Paul Greenberg
CEO of Nylon
Discussion
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
Hi! I'm Paul. I'm passionate about media, digital media and technology. I started as a sportscaster and then decided to get on to the management side. Over my career, I've grown businesses at CollegeHumor, MTV, Time Inc., TV Guide and others, and I'm currently CEO of Nylon, a growing media company targeting Millennial women. We have digital, influencer, e-commerce, event and print assets, so we're able to reach our audience everywhere they are. Ask me anything!
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Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Obviously there is a ton of great collaboration, but what's something tech people and media people misunderstand each other on?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@eriktorenberg It's hard to generalize about this. I've spent my career working to bridge the gap between tech and media in positive ways -- I believe that today in order to be a successful media company you have to be a successful technology company as well. I've also been deeply involved in tech my whole career in addition to media (I used my Bar Mitzvah money in 1981 to buy a TRS-80 computer that had 16K of RAM as all its memory. I had to save programs on a cassette tape and they could only have two-letter file names. But I taught myself how to program it!) The key is that everyone brings a different perspective to the table, and I respect those differing points of view. Some people think brand and content are more important; others think product and technology rule. When you can combine them elegantly, you win.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@paulgreenberg Thanks for being here today. 🙌During your career to date, what has been your a) most challenging moment and how did you overcome it? b) proudest moment and why? c) most surprising moment?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@ems_hodge Thanks! My most challenging moment was trying to grow MusicNet -- the b2b digital music company where I ran sales in the mid-2000s. It's like a white-label Spotify for companies who were looking to get into the subscription streaming music business, except no one had heard of subscription music. We spent a lot of time on education -- explaining the benefits of all-you-can-eat music for $10/month and signing big partners like MTV, Yahoo, Microsoft, Samsung, Virgin, etc. Eventually people gave us the credit we deserved and we grew the business quickly after that. Proudest moments were the exits we had in MusicNet and TV Guide Digital. Most surprising moment was when we released our movie at CollegeHumor and it was immediately nominated for seven Oscars.
Russ Frushtick
@russfrushtick
As another former MTV staffer, what's your take on how the company has changed/grown since you left?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@russfrushtick I think it's still an amazing company. They could be doing a bit more innovation to help find new ways to reach their millennial demo, but overall they have incredible brands and create great content.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Hey Paul! thanks for joining.
Walk us through what it's like to come into Nylon as CEO - what are some of the first things you did? What were some of the biggest challenges that you can talk about?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@eriktorenberg Thanks, Erik! I appreciate your having me. Coming into Nylon was interesting because it had a legacy as a print company with very little digital DNA (or operational function). The first things I did were to hire a terrific VP of engineering, a great video team, more digital editors and digital salespeople. We've since added a great Chief Revenue Officer and are continuing to round out the team with digital marketing people. The challenge was making sure this very powerful brand is recognized as relevant in today's media landscape with consumers. Traffic and social growth were critical. We've grown from 200,000 monthly unique visitors to 4.2 million in our first year, so things are going well. We're also at 1.7 million Facebook fans, 900K Twitter followers and 850K Instagram followers. The team here is very hard-working, and while we've had our share of growing pains, everyone is on the same page about the best way to keep moving forward.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What are your favorite products/tools that y'all use at Nylon?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@andrewmettinger Chartbeat, Curalate, Magento + Shopify (we created a cool API connection between the two), and believe it or not, I really like Google Analytics.
Sam Parr
@thesamparr · Roommates
@paulgreenberg What are your top 3 tactics for growing unique monthly visitors from 0 to $1m and how do the economics per writer and salary work at Nylon?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@thesamparr Many different tactics, including more content that is very shareable; increasing social reach; syndication; SEO. Writers are paid on a straight salary.
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
Hi @paulgreenberg thanks so much for joining us today. Would love to hear what your most effective strategies are when publishing new content? Do you have any tips or tactics to further increase engagement and audience?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@harrystebbings Hi. Content must be tailored to the medium where it will be consumed by the audience. If we create a video, for example, we will put the entire video on nylon.com, YouTube and then -- usually a day later -- Facebook (natively). We also create 15-second versions for Snapchat and Instagram and a 6-second Vine. We make sure we don't just repurpose clips for the shorter versions -- they have to feel native on those platforms.
Scott
@scottgabrielson · Founder, Oliver Cabell
@paulgreenberg thanks for joining us. What advise do you have for startups looking to get featured in Nylon?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@scottgabrielson Do something that is different from what everyone else is doing and that is a fit for our audience.
Michael Lee
@mikehlee_ · Product Designer @ Sunrun
Regarding distributing content - There are so many quality musicians out there. I learn about new and skilled artists each day on places like Soundcloud. What's a piece of advice you would give them to help them stand out among other talented musicians?
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Paul Greenberg
@paulgreenberg · CEO, Nylon
@mikehlee_ I would work hard at finding out where your targeted fans are currently. Are they on Facebook (probably), but are they also on Instagram, YouTube or Snapchat following other musicians like you. See if you can contact them to let some of the influencers in those communities know about what you've created. I would also make sure to play as many live shows as possible. The more you keep working, the higher the chance that someone will see you.