It's Bigger Than Influencers, It's Always Been About Influence

This dot matrix photo was me in the late 90's Web 1.0. Before we called them “influencers” they were behind the scenes heroes and personal friends of mine who were building industries and a global culture. As someone who was a fellow builder of culture I decided to use “the World Wide Web” to document and highlight a community I was so fortunate to be a part of. Those late nights toiling over my computer, on a dial up modem, cutting and pasting content and addresses in AOL resulted in my first company SoulPurpose.com and my first startup exit in 1999. Urban Box Office (UBO) acquired my media property and I took what was my "side-hustle" while working at Columbia Records as a senior marketer into creating an opportunity to hire a bunch of amazing people and finally having a production team. SoulPurpose.com created daily content, built out unique story profiles and developed unique experiential properties (Soul Purpose 40 Awards) and even a spin off media property called MogulMaker, geared towards identifying and building future "hustlers" and innovators. UBO may have run through it's $40m in funding, locked the doors and let go of all of us but I walked away with valuable and clearly timeless experience. It's interesting because in many ways I'm still doing the same thing at Authentic Ventures while the world has changed a whole bunch and very little "at the same damn time." Today we are helping brands invest in culture thru partnering with great content assets, producing engaging experiences, and investing in relevant talent and entertainment. Not much has changed there. What has changed is the role of brand to consumer and the expectation consumers have of brands and the platforms that brands have to communicate their story.

Last week in the spirit of SoulPurpose.com we created AUTHENTICATED (Batch 1), a behind the scenes, invite only group who currently live in a private network but will soon be the foundation for great content and connections. The community comes from leaders at major Fortune 100 brands, Venture firms, Social Impact Movements, Artist Management companies, and Startups. We are sharing ideas, content, opportunities and resources in an effort to make better communities, business and impact. No worries, Batch 1 will help us refine the future batches and hopefully you can be a part of an exciting moment in time not just for us but for all of us building culturally relevant brands, art and movements. What remains the same is that we believe that all great artisans and activists need patrons and today's patrons are brands. What is currently a pile of expensive and irrelevant ads, tv spots and sub-par partnerships has the potential to be smart investments of capital and time aimed at people, movements, experiences and technologies that consumers actually wants to engage with.

This post is dedicated to the late great George Jackson, who reminded me every day at UBO of my genius and cultural influence and literally predicted all of this. A hero and a giant.