Gary Vaynerchuk

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Gary Vaynerchuk (born Gennady Vaynerchuk; November 14, 1975; Belarusian: ??????? ?????????, Russian: ???????? ?????????) is a Belarusian American entrepreneur, author, speaker and internet personality. First known as a wine critic who grew his family's wine business from $3 million to $60 million, Vaynerchuk is best known for his work in digital marketing and social media, leading New York-based companies VaynerMedia and VaynerX.

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Early life

Vaynerchuk was born in Babruysk in Soviet Union (today part of Belarus), and immigrated to the United States in 1978. Gary and eight family members lived in a studio-apartment in Queens, New York. After living in Queens, Vaynerchuk and his family moved to Edison, New Jersey where Vaynerchuk operated a lemonade-stand franchise and earned thousands of dollars on weekends trading baseball cards. At age 14, he joined his family's retail-wine business. Vaynerchuk graduated with a bachelor's degree from Mount Ida College in Newton, Massachusetts in 1998.

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Career

Wine Library

After graduating from college in 1998, Vaynerchuk assumed day-to-day control of his father's Springfield, New Jersey store, Shopper's Discount Liquors. Gary renamed the store to Wine Library, launched sales online and in 2006 started Wine Library TV, a daily webcast covering wine.

Through a combination of e-commerce, email marketing, and pricing, Vaynerchuk grew the business from $3 million to $60 million a year by 2005. In August 2011, Vaynerchuk announced he would be stepping away to build VaynerMedia, the digital ad agency he co-founded with his brother in 2009.

VaynerMedia

In 2009, Gary, along with his brother AJ Vaynerchuk, found VaynerMedia, a social media-focused digital agency. The company provides social media and strategy services to Fortune 500 companies such as General Electric, Anheuser-Busch, Mondelez and PepsiCo. In 2015, VaynerMedia was named one of AdAge's A-List agencies. With 600 employees in 2016, VaynerMedia grossed $100 million in revenue. The company also partnered with Vimeo to connect brands and filmmakers for digital content.

The Gallery

In 2017 The Wall Street Journal reported that Vaynerchuk formed The Gallery, a new company that houses PureWow following its acquisition by Vaynerchuk and RSE Ventures along with other media and creative-content properties. PureWow CEO, Ryan Harwood, is The Gallery's CEO. A sister company to digital agency, VaynerMedia, Marketing Dive wrote that "joining forces with VaynerMedia grants access to increased video capabilities given the in-house teams and resources."

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Investments

Vaynerchuk has made a number of personal investments as an angel investor including in women's publisher PureWow in 2017. He has also invested in Facebook, Twitter, Venmo, and dozens of other startups. In 2017, Entrepreneur estimated Vaynerchuk's net worth at $160 million.

VaynerRSE

After exits in Tumblr and Buddy Media, Vaynerchuk started VaynerRSE as a $25 Million investment fund with RSE Ventures' Matt Higgins and backed by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. The fund focuses on consumer technology and acts as an incubator in addition to traditional angel investing.

BRaVe Ventures

In 2014, Vaynerchuk partnered with social TV entrepreneurs Jesse Redniss and David Beck to form BRaVe Ventures. The firm advises television networks on emerging technology and funds and incubates emerging multi-screen and social network startups and technologies. In November 2016 Variety magazine reported that Turner Broadcasting System acquired the advisory business of BRaVe Ventures to develop business and strategy for its flagship brands, TBS and TNT.

VaynerSports

In 2016 Vaynerchuk invested in the sports agency, Symmetry, to form VaynerSports to provide full-service athlete representation. In 2017 VaynerSports signed NFL draft participants including Jalen Reeves Maybin, Jon Toth and Josh Jackson.

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Media

Planet of the Apps

In February 2017, Apple and Propagate announced the launch of Planet of the Apps, a reality television series with a recurring cast that includes Vaynerchuk, will.i.am and Gwyneth Paltrow. Described as Shark Tank meets American Idol, in the show Vaynerchuk and team evaluate pitches from app developers vying for investment. The series cast joined with Product Hunt for a tour to Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

DailyVee

DailyVee is a daily, video-documentary series on YouTube that chronicles Vaynerchuk's life as a businessman. Started in 2015, Vaynerchuk records live, interviewing others and broadcasting investor meetings and strategy sessions at VaynerMedia. In the series Vaynerchuk implements social media strategies, especially through Snapchat to demonstrate social-media marketing.

