I joined Cornell Tech five years ago with a master’s degree in early childhood education and a career that mostly centered on education and philanthropy. I knew very little about computer science. I thought Java was coffee, Scratch was for itching, Python was a snake, and Basic was, well, basic. I came to Cornell Tech to explore what was possible in K-12 computing. Through this exploration, I’ve developed a set of values—a creed of sorts—that guides our work here at Cornell Tech.

Students thrive when we teach at the intersection of rigor and joy. In computer science, it’s fun to play with the real thing. But sometimes we water it down until it’s too easy—and kids know it. Struggle itself will not turn kids away from computer science. They want relevant learning experiences that lead to building things that matter to them. “I can do hard things!” is one of the most powerful thoughts a student can have.

Teachers matter. We can’t prepare students without preparing teachers. There is no online platform as effective as a skilled, caring human being in the room.

Great computer science teachers take many different paths to the classroom. On my team, we have four gifted master teachers from four backgrounds: special ed, social studies, tech, and design. There’s no traditional route to teaching K-12 computer science today. This is a shift from the recruitment of computer science teachers in the past and has an impact on how we recruit and prepare teachers. It also adds a wonderful dimension of diversity to our community.

Getting teachers prepared to teach computer science takes time and consistency. A few days of professional development here and there is not enough to get teachers ready for computer science. They need training and support over time. This was the thinking behind Cornell Tech’s Teacher in Residence program: we’re investigating whether putting a highly skilled computer science coach in a school for a year or longer helps teachers deliver instruction more competently and confidently.

The biggest lever we have is the one we aren’t using enough yet: preservice education for new teachers. The sooner we start teaching computer science education alongside the teaching of math and reading, during teachers’ professional preparation programs, the sooner we get to scale. It’s expensive and time-consuming to continually retool our workforce. Eventually, if every teacher enters the classroom prepared to include computer science, every student will be prepared for the digital world in which they live. This is what we mean by equity: equal access for every student, regardless of geography, gender, income, ability, or, frankly, interest.

We need to know more about how and what to teach. We have a little research and some survey data. We’ve transferred some research from other subjects. Some assumptions have been set in stone. This is an imperfect and difficult-to-navigate set of guidelines for educators. Because our curriculum comes from many sources, each with its own set of questions and reasons to research, we have a very fractured picture. We would learn a lot if, as a community, we agreed on a set of metrics for the next five years and were transparent about our findings.

Integrating computer science into other subjects is hard. There’s only so much time in the school day, and in response, there’s a serious effort to embed computer science into other disciplines as our best hope to reach every student. But can we bring computer science into a math lesson and do both subjects justice? I’ve seen some great examples that argue yes—and more that show one subject losing ground to the other. Better understanding the benefits and costs of integrating computer science is a high priority for our field.

It’s not (only) about jobs. When we focus on teaching computer science solely to fill open jobs in technology it changes what and how we teach. We sacrifice deep learning for short-term gains. We teach material that may be obsolete before our students enter the workforce. Our job is to prepare students for the world so they can seize all opportunities, personal or professional, that come their way. We need to let pedagogy — the practice of teaching based on the science of learning — lead the way.

We have to start planning for success.  We can’t continue to offer introductory lessons to students who are on their way to mastery or we will bore them out of computing. We need to be ready for them with fresh curriculum that builds on their skills.

I’m more confident than ever that we can take a highly complex subject and translate it for every student. We can teach rigorous, joyful computer science to kids of all abilities from all backgrounds. We can prepare teachers from diverse backgrounds, grades, and subjects to understand and teach computer science. But we will have to do it intentionally, and commit time and money. There is still so much to learn. We need to know more to do better. But I’ve seen students with special needs, emerging bilingual students, students of color—all underrepresented in tech— navigate computing with dexterity and purpose. So I know it’s possible because it’s already happening for some. And now that we know it’s possible, we must make it happen for all.

This blog is the first in a series of posts called Ground Truth, which is a term from multiple fields describing information provided by direct observation as opposed to inference. Over the course of the year, I’m going to share conversations with some of the people whose leadership I’ve had the opportunity to observe and learn from. Observe with me and share your ground truth on Twitter (@diane_levitt).

The post Ground Truth: Learning to Make Computer Science Teachable appeared first on Cornell Tech.

