Startup Stories: James Avery // Adzerk
By far the best part about my job is the fact that I get to meet every single week with interesting people who are building companies. Often over coffee, I get to talk with founders about the journey they've been on and are challenges they're pursuing. These talks are always inspiring, yet real - the life of an entrepreneur is never as glamorous as it seems from afar. But at the end of the day, I find myself constantly energized by the passion of the entrepreneurs I have the pleasure of interacting with.
One of the ideas I had when starting this blog was to share some of these conversations with a broader audience. Last week I sat down with James Avery who is building a company called Adzerk and taped the first of what I hope will be a series of videos with interesting personalities in the startup scene.
As you will tell in watching the video, the focus is not on production quality or professional polish. In the theme of "minimum viable product" and lean development, this video was shot on a Flip camera. As you can see, I did a great job of cutting out the unimportant person (me!) - you'll occasionally see my head pop into the screen but for the most part it's just a great look at my shoulder! Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed putting this together and expect to have many more videos to come (and hope that I can get better at telling effective stories with each one).
One final note - one of my goals in sharing these stories is to provide broader awareness of the cool companies that are being built "off the radar". Please feel free to reblog, tweet and spread the word as broadly as possible.
James Avery // Adzerk from Zack Mansfield on Vimeo.
A huge thanks has to go out to James for serving as my guinea pig in this endeavor. As you will see in the video, he's an engaging and smart guy who is taking on some big players in the Ad Tech space and building a great company in downtown Durham. I hope you enjoy.
James Avery Twitter Account
