Major props to the very talented Chris Masagatani who is our NYC Director and also an amazing video creator and producer. The video says it all, but I just want to reinforce how proud I am of Chris and Kavita for being one of our true bright spots this past year. eROI New York City has also done an awesome job staying connected to HQ in P’town. Check it out – the video makes you feel like you are in NYC – raw yet refined – is that possible?
Our fearless NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has been scouring the streets of NYC for 374 days. He and his fiance (now wife) moved there Dec 2, 2007. They moved straight into Hell’s Kitchen and Chris commuted all of 25 blocks to the eROI NYC office in the Flat Iron District of Manhattan where we still operate. So much change in a year – his wife is one of the top designers at nationally-acclaimed design school Parsons, and Chris is truly coming into his own as an expert online marketer, leading email design and web projects for CBS Sports, CBS Watch magazine, CBS Star Trek store among other key eROI clients like digital publisher Zinio, real estate companies like Shares of New York, The Marketing Directors and dozens more unique and amazing NYC-based clients.
What makes our year anniversary in NYC even better is that Chris has found his voice blogging on our new blog in the eROI blog family. Check out the phenomenal, unique video mashups, and photos of NYC life on THE REBIRTH OF SLICK >>
You will feel like you are in New York City when you read the blog posts and watch the videos at www.eroinyc.com
Met with a young entrepreneur, Noah Glass, 26 yrs old, who founded a super innovative startup called GoMobo, where mobile phone users (basically 1/2 of the world) can purchase food at a restaurant from their car, cab, train, or on foot and then go pick it up without waiting in line. It’s the perfect solution for Manhattan where waits can be long and everyone is on a mobile device. In the past couple years, Noah and GoMobo have been covered on ABC News, Good Morning America, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, and Inc. magazine. They’ve got 5,000 active users/consumers in their network and the company is really taking off.
On the Inc. magazine topic, I met an Inc. reporter, Athena, at the Inc. 500 Conference in 2007 in Chicago, and reconnected with her at the new Inc. office at 7 World Trade Center. Wow – the views from their office were unbelievable – and very cool to watch Ground Zero start to come back to life with some major developments happening quickly. I’m a huge fan of Inc. magazine and their annual Inc. 500 conference is really helpful for connecting entrepreneurs and giving some new perspective on growing your business the right way. Athena asked a lot of great questions about some of the innovative Oregon companies that I mentioned to her – Plas2Fuel and a network of entrepreneurs in a group we started called Starve Ups.
A friend sent me this awesome video on the “best prank ever done” at Grand Central Station:
I took the train in from Princeton, New Jersey this morning (spent the night at my childhood friend’s house in Princeton, after recovering from a huge night out at TGI Fridays – with him, his wife, and adorable 2-year-old son, followed by an intense game of Scrabble where his British wife crushed us with words like “cheque” and other non-American, English words). I digress. It’s a balmy 55 degree, overcast day in Manhattan and I’m loving the freedom of walking everywhere in this town.
I connected w/ Chris Masagatani, our NYC Director, at my hotel near Madison Square Garden and we walked to his interim office at ReturnPath – an awesome partner of ours. It’s amazing what you can get done in just a few hours when you have uninterrupted time in person with someone. Chris and I went over updates on all of our NY region clients – roughly 40 of them. We made travel arrangements for him to come back to see us in April in P’town. We also went over a NYC-specific grassroots marketing campaign of reaching out to other bloggers in NYC in the marketing, interactive, and advertising industries.
Chris’s blog is www.CrossPixelNation.com. It’s barebones from a design perspective, but it will soon be a key asset to our NYC office.
We treated ReturnPath Exec Stephanie Miller out to a tasty lunch of Southern cooking nearby and caught up on the happenings within the email and interactive industry. Huge thanks again to Matt, Stephanie, and the ReturnPath team to making our entry into the NYC market so much more enjoyable than scrapping away and learning the hard way.
Another update. We hired an awesome NYC-dedicated account coordinator, Donald Law, in our Portland office and he’s hitting the ground floor running this week.
If you still haven’t clicked through to Chris’s blog, here is Episode II of his video talents and impressions of the Big Apple after living here for the past 6 weeks:
Chris spent all weekend and week (wait – is he working at all?) on this very cool video of his journey from Portland to New York City. Watch it and see the amazing amount of positive energy Chris has – nicely done!
Big things will happen in ‘08, Chris – let the journey begin!
Dylan Boyd, our VP of Sales & Strategy, Maureen Pimley, our VP of Client Services & Operations, Sam White, our Creative Director, Chris Masagatani, our AE and soon to be eROI New York office Director, and I just returned back to P’town from an amazing 4 day trip to New York City. It solidified our decision to open an office there after meeting with strategic partners like KickApps, HBO, Ogilvy, Return Path, MediaPost, RidgewoodTV, and the Mixx Agency. We checked out several shared office places and are most likely going to settle into an office in Union Square in Manhattan.
We also attended and spoke at the MediaPost OMMA East show which had an unbelievable number of online marketing stars from Google, NBC, and others in the social networking space where the highlighted hot topics revolved around “widgets” and professionally-produced video content mashup up with user-generated video content to form very real and believable, engaging content driving media sites.
As an entrepreneur, I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to grow our relationships and connections in NYC, but I also have to admit that it’s a little nerve-wracking with how expensive it will likely be. It’s clearly a risk worth taking and I have the utmost confidence in my team (and especially Chris who is going to be starting up the office there) making this a huge success. Our partners and clients in New York have already extended unbelievable generosity and hospitality. Thank you to all of you who have opened your doors to us (literally and figuratively). Thx!
Great Welcome Email - Every once in a while I get a nice surprise. I was told the other day that Levis had a great new welcome email and that it lived up to the promise on the home page. What was this promise? Well if you look at the home page at the footer they state “Sign up [...]
I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