I’ve been formally involved with Cornell Tech as a Fellow for about a year now and it has been super-fun having a front-row seat to seeing a major university rise on an island in the middle of New York City, the greatest city in the world. Cornell Tech’s major point of differentiation from most graduate institutions is its Studio program. All the components of the program are described on the web site but to really boil it down, the Studio program is about combining a top-notch academic foundation with the real-world experience of building actual products and services with multidisciplinary teams (design, engineering, business, and legal).

The Studio program has had an excellent Startup Studio track for years, led by David Tisch. Many students coming out of Cornell Tech will work for larger companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) and I’m excited to write that I will be co-leading and co-teaching a new track to complement Startup Studio with my good friend, former colleague, and Google exec Bradley Horowitz. We’re calling it BigCo Studio:

In this class, students will learn how to successfully navigate the opportunities and challenges of a BigCo (Big Company) and build products in a complex environment at scale. Students will also learn about how business development, M&A, and other corporate activities complement, and sometimes compete with product teams to drive larger strategic initiatives forward in BigCos. Students will work in teams matched with a real-world opportunity and advisor from a BigCo. Teams will then build and pitch a working product in three sprints culminating in a final presentation and demo. The class will include lectures and prominent guest speakers from the industry.

BigCos and their products and platforms are increasingly central to our lives, even if you’re a startup (think Gmail, AWS, iOS, and Google Cloud, just to name a few). Chances are you are using one or more BigCo products to read this post. There is a vibrant ecosystem of blogs, books, and information about the startup world but very little practical guidance out there about life in BigCos. We’re looking forward to covering the good, the bad, and the ugly of building products that matter in complex orgs. We’ll be sharing the dark arts of life in a BigCo that we spent the bulk of our careers learning the hard way.

I am particularly excited to be working on this with Bradley, whose professional expertise I respect deeply but also someone I love like a brother. We went through some serious wars at Yahoo! while having an incredible amount of fun. We last worked together in 2008 and since then, Bradley has gone on to run product for some of the most-used consumer products in the world at Google and I joined a little startup called Etsy and grew it into a BigCo. I can’t imagine partnering with someone more suited to the work and it feels like getting a band back together.

If your company is interested in working with our students, first read the How it Works and FAQ sections on the BigCo Studio page and feel free to reach out. If you’re a leader in a BigCo and there’s a topic you really wish students knew more about when they joined your company, let me know. My email is firstname.lastname@cornell.edu.

This blog post was republished from Chad Dickerson’s blog

The post Co-teaching a New Class at Cornell Tech: BigCo Studio appeared first on Cornell Tech.

I made so many new and diverse friends this summer in gorgeous Ithaca, NY. This is where my classmates and I spent the first three months of our Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program. A common goal that unites us is fusing technology with business and creative thinking—a core tenet of the Cornell Tech MBA. We also share the premise that the rapid pace of innovation in the digital age calls for a new approach to the way we learn, collaborate, and craft our experience.

With that in mind, as our MBA Class of 2019 approached the end of our summer semester in Ithaca, we wanted to crystallize our experiences by reflecting on what had gone well, what could be improved, and what actions we should take going forward.

For those with experience on an agile team, these three categories likely sound familiar. They are the key tenets of a retrospective. Retrospectives give teams recurring opportunities to reflect, bond, and collaborate to shape positive, incremental change. We decided to apply the best practices from the tech industry to our cohort in order to accomplish the following goals:

1. Generate feedback and action items for individuals, our cohort, and Cornell Tech
2. Spend time together reflecting, bonding, and collaborating
3. Learn about agile teams and retrospectives
4. Eat pizza!

We drew inspiration from around the internet on ways to run effective large retrospectives. Here’s a quick summary of what we did at Cornell’s eHub in 1.5 hours:

10 minutes: Intro and eat pizza

25 minutes: Mini-retrospectives
We ran mini-retrospectives in groups of about four to eight people
where everyone shared their thoughts on “what’s gone well?” and “what can be improved?”

10 minutes: Sharing themes
Each group shared their top two themes.

15 minutes: Action items
We formed new groups to come up with action items for the themes we identified.

25 minutes: Present
We gave quick presentations to say what actions we’re going to take.

5 minutes: Get started!
People volunteered to own and help with each action item.

