Jason Calacanis: commitment

Transcript context

…The blog story, this is going to be a big theme that we'll come back to later with what you're doing now. Before the brand was New York magazine, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and everybody you wrote for, it was just a faceless name. In the blogging paradigm now, the blogs don't matter. It's the writers that matter. Absolutely. So, she wouldn't do it. Xeni Jardin said to me, oh, you picked the wrong target. I was talking to her because I was trying to recruit her. She's like no, no. I love this Boing Boing thing. I don't want to do anything commercial. I was like all right, that's fair enough. Who should I target? She goes you picked the wrong target. I said what do you mean? She was like oh, Nick's not making any money on Gawker. Gawker doesn't make any money, loses money. I was like okay, tell me more. She goes, 100% of revenue is coming from Gizmodo. You know Peter Rojas? I was like yeah, I've heard of him. She said that's the one you want. I went to Peter Rojas and I called this guy who was running Jewel Bako, which was like a fancy sushi place on the Lower East Side. He was the owner, and his wife. It's like a pretty hot ticket. I asked Peter to come and have sushi with me and his wife, Jill, or his girlfriend at the time. He says can I bring my girlfriend? I said of course. We go there and I'm prepared to knock their socks off with some Omakase. I said you guys have anything in terms of like [...]? “We're vegans.” I said okay yeah, that's no problem. I said give me one second. I went back to the guy and said listen, I'm trying to close this deal. It's really important. They're vegan. He says don't worry about it, I'll be right back. He runs to the Korean grocery store, he comes back with two big shopping bags full of things, and he makes them the most amazing Omakase vegetables. I said Peter, Nick Denton is a bad actor. Equity is what you need. If you join me and you create a Gizmodo killer, I'll give you equity in the company, you'll become a millionaire, and we'll be in it together. You'll be a partner. He goes, "Nick said he's going to give me equity." I said he'll never give you equity. When did he tell you that? He said, "They told me that like six months ago." I was like yeah, how's that going? I said, I will give you equity on day one, fully vested, everything, just like me. He said, "Okay, let me think about it." He came back and he said, "Okay, I'll do it." I said great. By the way, at this point in time, I'm probably 17, 18, 19 years old at this point, I'm reading Gizmodo every single day. I always wanted to know what happened. How did Engadget become bad? I never knew.…

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