Ari Paparo is an adtech serial entrepreneur, my old boss when I was CMO at Beeswax, and the author of Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance (comes out Aug 5). I noticed his paintings in our Friday 1:1s we'd do over Zoom during the pandemic. Earlier this month, he invited me to his apartment to show me his art and talk about creativity, building companies, and painting.

Preorder his book here: https://www.amazon.com/Yield-Google-Bullied-Advertising-Dominance/dp/B0F67HV2BB

If you work in adtech, you'll know Terry as the guy responsible for most of the M&A that's happened in the last two decades. And that he does highly topical and incisive parody videos that are some of the best marketing in what is generally a pretty dry industry. Behind all that, he's been a comedian for 50 years.

We dive into "what's the deal with the parody videos?" and get a sense of how Comedian Terry and Banker / Thought Leader Terry are all the same authentic self that has differentiated him and driven his incredible success.

Gavin is unapologentically a musician. But maybe it wasn't always like that: while he's been in bands his whole life (current one here), like many of us, he used to wonder how much of that side of himself to reveal. Is the wall between creative and "business guy" ever there for a good reason? We discuss.

Also check out his other musical project where he engineered and mixed.  https://thejaguarclub.bandcamp.com/album/close

Michael Nevins made a career in advertising, adtech, and music tech that led him to start his consultancy (and podcast!), Kick & Snare LLC. But before that, he helped manage the band Living Colour.

How did a front row seat to massive rock stardom in the late 80s lead him to advertising, tech, and where he is today?

s/o to https://jazzwahi.org/ where Michael volunteers doing live sound. Check them out!

"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0

What does someone who drove 4 (4!) exits in 15 years and a Alvin Ailey-level dancer have in common? 

A lot more than you think. I especially loved her take on how doing things that are hard early in life — things you’re passionate about — can tell people who you are later in life.

*Note - we had some audio difficulties at certain points in this episode. Thanks for your patience!

Myles Younger is an artist. Here's some of his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ZTcuSbyAQ

He was one, too, illustrating and drawing at a young age. In between, he had a career in advertising technology where (I claim) he brought his artistic background with him.

Listen and see what you think. Also a lot of shop talk about adtech and creative tech and why there's never been a big creative tech success story other than Adobe.

What's it like to go from playing arenas (opening for The Killers, Blondie, & more) to building a highly successful tech company? My guest this week has done both, and now he's merging the two with an incubator & fund called Creative Captial. We cover quite the journey in 40 min.

Dom in his band Protocol when they had a song on the UK charts in 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7IMyjXLcSk (he's the drummer)

I talked to Erich Wasserman, tech founder and sales exec who got his start playing classical piano at the very top levels of that craft. He thinks there's a link between learning to do something really well (like piano) and being able to other things really well later in life. We explored that and how he ended up transitioning from art to sales to co-founding one of the biggest demand side platforms in adtech.

New episodes on Wednesdays

Starting May 28, 2025