Retrospective takeaways

Over 1.5 hours, we generated thousands of thoughts about what’s gone well and what can be improved. Here are just a few:

• “Cornell’s campus in Ithaca is Gorges”
• “The temperature in our classrooms fluctuated too much”
• “The fast paced curriculum helped me improve my prioritization and time management”
• “Communicating on Slack was instrumental”
• “High diversity of talent and culture in the cohort”
• “Sharing is Caring was amazing”

We then whittled down those thoughts into themes and prioritized the ones we thought would be the most impactful. Here are a few examples:

• Student-organized groups
• Culture of continuous feedback
• Networking outside of our cohort

For each of those themes, we generated concrete action items. For example, one action item is to support Emily, our classmate, in scaling the Sharing is Caring initiative on the cross-disciplinary Roosevelt Island campus. (Sharing is Caring is an incredible weekly meeting where students share their expertise and wisdom with the class.)

After the retrospective we all voted on a scale of one to 10 as to whether or not we should do another retrospective in the future, and the result was a net promoter score of 83! Here’s what that actually sounds like:

• “Super helpful, collaborative, and actionable.”
• “I found it inspiring and enjoyable.”
• “We came up with meaningful conclusions and action items that were based on a variety of perspectives.”

We have continued discussing, coordinating, and making progress on each action item in our cohort’s Slack team. We’re looking forward to continue growing together by shaping the Cornell Tech experience on Roosevelt Island for not only ourselves but also future students!

Ryan is an entrepreneurial product engineer with eight years of full-stack experience leading agile teams to build products that people love. Check out some of the work he’s done at https://ryansydnor.com.

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Think wide, stay focused:

In the Runway Startup Postdoc Program, we select PhD grads that wish to start a company by harnessing their deep tech expertise. These brilliant people need to go through a paradigm shift- from an academic mindset to an entrepreneurial outlook. It’s a shift that requires education and practice, but it’s absolutely necessary for their success.

Entrepreneurial mindset from day 1

This is why we begin our program with a unique learning experience: a 5 day intensive workshop on how to discover the most valuable market opportunities for their innovation. This hands-on workshop presents a visual business tool- the Market Opportunity Navigator– to help postdocs in overviewing their potential markets, developing an open mindset that avoids locking in, and eventually setting a smart strategic focus.

The framework consists of 3 steps that are necessary for that matter: (1) how to identify different applications and target customers stemming from the core abilities of the startup; (2) how to evaluate different market opportunities to reveal the most attractive option; and (3) how to create a strategic plan that focuses on the most promising path but keeps you open minded and agile. Each of these steps is accompanied by a dedicated worksheet that lays out a structured process in a simple manner.

During the workshop, postdocs apply the Market Opportunity Navigator on their own business idea, and go through one full cycle of the process. Fernando Gomez-Baquero, director of Runway and Spinouts, says that this is an excellent opportunity for the postdocs to take a step back from their initial idea and open up to different directions that might be more promising: “participants often come with a specific product and market in mind, but these are unproven. This workshop helps them to define their unique abilities, understand what else may be in store for them, and learn how to validate these options. It clearly lays out all the questions that entrepreneurs must deal with before setting their strategy. It’s the students’ role to find the answers, but we are now confident that they have the right tools to do so”.

Combining planning and experimentation

The wide perspective that this workshop provides is essential before moving to the next step- validating a specific market opportunity through intensive customer interviews and minimum viable products. This is where the NSF I-Corps program comes in, and adds a great boost to the entrepreneurial shift of our postdocs.

Our entrepreneurs come more mature to this program, as they have already screened different strategic options and set their strategic boundaries to engage in more meaningful lean cycles of experimentation. Furthermore, if a business model turns out to be rejected, they can pivot more easily and more distantly.

Ardalan Khosrowpour, Runway postdoc, CEO of OnSiteIQ, and former I-Corps awardee stresses the complementing nature of these two approaches: “The Market Opportunity Navigator helped OnSiteIQ exit a local optimum market opportunity…It helped us take a step back from our laser-focused customer discovery and revisit our decision regarding the customer segments and the product-market fit before moving forward. I believe this is an excellent, crucial, and complementary method to Lean Startup by Steve Blank that should be implemented by all startups and especially for university spinoffs where the market opportunity is less clear than the core enabling technology.”

