, an investment management business and holding company that provides capital and strategic partnership to consumer brands, media and technology companies. Jason also founded Laundry Service, an advertising agency that sold to Wasserman Media Group in 2015. And full disclosure, I worked for Jason at Cycle Media, the sister company of Laundry Service, and that's where we met. In this episode, we talked about the direct to consumer commerce wave, sports advertising and also the future of marketing. And this conversation begins with a story of how Jason use Twitter to recruit me back when I was a senior in college. I hope you enjoy this episode.

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SHOW TOPICS

1:07 How Jason uses Twitter and why he thinks advertising begins with creating a great product, and how social media can be leveraged for product development

5:27 Why Jason thinks Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are working on the right problems, how writing can help you become an “influencer”, and the addictive incentives of social media

9:08 Why long form content is not dead, why David thinks “Always be paranoid” is the most important thing he learned from Jason, and why Facebook and Twitter are facing the problems they are today

16:19 Jason’s mindset while building Laundry Service, the importance of a personal end goals, the difficulty of building a services business, and why you should always “Make it about the work.”

25:27 Why Jason is a bit jealous of David, how Steins is different from VC firms, and why is Front Office Sports so important?

35:28 The viral spread of TikTok, why Jason loves it, and how algorithmic feeds become important as a social network scales up

38:17 Why “nothing is binary”, the DTC wave, and why DTC brands are still reliant on wholesale and traditional retail channels

47:08 Why does sports advertising suck, misaligned incentives, and why it’s different to own a brand than be a brand agency

Broken by Laura Williams McCaffrey (audio)