(upbeat electronic music)
(upbeat music as crowd cheers)
- Whoa! Hey everybody, how's it going?
I'm incredibly thrilled to be here,
and I know you're waiting for the next speaker,
but I just wanted a couple, quick minutes about RISE.
I met Paddy last year, he came through town,
and he asked me to be the co-host for RISE,
and I didn't know what to expect.
And, as you can see here, if this is your first
Web Summit, the team behind this conference are
just incredible, and the experience in Hong Kong
was just as magical, and very exciting.
It's probably the best conference you'll ever see
in Asia, so if you're interested in the Asian market,
please come and join me in July, next year.
I will personally buy everybody some Dim Sum,
if you actually show up,
and we're going to have a big Yum Cha table together,
and then check it out.
It's just going to be the 20th anniversary of the
handover, in Hong Kong, so the city is going through
a nice polishing, so it should be very exciting
for you to come out and check it out.
I've been working with startups for many, many years,
in Hong Kong, and having RISE, based out of Hong Kong,
but a global conference, has been very exciting for
the community there, and to this Web Summit
I was able to bring along people from China,
Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore as well,
to be my guests here, so I'm very excited about that.
If you want to learn more about it, or meet me,
there's a RISE lounge over in Pavilion One,
just behind the stadium here, and it would be great
to see you guys, in July, 2017. Thank you very much.
(audience applause)
So, it's my great pleasure, and great honor,
to introduce the next speaker.
I'm sure everybody's seen his Snapchats, read his books,
and just followed this guy, this guy has an incredible
amount of energy, and support for entrepreneurs
and founders, and I'd like to call him my new best friend,
but I just met him backstage, like, two minutes ago,
for the first time, but maybe he
found a connection in me, so we're together.
But please, put your hands together, and welcome
to the stage, the CEO of VaynerMedia,
Gary Vaynerchuk.
(upbeat electronic music as crowd cheers)
- What up, Lisbon?
(crowd cheers)
Shit's changing.
Communication is changing, the attention
of our consumer is changing, people are baffled
by results of elections and business growth,
and turnouts like this, but I am not.
Because, for my whole life, since I was six years old,
putting up signs on trees and poles to sell my lemonade,
I've been day trading attention.
We're living through, regardless of what the media
or your social media tells you, we're living through
the greatest era to be
an entrepreneur or human ever.
Let's clap that shit up because it's true!
(audience applause and cheers)
It just is.
The problem is we, especially if you came
to this conference, especially if you're a fucking
teenager back there, we--
(audience cheers)
(laughs) Yeah. We have a massive responsibility
to start making positivity louder.
One of the trends that I'm massively fascinated by
is the minority of angry is much louder than the
silent majority of happy.
And if I can accomplish anything, and I'll get into
my real talk in a second, but if I can accomplish
anything at this conference, I ask that the people
that are as happy as I am, because I am the most
grateful fucker you will ever meet,
for them to get louder, about how good it actually is.
(audience cheers)
How many people are entrepreneurs or in a startup?
Raise your hand.
Very nice.
How many people work in companies and organizations?
Raise your hands.
Very nice.
Let's break them down into two things,
the two things that are broken, which means
there's opportunity in those two sectors,
look like the following.
Let's start with the entrepreneurs.
As positive as I am,
we're also living through one of the worst
eras of entrepreneurship. Let me explain.
We're living through, especially over the last five years,
the greatest era of fake entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship has gotten so popular, so cool,
that people that never sold anything or aspire to build
a business, have now decided that they are entrepreneurs,
because they came up with the Uber for
delivering oranges to your fucking house.
(audience laughter)
Yeah, you should clap that shit up,
because it's a problem, and let me explain why.
(audience applause)
One of the things that I feel a huge responsibility for,
because I'm such a proponent of entrepreneurship,
is to also talk about the practical nature
of entrepreneurship.
There's an underlining thing going on in the
Silicon Valley ecosystem that hits the entire world,
which is, we're seeing, very quiet, underlying,
suicide in our space, because there are people
who are not equipped to be entrepreneurs, because,
let me tell you what entrepreneurs do.
They get punched in the fucking face, 24/7/365,
for the rest of their lives.
(audience applause)
And if you weren't built for that,
if you went to good schools, or mommy and daddy
protected you in ecosystem, and you come out
with your product selling oranges, and the market
punches you in the face, you are not prepared for that.
And so what we need to, more than anything,
whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a kid growing up,
whether you're an executive, one of the things
we have to start deploying and talking about more,
in this echo chamber, is self-awareness.
You have to know who you are.
Not everybody has to be a number one.
For every Instagram that made a billion dollars
in 500 days, there's five million Instashits
that aren't going to win.