Education is an ongoing process

Even after our postdocs go through these excellent training programs, we keep holding their hand as they perform the early steps of their entrepreneurial journey. We urge them to use their toolkit and apply these business tools overtime, to reflect on their learning. The systematic approach enables them not only to make smarter strategic choices, but also to discuss and debate with their team, mentors, and stakeholders. After all, structured means are vital in the chaotic process of bringing innovation to the market.

The post Runway Startup Program Teaches Entrepreneurs to Uncover Different Opportunities appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Winternships give these young women an immersive experience in different tech businesses/industries as well as a resume credential that will make them more competitive when applying for a summer tech internship.

Winterns and company sponsors were so excited about the experience they wrote about it. Here are a few of the first-hand experiences:

LinkedIn: Making Strides to Encourage More Women in Tech

Learn about LinkedIn’s three rewarding nonstop weeks with the Winterns. Students were fully integrated with the video team, where they built a product that will actually be used on LinkedIn’s platform.

Two Sigma Ventures: Thank You to Our Three Winterns

Two Sigma Ventures welcomed three CUNY students to their team through the Winternship program.

Turner Broadcasting: Let’s Talk About Tech

Macaulay Honors College at Baruch sophomore, Annmarie Gajdos, talks about her Winternship with Turner Broadcasting.

Paul, Weiss: Hosts CUNY Women in Tech Interns for Winter Break

Paul, Weiss welcomed five CUNY students to their team through the Winternship program.

Intersection: The Most Productive Winter Break of My Life

Macaulay Honors College at Baruch freshmen, Justina Hilbert, talks about her Winternship with Intersection.

Thank you to the following companies that participated in the 2018 Winternship Program:

The post Winternship Recap 2018 appeared first on Cornell Tech.

In 2014, I saw Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh speak in downtown Las Vegas. Of all he said, what stuck with me most was his notion of ‘collisionable hours,’ in other words: hours spent colliding with people sharing ideas. He conjectured that transplanting people in different communities has the potential to improve them by introducing diversity-in-thought and fresh ideas. I always thought the theory was interesting, but I never really experienced it much in-practice until Cornell Tech built and opened its doors to its new campus on Roosevelt Island.

The post Collisions: How Interactions Become Actionable appeared first on Cornell Tech.

One of the main reasons I chose to attend Cornell for my MBA is their recently launched Fintech Intensive, offered at the incredible Cornell Tech campus in NYC. The intensive, led by Drew Pascarella, blends teaching us hard skills, involving us in collaborative projects with both startups and institutional players in NY, and exposing us to a roster of incredible speakers.

One of my favorite speakers this month was Ben Alden, a fintech legal authority, Cornell University alumnus, and General Counsel of Betterment. I could not have been more impressed by the quality, openness, and insightfulness of Ben’s presentation at Cornell Tech. By the end of the class, we were all sold on Betterment’s human centric vision and culture.

Here are my 5 major takeaways from the presentation:

1. Wealth management is ripe for disruption

Traditional wealth management is under tremendous scrutiny from clients in recent years for the following reasons:

• (i) high required minimum account balances,
• (ii) high fees,
• (iii) inability to produce differentiated investment returns, and
• (iv) a lack of technology solutions that facilitate ease of use and information transparency.

Since the financial crisis, digitization has disrupted the wealth management practice with new startups gaining market share and incumbents revisiting their business models in the face of increasing competition and pricing pressure.

2. The SEC’s approach to fintech is promising

Contrary to popular belief, the SEC is actually encouraging fintech innovation and is taking steps to improve clarity on regulation. In recent years they have been actively soliciting input and involvement from leading industry stakeholders (including Betterment) to recommend ways the agency can improve regulation around the following technologies:

• (i) Robo-advisors — to democratize investment
• (ii) Blockchain — to make trading, clearing, and settlement processes more efficient and cheaper
• (iii) Online marketplace lenders & crowdfunding platforms — to create valuable sources of capital for small businesses and entrepreneurs

3. Robo-advisors record impressive growth

The growth in automated investing pioneered by Betterment and Wealthfronthas resulted in assets under management in the billions. If these companies continue their CAGR of 68% until 2027, robotic-advisors can reach an AUM of $90 trillion. The growth is so impressive that traditional players such as Schwab and Vanguard have entered the fray. The growth is driven by three major factors:

• (i) lower management fees, between 0.15% and 0.5%
• (ii) similar (if not better) performance, since beating the market is nearly impossible these days
• (iii) no minimum balance requirement

4. Frictionless Design, Narrative & Simplicity

Everything about Betterment, from their product to their business model, screams simplicity and friction-less design. Their narrative is clear:

To empower you to make the most of your money, so you can live better.

