Jason Calacanis: commitment

Transcript context

…It's about fame and power. All that. Fame, power, money, fame, power, money—that's all I wanted. I just wanted to have fame, power, money, all of those things. I'm just like, "Number two, no." But I said, "What would you change about that?" He's like, "This, this, and this. What's your budget for photos?" I just took my camera out and I said, "I have this camera with the Carl Zeiss lens, I got a [...] photo." He's like, "Okay, yeah. Let me get you on the phone." He called Frank Micelotta or somebody and he was like, "What's your budget for photography?" I was like, "Well, I take all the photos myself." He goes, "Well, what can you spend on a photo shoot?" I was like, "I don't know, a thousand dollars?" He just called somebody, he was like, "Can you do a photoshoot for this kid for the cover?" The person was Frank Micelotta or somebody who was like, "Sure, John. I'll do it for you." He set me up with the photographer, we then did the cover photos. The guy said, "You do understand that this is costing me a thousand dollars to develop the film and my photo assistant and I'm making zero dollars on this." I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry." "No, no. I love what you're doing. Can you help me set up my Internet connection?" I said, "Yeah, of course." All of a sudden, I became the king in New York because the internet hit. Magazine went to 75 full time people, $12 million in revenue. I built up my credit cards. I was on Charlie Rose, I was on the cover of The New York Times. In three, four years, I went from being a nobody to writing for Paper Magazine. When I would walk into any club or whatever, people knew what Silicon Alley Reporter was, I could get into any party. I made a list and ranked the top 100 people in the industry, and I ranked it just to tweak people. People would beg me to move up 10 rankings and I got everything I wanted. The list is still doing that to this day.…

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