Episode Summary

How many Emmy-award winning journalists working in war zones in the Middle East do you know who go on to become startup CEO of a hot new media company? That’s Jeff Kofman, the guy who got fed up spending hours transcribing interviews while on assignment and thought, there has to be a better way. And there is, and he calls it Trint. In this episode of The Sydcast, Jeff shares his story of what it took to go from one world to an entirely new one, and some of the adventures he encountered along the way.

Syd Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Jeff Kofman

Jeff Kofman, CEO and founder of Trint, is a tech entrepreneur with an unusual backstory. As an Emmy award-winning network television news foreign correspondent and war correspondent with ABC, CBS and CBC News he spent more than three decades reporting from around the world. Jeff has covered many of the biggest stories of our time including the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil Spill and the Chile Mine Rescue. He's won an Edward R. Murrow Award, a duPont Award and two Emmys, including one for his coverage of the fall of Muammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011.

Insights from this episode:

• Difficulties Jeff faced with transcription and wasted time that led to him creating Trint, the problems the company set out to solve, and what sets Trint apart from the competition.
• Benefits of being a new company in a new category of technology and software.
• What it takes to be a successful start-up including maintaining focus, providing solutions people want, and being sustainable and repeatable.
• Details on why being a journalist was good preparation for being an entrepreneur.
• How to communicate with your employees to achieve common goal-setting and create a positive work-environment.

Quotes from the show:

• “I think that people sometimes confuse AI as the end product, AI is a means to an end.” – Jeff Kofman
• “We live in an era that I call the Voice Economy. The 20th Century was text driven, today we live in a voice-driven economy.” – Jeff Kofman
• On entrepreneurship: “It is more creative than I ever imagined. It is harder than I ever imagined. And it is more fun than I ever imagined.” – Jeff Kofman
• “All of us are in the business of storytelling, that’s called living.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think that the innovation opportunities in this field are pretty limitless, people need to be able to turn around content efficiently and get it out to multiple platforms and integrate it into traditional products.” – Jeff Kofman
• “It’s very interesting when it comes to timing, many people forget that when they look back at the success of a company.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “A start-up has to have an actual business model that’s sustainable; if it’s not a sustainable business, it’s not a business.” – Jeff Kofman
• “You have to be really comfortable admitting what you don’t know … you have to be really humble about knowledge.” – Jeff Kofman
• On being a journalist: “You become incredibly resourceful, you understand what’s achievable and what’s not, and you do it.” – Jeff Kofman
• “It’s oppressive to think about how hard life is for some people.” – Jeff Kofman

Resources:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Benedict's Newsletter

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Jeff Kofman

Website: trint.com

Twitter: @JeffreyKofman

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)