Every feature and every piece of content they release comes back to this simple narrative, making it stronger and more compelling. This has the effect of (i) keeping their marketing and sales efforts laser focused on solving this problem and (ii) makes customers connect with what they are building more quickly and organically.

5. The importance of setting up the right legal structure

Ben credits a great amount of Betterment’s success to Eli Broverman, a young securities lawyer from NYU Law who co-founded Betterment alongside Jon Stein. He stressed Eli’s foresight in selecting the right legal structure for Betterment in the earliest days of the business. Not only did it impact things like taxes, paperwork, and liability, but it optimized the company for massive growth in the future. Betterment operates as both an SEC-registered investment advisor as well as a registered broker-dealer. The parent company for Betterment LLC and Betterment Securities, Betterment Holdings, Inc., was established in January, 2008.

This article originally appeared on Medium.

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The majority of the presentations came from Product Studio, the fall Studio course in which companies, organizations and nonprofits pose “how might we?” questions to teams of 4-5 masters students.

This year’s Product Studio course matched 260 masters students with 52 product challenges from organizations like ConEd, Grammarly, Two Sigma, Oscar Health, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many more.

Teams of technical, business, law, and design students responded to these challenges with real prototypes of products and services.

Here are just a few of the questions posed to the students and the products they developed over the semester.

Capital One Labs asked, “how might we use blockchain to create a more secure and user-friendly data sharing platform?” to which Cornell Tech master’s students responded with Zero-bit, a user-friendly military-grade secure storage platform use the power of decentralization to secure user data.

Con Edison asked, “how might we make EV charging more accessible, affordable and/or competitive in NYC?” The team tasked with this challenge created Con-Nect, an app that helps manage electric grid peaks by prompting users to turn off smart devices during these peaks in exchange for reward points.

Oscar Health asked, “how might we enable doctors to better manage patient relationships between visits?” The resulting project is Luna, a mobile app that engages the informal caregivers of bipolar patients to help clinicians make better treatment decisions.

Other presentations were made by Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Runway Startup Postdoc companies Biotia, OnSiteIQ, and Tatch.

The post Celebrating Real-World Product Development at Open Studio appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Our alumni population officially eclipsed our current student population (325 alumni to just over 300 students). We welcomed four full-time faculty members as well as dozens of practitioners and visiting faculty.

Perhaps most notably, we move d into our new campus on Roosevelt Island.

In case you missed any of it, here are the best and most popular stories of the year. Here’s to an even better 2018!

Cornell Tech Campus Opens on Roosevelt Island, Marking Transformational Milestone for Tech in NYC

On September 13 we held our official groundbreaking, which included remarks from Cornell President Martha E. Pollack, Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and others.

Mayor De Blasio, Cornell Tech and CUNY Launch ‘Winternship’

It was also a big year for our WiTNY (Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in NY) initiative. Just a month after the dedication, we partnered with CUNY and Mayor Bill de Blasio to launch ‘Winternships’ — a program offering 2-3 week mini-internships during January for CUNY freshman and sophomore women in tech.

Four World-Class Professors Join Cornell Tech Faculty

Over the summer we welcomed four new full-time faculty members:

• Matthew D’Amore, Professor of the Practice at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School
• Karan Girotra, Professor of Operations and Technology at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
• Wendy Ju, Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
• Garrett van Ryzin, Professor of Operations, Technology and Information Management at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Speech Up Mobile App Makes Speech Therapy a Game For Kids

Alumni startup Speech Up is an innovative app that takes a gaming approach to speech therapy through puzzles and challenges designed to help kids pronounce words correctly. Winner of one of four Cornell Tech Startup Awards, Speech Up was founded by David Cheng, Johnson Cornell Tech MBA ’17, and Luis Serota, Master of Computer Science ’17, Steven Chen, Johnson Cornell Tech MBA ’17, and Eliza Bruce, a 2017 MFA graduate of Parsons School of Design.

