Avi Zolty is a young and enthusiastic entrepreneur who entered into the world of business at the young age of 16 when he founded his first business. After which, there was no stopping him as he went on to establish many popular teen nightclubs and eventually the foundation of the largest dubstep promotion company in the South. At present, he serves as the chief marketing officer for the co-working company: Ctrl Collective.
After graduating from the prestigious Y Combinator in 2013, he founded and served as the senior marketing executive for Beatdeck (acquired) Skurt (acquired) Trustable (acquired) and Happy Gifts Inc (Earfleek & IvoryClasp). Apart from this, he also founded the non-profit accelerator teenstartupacademy. In this candid interview, Avi talks about what inspired him to become an entrepreneur and how he managed to establish and run multiple businesses at once.
Interviewer: Tell us something about your background?
Avi Zolty: I grew up in a religious Jewish household in Pittsburgh, PA. I most certainty attribute a lot of the Jewish learning as something that helped shape my business and analytic mind. The ‘Gamara’ is a Jewish text that resembles somewhat a transcription of a court hearing. Where different Rabbis go back and forth employing different logic and reason-driven arguments to get to the bottom of complex questions. The ability to read depth from metaphors and rationalize complex logical assumptions is a muscle uniquely exercised in Jewish learning and business strategy!
Interviewer: What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
Avi Zolty: I think inspired is the wrong word. I consider Entrepreneurship my vice. I don’t start businesses because I want to- I start businesses because I need to. I love the rush and excitement of launching something new and seeing users interact with it. The thrill of the project is similar to what I assume a gambling addict feels playing craps.
Interviewer: How it’s like to manage multiple businesses at once?
Avi Zolty: Confusing, certainty. The trick is to surround yourself with employees you can trust. A good employee needs to not just be competent but take initiative. You need to have people who you can delegate to and trust that there work-product will be top-notch without your involvement.
Interviewer: What are your thoughts on social media marketing?
Avi Zolty: Social Media marketing is the future of marketing. Billboards or other branding campaigns and channels will never work as well as Social Media Marketing. Social Media platforms own a large amount of data on it’s users, allowing the advertiser to be very focused an deliver (only) extremely relevant content. Additionally, they can quantify their results due to the direct-response nature of these fields using UTM and pixel tracking. This changes the game, as no longer does advertising require large amounts of money spent trying to understand your demographic and analyzing where to buy or place a billboard TV/Ad. With social media you’re able to launch a campaign with (almost) every dollar going to highly targeted users, where you can quantify and analyze the results in real time.
Interviewer: What advice would you give to emerging entrepreneurs?
Avi Zolty: There are four types of ideas set into two categories. Good ideas (These may sound like good ideas or bad ideas) and Bad Ideas (these may sound like good ideas or bad ideas as well). No one works on bad ideas that sound like bad ideas, and the good ideas that sound like good ideas (self-driving cars, and AI) are being tackled by the bigger players. Entrepreneurs live and die in their ability to differentiate between good ideas that sound like bad ideas and bad ideas that sound like good ideas. As everyone is striving for the former, it’s important to search out products that sound like bad ideas. Y Combinator teaches you to solve your own problem for just this reason (Although an idea sounds bad, you know it’s good because you yourself would use it). Where most startup founders fail, is that they fall for the traps of bad ideas that sound good. These bad ideas sound good because they’re X for Y (example Uber for ____, or Airbnb for ___); based solely on data (I ran a survey and 50% of people said...). A good way to avoid these are to be truthful with yourself about your motive the first time you searched for competition. Where you looking, hoping there was no competition? Perhaps there was similar products which you had to reason away as how you were different. If so, you’ll likely fail. Or did you search hoping the solution existed so that you could use it yourself.
Media Contact
Company Name: CTRL Collective
Contact Person: Avi Zolty
Email:Send Email
Country: United States
Website: AviZolty.com
