One of our favorite series this past year was a very cool, intimate look at the “formative” moment of some well-known business owners. Co-produced by Reddit and Google Cloud Platform, “Formative” speaks to the entrepreneurs in all of us.
For your viewing pleasure, we’ve decided to make a one-stop shop for all of the Formative videos along with some of our favorite quotes from the groundbreaking individuals featured.
Casey Neistat
Amateur YouTube filmmaking star and owner of Beme, a social video app, Casey started out in a small town in Connecticut. After a lifetime of questioning authority, skateboarding and washing dishes, he bought his first iMac, moved to New York and started a new life making a name for himself on YouTube. These days, he proves his school teachers wrong as he skateboards around the office of a company he built from the ground up.
Favorite quote:
“That inflection point, that moment, leaving Connecticut, leaving a life that very easily could have been my entire trajectory, working in kitchens, living in a trailer park, struggling to be miserable, making the decision to leave that and embrace something that was certainly terrifying, unknown, undetermined in every capacity, that inflection point, that decision, has been the most pivotal decision in my entire life.”
Rana el Kaliouby
Kaliouby grew up as a student from Egypt interested in computer science, and her path lay in academia thousands of miles away from her family. She used digital technology as a communication tool. But after too many transactional conversations, she found that current tech may be able to span the distance between herself and her family, but it couldn’t convey emotion. With that realization, she decided to take a step into the commercial world by starting her company Affectiva.
Favorite quote:
“I think there were many times when I considered quitting. I think what kept me going was this passion, this deep conviction that I’m onto something that can change how we connect to each other. I think that this passion, this internal drive and this…I don’t know…this gut feeling that you’re onto something. I think that’s very important.”
Robert Herjavec
As a young Croatian with parents determined to make it in “the New World”, Herjavec never expected to be the owner of one of the largest security companies in the world (or a shark on “Shark Tank”). But after witnessing his mother get duped by a vacuum cleaner salesman, he knew that that he never wanted his family to have to deal with feeling weak due to life’s challenges ever again.
Favorite quote:
“Everybody has that story, everybody has that element of meaning. You just have to take that meaning and channel it into incredibly long hours of really boring drudgery and work and create something for it. And that’s what business is. That’s what starting a company is. The beauty is you don’t remember the work. You remember the exhilaration. If you have enough meaning those moments will make it all worthwhile.”
Nick Woodman
Nick Woodman, a California surfer turned GoPro CEO, stumbled into the creation of one of the world’s largest camera company by trying to get away from a “conveyer belt” career. The story of GoPro begins with Woodman starring at the ceiling, depressed with his outlook after college. In that moment, he decided to go surfing, and his subsequent surfing trip throughout Southeast Asia and Australia gave him the idea of GoPro. The rest is history.
Favorite Quote:
“There’s a big difference between going to work, to a job, and realizing your dreams and your passions. Those are two different things. For me GoPro is the result of me pursuing my dreams and passions to the fullest.”
As mentioned in one of earlier posts about the series, this content is a great example of cross promotion at work. Reddit and Google Cloud Platform worked together to create great content, although they did it for different reasons. Reddit, a user-generated content website, looked to develop more branded content to engage its visitors. Google Cloud Platform’s reason, however, is less obvious. The tech giant funded the initiative because such tactics get its brand in front of its audience. By engaging potential leads earlier in their search for a solution (before they even know they have a problem), a business owner is more likely to turn to Google Cloud Platform when it’s time to turn to the cloud. The tactic is what content marketing is all about.
