Digital & Dirt
00:02:48 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:02:48] S1: Yeah. So actually when I was still in college, we, as everyone know, we hit the financial crisis. So that was 2008. And then in 2009, I got a call in March, before the summer was about to start that I actually was being invited for an internship at Goldman Sachs in New York. So intern there right after the crash and had the opportunity to kick off my career in New York working in the financial industry, which I think was really opportunistic for me. I think at that point, while there was a lot of people that had lost their jobs during this time, which is really unfortunate. I would say being young and cheap and hungry, definitely put me in a good spot to be able to kick off my career. Doing something that had, I would just say like a lot of momentum behind it and gave me a chance to kind of get a real world view of what the working world was like in a very high stress, but also high impact environment. So I worked for Goldman for about two and a half years and then left for an opportunity to go to a startup called DataMiner. At the time I was hired as their first salesperson in New York and DataMiner was a company that was really predicated on the Twitter fire hose. So they were one of the earliest partners have access to this real time information and this was 2012. So I think one of the things that sold me on it initially was sitting on the trading floor. I watched all these people scrolling on their phone and looking at Twitter because all of that was blocked in the office. And one of the first things that broke interesting enough was actually the twenty twelve London Olympics. Prior to that, people would watch the Olympics on TV and that's when they would find out what happened. And this was the first time that everything broke on Twitter. NBC really needed to rethink their whole entire process and more and more information was breaking things that were moving the market. And so this was my first time working for a startup. My clients were on the investment bank and hedge fund side. And then I had the opportunity to, you know, was thinking about, I was in a sales role, but wanted to do something a little bit different and started just meeting with everyone.
00:05:10 · Lucy Markowitz
Included in the everyone was I was connected with Michael Provenzano, Sarah And Vistar, we met, I think it was like a total blizzard outside, which made it easy for me to sneak out of the office real quick. People didn't question why I was gone for so long. I think they just thought I got stuck somewhere. And we met up at the, I think it was the Birch Coffee on 29th Street and literally just talked. Brought my resume, printed it out. He didn't, I don't even think he looked at it. And was kinda just talking me about his view of the ability to revolutionize an industry, which even though I didn't know a ton about out of home and didn't know about the marketing world in-depth, I think the idea to be a changemaker was really interesting to me. And I thought, why don't I go work for this guy? He's had success in a past company that he started. Maybe I'll work there for one year and see what happens. Maybe I'll hit it big. And almost twelve years later, I'm still standing.
00:06:14 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:06:14] S0: Yeah. We always say that. And that's a great podcast listen. We've actually had Michael on twice, but his journey and he touched on it on the last podcast about that, right? This past season was kickoff and it was all about the people for him. So what was it about him? You know, here you are. If I'm thinking about, I'm thinking as like your parents and you're like, my daughter, she went to the U, she graduated, she works for this, you know, Goldman Sachs, beautiful job, company's never going anywhere. And then you jump to a data company that's basically a startup, and then you leave that to go off on a blizzard to meet this this guy. What was it about Michael that you... Because it's a trust thing at this point, because you're you're taking a gamble on how old is Vistar at this moment? [00:07:00] S1: So it was about a year and a half, two years old from like inception. [00:07:06] S0: Correct. Which is still super, super. So what was it about Michael that sold through the idea or was it just the journey and the dream?
00:07:15 · Lucy Markowitz
[00:07:15] S1: Yeah. Well, so I think it was a combination. I used to always say to Michael, you guys took a risk on me and he would remind me that it was also a mutual risk at the end of the day. So I think for me it was a couple of things. One, I really enjoyed the creativity of being at a startup, kind of being in charge of your own destiny versus doing a job that many people have done before. And change takes a long time, especially when you're in a very large organization. So I think the idea of working for someone that also kind of believed in failing fast and wanting to change an industry, I think that was really interesting to me. Now at the same time I had to sell myself knowing very little about ad tech, mostly just what I had kind of read. But the way I sort of sold myself into Michael was at the early days of DataMiner, the company has gone far away from when I first started there. But at the beginning, really I was selling a product that no one knew existed and nobody wanted. So I told Michael, I could do that for you. I'm not sure he took that as a compliment that I was essentially telling him that nobody wanted to buy what his company was selling. But I think that it was the reality of things of when you are trying to bring change, which was more than just automation. It was a new perspective on how a really traditional old school medium was being bought that you needed to both convince buyers and sellers. I think that was something that Michael wanted people that weren't afraid of people saying no. And that we're gonna be in it for sort of the fun of getting those wins and not necessarily being being bogged down. It probably also helped that I was 25 and I didn't quite know like what failure felt like. You have less to lose at the time. And so I think my parents did remind me that I was not able to move home and that
00:09:15 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:09:15] S0: Nice little precursor. [00:09:16] S1: Yes, exactly. They were like, you need to pay your bills. But at the same time, I think they were encouraging me to sort of believe in myself. And if I felt like this was a good move, they would stand behind me.
00:09:31 · Ian Dallimore, Lucy Markowitz
[00:09:31] S0: Yeah. And I love that about it because there's so many things and we're going to go deep into what makes Lucy, Lucy, because you've always had this ability to tell your story. But going back to the point, like Vistar was established early on to automate an industry quite frankly, at the time wasn't asking A for anyone to lot of vendors were kind of like, hey, who are you? We don't need you. And the industry wasn't even there yet looking for automation. The word programmatic didn't even exist in our universe. So that part had to have been a lot of fun. So going back to your point, like working for a large company, everything's kind of cookie cutter. So if you go in and it's like sales, it's like, oh, this is how we sell. This is kind of the blueprint. This is the process. And then there's little room, I guess, for storytelling, the cultural side of things. So knowing you personally now, like, I would have jumped all over that all day and been like, this is phenomenal. Like, yes, I yes, I want to go to tell I'm going to go tell an industry that didn't ask for this. And a lot of people throwing up the middle finger like, hey, who are you? Stay away and don't talk to my clients. But also you get to kind of set the path. So you're employee number 12. I always I always jokingly say you're actually like employee number three. And really, if we're being honest here, probably employee one it sometimes in your mind. [00:10:50] S1: Right, exactly.