Itay Dreyfus

There’s an activity that the Barrel partners have been doing for a while: reaching out to a couple of contacts per week. These have typically been former clients, industry acquaintances, other agency operators, investor types, old friends and classmates, etc. It’s been a practice we’ve kept up weekly since 2017.

But he and Ross still come to work, daily, in search of transcendence.

Recently I thought about the heyday of bookmarking apps – Pocket, del.icio.us, Pinboard, Pinterest, etc. It seems that many are still around. Or maybe these are the ones who managed to survive? There was a rise in note-taking apps in recent years which made me think about whether we're... See more

Every weekday, Trent Reznor makes his way from his house, a cottagey sprawl behind a white wall in a canyon on Los Angeles’s Westside, to a studio he’s built in his backyard. There he meets his best friend, bandmate, and business partner, Atticus Ross, and they get to work. Reznor and Ross observe the same hours, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 7... See more

The site feels like a chaotic newsroom with the cutting room floor exposed. I think that’s part of the excitement — and good design.

One mistake I often used to make at Justin.tv was offering a potpourri of business models (virtual goods, product placement, chat ads, contests, etc..). I was embarrassed to say Justin.tv would monetize with advertising when clearly that was the only answer. Own the simple business model.

It's a simple way to sustain an ongoing always-on outreach to nurture your network. This is the lifeblood of generating consulting work.