TCS & Cornell Tech Inaugurate the Tata Innovation Center

Earlier this month, we announced a $50 Million investment from Tata Consultancy Services to rename the Bridge at Cornell Tech, enhance applied research and accelerate K-12 digital literacy in New York City schools.

Cornell Tech’s Campus: In and of Roosevelt Island

Cornell Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus was developed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with both the school’s and the island’s structures in mind.

The Next Frontier: Data Mining Social Media Images

More faculty means more groundbreaking research. Learn about Noah Snavely’s pioneering work on mining data from social media images.

Collaborative Startup Will Monitor Pathogens in Hospital Settings

Biotia, a Runway Startup Postdoc company at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute is developing microbial surveillance for hospitals, in a joint venture between researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech.

Tech, Media & Democracy Hosts Panels About the Intersection of Journalism and Technology

Since launching in September, the Tech, Media & Democracy initiative, a partnership between six New York City universities, has hosted three public panel discussions touching on some of the most pressing issues facing media in the digital age. Check out the audio from the panels.

Applied Math: Noel Alexander ‘17 Takes His Operations Research to the Next Level

The 2016-2017 was the first year of two new masters programs on campus: Master of Operations Research and Information Engineering and the Master of Laws in Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship. Noel Alexander, ORIE ’17, shared what brought him to Cornell Tech and what’s next for him.

Teaching K-12 Students Computational Thinking and Doing

The goal of our K-12 Education Initiative is that all students in New York City are able to build something digital that has meaning to them.

The post 2017: Cornell Tech Year in Review appeared first on Cornell Tech.

Gary Vaynerchuk, a man that likely needs no introduction because of the strength of his own personal brand, did just that. Chances are you’ve seen his popular DailyVee and #AskGaryVee videos, read his best-selling business books, or heard him speak. Vaynerchuk’s storytelling has helped him scale his multi-faceted career as an influential serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, best-selling author, and CEO of VaynerMedia and VaynerX. Vaynerchuk shared his famously candid advice for how to build a personal brand with members of the tech community at a CornellTech@Bloomberg event led by Scarlett Fu, the anchor of “Bloomberg Markets.”

Create quality content

Vaynerchuk regularly shares his personal and professional advice with his millions of followers and actively encourages others to develop their own personal brands through storytelling.

His advice? “First figure out if you are capable. Are you good enough at writing, video, or audio to tell your story? You have to find your medium,” Vaynerchuk says. Next, remember to give more than you get back.

“I truly believe that the reason I’ve really popped over the last decade is that I give more to my audience that I ask for in return. I’m putting out the best stuff I’ve got every day. It’s not a top of funnel,” he says adding that creating great content has landed him meetings with media giants like Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and Tumblr’s CEO and founder David Karp. “It’s ultimate brand arbitrage. It works because so few people do it.”

Do what you know best

Vaynerchuk built his personal brand about subjects that he knows well: the current state of consumer tech, wine, and the New York Jets. Vaynerchuk notes that he prefers to discuss topics unless he is an expert in the subject. Choose a few topics that you want to be known for and make sure you study them and know it extremely well. As Vaynerchuk says, “don’t be a headline reader” meaning instead of skimming the surface, learn as much as you can so you are truly an expert in your subject matter. Instead of trying to learn a bit about a lot of topics, work on thoroughly understanding the topics you are passionate about and want to make the focal point of your personal brand.

Consider starting on the side

You no longer have to work traditional business hours to start a business, Vaynerchuk explained. Whereas previous generations were limited to managing a business during “typical business hours,” the Internet has enabled people to manage businesses online at any hour. “It’s the options that we are now awarded by the infrastructure of scalable technologies that have no cost of entry to build a personal brand or business direct-to-consumer is just fascinating to me.”

Vaynerchuk experienced that himself when he grew his family wine business from $4 million to $60 million, in part become he became a wine expert and started the popular online show, WineLibrary. Vaynerchuk didn’t just want to be known for wine, growing his family business, or his motivational advice. He wanted to be known for his marketing and business advice so he expanded his personal brand by becoming an expert in specific topics and creating valuable content.

Vaynerchuk’s advice can be polarizing, but one thing is clear: a strong personal brand can lead to career success.

Watch the full conversation:

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