How Jason Yanowitz Built Blockworks into a $150M Business

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:00)
It's a game of resilience, how long can you survive? There's a fallacy that founders have this grand vision at the beginning. They write up the master plan, and then they go execute the master plan. And in reality, there's never a master plan. Building a business is basically just putting one foot in front of the other for decades at a time, and basically not running out of money. The riches are in the niches, and so we didn't have the biggest audience. We had the hedge fund manager allocating to Bitcoin. Having 10 of those people for our sponsors and advertisers was more valuable than having 10,000 22 year olds who had just graduated.

**Wouter Teunissen** (0:28)
Your advice for a first time founder would be to start like a very niche B2B business and just curate the top 50 people in a very specific industry.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:35)
Bi was 23 and starting over.

**Wouter Teunissen** (0:38)
So Jason, I appreciate you taking the time. From flipping eBay cards as a kid, to your $1,000 side hustles in college, you're here. You welcome me into the studio at your $130 plus million company today running it.
It's insane. So I appreciate you letting me interview you.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:54)
Yeah, man. This is the first recording in the new studio, actually. You're breaking it in. No one would rather have in the studio.

**Wouter Teunissen** (1:00)
Oh, dude. You're putting a lot of pressure on me to make it go right. But sweet. No. Yeah, I love it. Let's I think let's just dive into it. Let's start from the very top.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:09)
Yeah.

**Wouter Teunissen** (1:09)
You've got a very entrepreneurial family. I think it's super interesting. I think you said no one in your family, like your parents haven't had a nine to five. Your mom and your dad, I think, are still entrepreneurs.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:18)
Yeah.

**Wouter Teunissen** (1:19)
Like tell me about growing up as a kid in this family of entrepreneurs.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:22)
Yeah, I didn't realize. So I grew up in California. I was born in Boston, grew up in California. I didn't realize at the time that I think my family, it was kind of a counterculture family, very into the health trends before Brian Johnson was talking about them, very into not really working in nine to five. My dad started a company in his late 20s. And since then, I've only seen him run his own businesses. My mom started a company, and I think in her late 20s or early 30s and sold that.
And so that's really the only thing I've known. So myself, my sister doesn't work in nine to five. My brother doesn't work in nine to five. I think it was always just programmed in us that not even consciously, it's not like they were telling us like, don't get a nine to five, but it was very much programmed in us to be, I would say counterculture, anti-sister, anti, you know, kind of the man, the system. And just, yeah, that the path could be what you wanted it to be, and that you could kind of just go do things in life. And as long as you put in a ridiculous amount of hard work, those things hopefully would work out.

**Wouter Teunissen** (2:33)
Yeah. I mean, that explains your curiosity. Like, you know, flipping eBay cards as a kid, no normal kid does that, like just because it's possible. And you thought like, hey, I can make better photos. Like, I think you've told the story where your mom was like, yeah, he just picked up these eBay cards and started making better photos, started writing better coffee and started flipping them online. Like, that's not a regular thing kids do.

**Jason Yanowitz** (2:54)
Yeah, I think, you know, I did all these things before Blockworks that were what people would consider very irregular, you know, abnormal for a kid to do. But I think looking back, I was just chasing the ability to go build something and to go build it online and to not work in the traditional system, right? So, yeah, you mentioned eBay cards, right? I would buy these eBay cards. I would buy these, I think it was MLB showdown cards on eBay. I would buy them. I would find the MLB showdown cards that had bad marketing, bad copy, bad pictures. I'd buy the cards. I'd get them, you know, bring them home. I'd take better pictures of them, rewrite the copy and upload the exact same card on eBay for twice the price, for double the price. You know, there was, I was trading FX currencies in college. I was, you know, I did this thing called Verve, which ended up, in hindsight, big, you know, probably a pyramid scheme. But when I was 18, I didn't really know that. So I've always been chasing the kind of, the high of building something and making an impact.