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The Zen Master of SF New Tech – Myles Weissleder
Holidays are upon us and we caught up with Myles at his favorite place, Sausalito. We interviewed him as he reflected back on his career. Interesting background to say the least.
Q: Tell us about your background?
I grew up in Westchester county in NY- you know the Clintons and got a Psychology degree from SUNY. I was the college newspaper editor and music fan, and found I didn’t like Psychology. I did PR for bands, music events. I use my Psychology background and it helps figure people out.
Q: How did you get into PR?
I wanted to be in music industry and came to SF. I worked for keyboardist, Merl Saunders, doing his media and PR. I really couldn’t live on that and I knew I had to be in NY since Bill Graham Presents wouldn’t take my phone calls. I went back to NY and got into Corp PR on Madison Avenue.
Originally, I thought is I wanted to bring the concept of the internet kiosk machines to NY, which was popular in SF at the time, but the NY Cafe culture was different. No one was doing BBS then in NY because it was pre-internet and very cult-ish. Then as I did work for a Corp PR agency, we worked withStarwave, an internet content aggregator – Paul Allen’s baby.
That is where I met Scott Heiferman. Scott contacted me to help with his start-up, iTraffic, and worked in an Asian Tenement building on Broadway. iTraffic was one of the first on-line and direct marketing/Ad agency and we published an directory on-line directory. We were the first hired by Disney, Sports Illustrated, Bell South and sold to Agency.com and came back to SF.
Scott Heiferman contacted me again and asked me if I was interested in a new venture, Meetup, but I told Scott didn’t want to go back to NY. I worked on the marketing before it launched and after the launch did communications and PR/marketing for Meetup before it became big and started 2-3 years later the SF New Tech Meetup using the same model as the NY gig in 2006.
Q: You seem to have an entrepreneurial spirit which I see in the SF Tech culture, do you have that?
Yeah, When iTraffic as growing, I did the cubicle thing and found I am just not cut out for that. I am too much of an independent thinker. As an entrepreneur, I find I need to turn the dial up every day where I have pressure to compete to get my paycheck. My support network is my family, my wife, every person working in a small company or start-up needs that.
Q: How did you and Matthew Gonzales get together?
You know Matt’s doing his own thing and I am happy for him. Pretty simple, I needed some help and I said you can just run with it and he did. We got along well and just talked about everything.
Q: What were some of the SF New Start-ups that you felt were going to be big?
Wow, I felt Evernote, Twilio, Apture – and all these you just felt they were going to be big, get snapped up by bigger fish.
Q: What’s next for SF New Tech gig, lessons learned?
I want to make this gig something grander and something special. I think it is still evolving from the Meetup group it came from to an International entry scene like Japan Night. People are interested in the international tech scene. We are still going to do two events a month and theme more events. I am also doing lunch time meetings with AT&T. It is on my back to make it grander. Expanding it to other communities, perhaps?
What we are seeing in SF the last few years, are the number of events in the “city” so competing for people’s time. I hear the Palo Alto folks have a hard time relating to the urban start-up culture here in SF. I see us as the bridge between Silicon Valley and the urban SF Tech scene.
We appreciate being involved in SF New Tech as their media sponsor. Thanks to Myles for a great 2011 year and thanks to Myles all who make SF New Tech a great place to be.
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