The #AskGaryVee Show

In 2014, Vaynerchuk launched The #AskGaryVee Show on YouTube with his personal content-production team. In the show, Vaynerchuk canvases questions from Twitter and Instagram and responds in a signature, extemporaneous manner. Show questions, most commonly on entrepreneurship, family and business topics, are pre-screened by the production team but remain unseen by Vaynerchuk until each show's taping. The AskGaryVee Show inspired Vaynerchuk's fourth book, AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness.

Wine Library TV

Vaynerchuk hosted a video blog on YouTube called Wine Library TV (WLTV or The Thunder Show) from 2006 to 2011, featuring wine reviews, tastings, and wine advice. The show debuted in February 2006 and was produced daily at the Wine Library store in Springfield, New Jersey. Vaynerchuk appeared on the cover of the December 2008 issue of Mutineer Magazine, launching the "Mutineer Interview" series. Celebrity guests included Jancis Robinson, Heidi Barrett, Kevin Rose, Timothy Ferriss, Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money, Wayne Gretzky, and Dick Vermeil.

At 1,000 episodes in 2011 Vaynerchuk retired the show and replaced it with a video podcast, The Daily Grape. In August 2011, Vaynerchuk announced on Daily Grape that he was retiring from wine video blogging.

Wine & Web

In 2010, Vaynerchuk launched Wine & Web on Sirius XM satellite radio. The show's programming paired new wine tastings in a "Wine of the Week" segment with coverage of gadgets, trends and startups in its "Web of the Week" segment.

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Books

In March 2009, Vaynerchuk signed a 10-book deal with HarperStudio, reportedly for over $1,000,000, and released his first book, Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion, in October 2009. In the first weeks of its release Crush It! climbed to #1 on the Amazon Best Seller list for Web Marketing books. It also opened at number two on the New York Times Hardcover Advice bestseller list and on the Wall Street Journal bestseller List. Crush It! was also among the first books released on the Vook platform.

In 2011, Vaynerchuk's second book was released. The Thank You Economy explores the numbers and soft factors that drive successful relationships between businesses and consumers. The Thank You Economy reached the number two spot on the New York Times hardcover advice bestseller list.

In 2013, Vaynerchuk released his third book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World, through publisher Harper Collins. By highlighting campaigns and strategies that both succeeded and failed across all of the major social-media platforms, Vaynerchuk's third book shows social media marketing strategies and tactics that he believes businesses should be avoiding or employing. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right-Hook debuted at the top of the Wall Street Journal's business books list and at number four on the New York Times hardcover advice bestseller list.

In March 2016, Vaynerchuk's fourth book, AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness, was published by Harper Business, part of Harper Collins. Based on Vaynerchuk's YouTube series, #AskGaryVee, Vaynerchuk compiled questions and answers from his YouTube show into a book, based on categories including self-awareness, parenting and entrepreneurial hustle. #AskGaryVee became Vaynerchuk's fourth New York Times bestseller.

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Recognition

Vaynerchuk has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Time, and has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Ellen.

In the 2000s, Vaynerchuk was described as "the first wine guru of the YouTube era", "the wine world's new superstar", and by Rob Newsom, a Washington State wine maker, "outside of Robert Parker, probably the most influential wine critic in the United States". In 2003, Market Watch magazine awarded Gary Vaynerchuk its Market Watch Leader" award, making him its youngest recipient. In July 2009 Decanter ranked Vaynerchuk at #40 on "The Power List" ranking of the wine industry's individuals of influence, citing that he "represents the power of blogging".

In 2011, The Wall Street Journal named Vaynerchuk to its list of Twitter's Small Business Big Shots and Bloomberg's Business Week named him to its list of 20 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow. In 2013, Vaynerchuk made the November cover of Inc. magazine in a feature on "How to Master the 4 Big Social-Media Platforms."

In 2014, he was named to Fortune's 40 Under 40 and selected to judge the Miss America pageant. In 2015 he was named to Crain's New York Business 40 Under 40 and named to Inc.'s list of "Top 25 Social Media Keynote Speakers You Need to Know." In 2016 Vaynerchuk was a judge for the Genius Awards.

Gary Vaynerchuk: August can be crucial to career success