Matthew O. Brimer
Co-Founder of General Assembly
Discussion
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
Hi, I’m Matthew Brimer! I do a few things, but mostly consider myself an entrepreneur, artist, and instigator. I co-founded General Assembly a few years ago, and also co-founded Daybreaker. I love community building, supporting other entrepreneurs, creating movements, dreaming up the future of education empowering people to transform their lives for the better, traveling, and helping make the world a better place. Excited to jump into the conversation!
Btw, as a bit of an extension to my intro above -- I co-founded General Assembly in 2010, and also co-founded Daybreaker back in 2013. I started a social gaming startup 2007 (which failed!), but I learned a ton from it and got my feet wet in the startup space. I love community building, supporting other entrepreneurs, creating movements, dreaming up the future of education empowering people to transform their lives for the better, traveling, and helping make the world a better place.
Excited to be here, and looking forward to diving in and chatting with you.
upvotesharetweet・
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@eriktorenberg Helping to promote its 2nd party in Boston so really excited to know more :)
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@eriktorenberg Big vision for Daybreaker, wooowee! In short form -- to create a world-changing cultural movement and lifestyle brand dedicated to inspiring a global community of individuals through mindfulness, camaraderie, self-expression, wellness, and mischief. What we've created -- are creating -- with Daybreaker is unlike anything I've ever seen before, and it's incredibly inspiring and humbling to me to see what is happening. We're *waking people up*, figuratively and literally!
daniellevine
@daniellevine · Docket.report
Hey Matt! Thank's for doing this AMA. I'm wondering, what's the best thing you've come across in the last 30 days and why? Could be anything, a product, an article, a tea, a quote. Anything! Thanks for answering.
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@daniellevine Something I've come across recently that I love... I was coming off the L train today in the Union Square subway station, and lo and behold I saw this amazing underground retail installation: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/the....
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@daniellevine Compared to the normal subterranean bodega fare in NYC's subways that are usually filled with cheesy magazines, processed food, and generally unappealing vibe, this place called "The New Stand" was beautifully designed, well-lit, with thoughtfully curated products, healthy juices, and a cool neon sign. It was awesome and totally something that there should be more of. Perfect for setting up shop right off the L train from Williamsburg too. ;)
Phil Nguyen
@p_ngu · The Daily Water Cooler + Vettery
@brimer Thanks for the heads up on The New Stand, looks really neat and I love the thought behind it.
Aditya Gopal Ganguly
@gopcruise · Developer, Practical Knowledge Labs
You started a gaming company as well? What are your views about the domain of serious games?
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@gopcruise I wouldn't consider myself a gamer really, much less a serious gamer, though my social gaming startup that I co-founded back in 2007 was a team-based community-powered social gaming platform called PickTeams, which leveraged college rivalries and sports rivalries, allowing people to 'play out' their affinity groups and competitive rivalries online through fun massively multiplayer team-based games that we built. The post-mortem is here: http://www.gocrosscampus.com. We never ended up figuring out how to generate any significant revenue, and when the recession hit in 2009, we ran out of cash and had to close up shop. Difficult times for sure, but ultimately a powerful learning experience. All entrepreneurs go through failures, and the best entrepreneurs learn from those failures and go on to bigger and better things, humbled and more experienced than before.
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
How do you stay devoted to all the projects/startups you are working on? Related to this, how do you make sure that the teams at each of your startups feel that you are available for mentoring?
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@arpitgupta It can be tricky at times! Time management and prioritization are critical. It's something I've gotten better at but still struggle with -- there's never enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do. Which means you have to cut out what doesn't matter, you have to be able to say no. I try to manage my professional 'pie' so that I remain devoted -- time-wise -- to the projects that need me the most, but also those that I choose to devote my time too. You don't want to feel overwhelmed with obligations such that you can't focus on everything. I try to choose one or two HUGE projects to focus on at any one time that I'm operationally involved with, accompanied by some other endeavors that require less of my day-to-day operational involvement. For me, right now at least, that means I'm primarily spending my professional time on General Assembly and Daybreaker, accompanied by some time carved out to support a few other companies/projects I'm supporting or advising, like the co-living startup Common (http://hicommon.com) for instance -- but making sure that I keep my primary focus on the company or companies that need me most.
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@brimer How did you get Alexis Ohanian to invest in GA? What a cool investor to have on board! http://alexisohanian.com/pages/i...
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@arpitgupta We spent time with him, became friends, got him involved in our hackathons and events and early educational offerings, and when we were ready to raise our Series A, he was in! It's all about building relationships with people who believe in you and your mission.
Jourdan Bul-lalayao
@jourdanb21 · Co-Founder & CTO, Jobox
Hi Matthew!
Thanks for your AMA on Product Hunt!!
My question is intentionally vague as I'd love for you to answer based on your interpretation of the question :).
If you had only one tip to share with entrepreneurs on how to build a successful startup, what is your absolute #1 tip?
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@jourdanb21 one tip I have for entrepreneurs is to *hire people who are better than you at specific things*. As you build your team, bring on people smarter and more capable at particular areas of the business where you feel your skills lacking. As your company grows you want the average quality of talent to be going up. It's a humbling thing to be surrounded by so many incredible people in your company, but as a founder that's vital!
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
What are you favorite hobbies lately?
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@jacqvon some of my favorite hobbies -- I love creating new experiences for people that push them forward as humans. Sometimes that means hosting an intimate dinner with new and old friends where everyone goes around the table and shares one thing they're vulnerable about and one thing they're proud of. It gets really deep really quickly, and it's amazing to see how people's facades break down and how real and authentic they get when you create the space for that. I'm some combination of a creative and sociologist at heart (I majored in sociology at Yale during undergrad), so I love thinking about and creating ways for people to find transcendent moments that enable them to become better versions of themselves. It's really rewarding too, to see people find fulfillment in an experience or a product or a piece of art you've created. I've come to realize that one of the best ways to be happy yourself is to create happiness for others. :)
neeharika sinha
@neeeharika · Google, Threadchannel
Hello Matthew! So great to meet you here for the AMA. I would love to know if General Assembly is planning to expand into Indian and Asian markets? What was the growth roadblock you had to face expanding into foreign markets.
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@neeeharika We're expanding a lot into Asia-Pacific actually. We recently opened General Assembly Singapore, and have campuses in Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong already. Much more to explore!
Erik Finman
@erikfinman · Founder of Finman Technologies
Do you think that more startups will take on the physical space of edu more? and if so how would you scale that to k-12?
M
Matthew O. Brimer
@brimer · Co-Founder, General Assembly
@erikfinman I think in-person education, when done well, can be incredibly powerful. We've seen it all over the world at GA's campuses. Turns out people like to be around people! You can only have so deep of an experience through a glowing screen, but IRL experiences can be really powerful and transformative, allowing people to engage and connect and learn with each other, motivating each other face to face and making the learning experience more tangible.