Number 39 at Snapchat,
and number 78 executive at Facebook,
are going to make a lot more money than
the number ones in this room on the company that
isn't going to succeed.
So please, don't listen to me, or fucking Paddy,
or anybody else, if you're not an entrepreneur,
that is phenomenal.
Shit, to be very frank with you,
I wish I wasn't.
Self-awareness.
(audience applause and cheers)
Corporate people that work in organizations,
companies, one more time?
Alright. You guys have a whole another thing going on.
Over the last seven years, I built a company called
VaynerMedia, with my homie Matt Higgins.
Matt Higgins, where are you?
Gotta be somewhere. Anyway, Matty's in the crowd.
We've gone from three to 750 people,
three to 100 million in revenue,
Under Armour, Chase, Unilever, Turner,
biggest brands in the world, and I've been fascinated,
coming from growing my family liquor business,
coming from investing in things like
Twitter and Tumblr, and things of that nature,
coming from that ecosystem, I didn't understand
what was going on in your world.
I didn't get it.
I didn't realize why you were spending so much money,
on television, and print, and outdoor.
I didn't get it.
But now I've come to learn it,
and what's really interesting to me,
is the massive naivete.
I had a very interesting election night,
as an American born in the Soviet Union.
I was flying to London, over the election,
so I didn't actually see it.
I landed, and got all of it at once,
the 50,000 texts from friends and family,
the actual news of the results,
but interestingly enough, more than anything,
what caught my attention, because I was a little
less naive than the marketplace of what could
have happened that night, was the business aspect
of that day.
The amount of CEOs and CMOs that called me,
or emailed me, or wrote me an email that said,
"Huh, maybe you're right about this TV thing,
"or this mainstream media."
We have an enormous, and I mean enormous,
overestimation of what mainstream media and
traditional communication platforms are worth,
and a gross underestimation of what's happening
in the worlds that we're all looking at.
There are hundreds of people,
right here, right now,
filming me live, that technology
would've cost thousands of dollars on a big
fucking camera like this, just 10 years ago.
We're living through, my friends,
if you understand anything about what's going on
while we sit here in Lisbon,
we're living through the greatest shift
in human communication since the printing press.
Communication has been completely shifted forever.
There are 60-year-old men in this audience
who texted poop emojis last night.
(audience laughter)
Watch this, I'm going to show you
something really fascinating.
Do me a favor, Web Summit.
I want you to stand up if the following
statement is true.
I know some of you are fucking lazy,
but it's good circulation, so if this
is true to you, stand up.
How many people here, now, actually get upset
when another human being calls them?
Stand up.
Gonna wait.
I want everybody, don't sit down yet.
I want everybody to look at this.
These are human beings, I'm going to repeat it
to everybody, these are human beings that actually
get upset when another person calls them.
The main way we rolled, just five or six years ago.
Let's clap it up for these pioneers.
(audience applause)
I'll tell you why I'm clapping for that pioneer right there.
I'm clapping, because what these people have innately felt,
and understood, is the emergence of the most important
asset in our new ecosystem, along with the
health of our family, money, our religion,
and the health, which is, time.
The reason those people stood up, and were mad,
that somebody called them, is because we
have technology now, that allows us to actually text
somebody, and I'll call you back on my time,
don't call me on your time.
Like, literally, like...
"Fuckin', I'll text you back, mom!"
That kind of shit.
(audience laughter)
And so, we as business people, in Corporate America,
need to wrap our head around one very big truth.
The day of advertising,
stealing somebody's time,
is over.
And when I say "over", I don't mean it's dead.
People will still run radio, in-between the songs
that you want to hear, people will run lots of commercials
in-between the sports and the TV shows that you watch,
you'll be reading a very nice article, and the next page
will have a big fucking car ad on it,
and you'll have to go seven more pages.
You'll go to a nice little website,
and a piece of shit, fucking popup banner ad
will go in your fucking face.
And by the way, let's talk about popups real quick.
The next time I get a popup, I mean, this is so
devastating, popups on cellphones, I don't know
if you guys are living the same life I am,
but when I get a popup on a cell phone,
with such little real estate, and that little "X"
is so goddamned small...
(audience applause)
And you know what happens, our thumbs
are fucking fat as shit.
And so, when you click it, you click into the ad,
you don't actually click out.
And they just stole seven of my seconds,
and I want my seven seconds.
How many people work at advertising agencies?
Raise your hand.
Hi, me too. Great.
So, back at our advertising agencies, as you know,
we look at data, and we're, like,
"Oh my God! Look at the 6.7% click-through ratio!"
Because, nobody can fucking "X" those piece of shit ads.
So, two account people are, like, "Yeah, awesome!
"We're fucking awesome!"
Meanwhile, the person on the other end
is, like, "I am never buying another Samsung product
"for the rest of my fucking life."
It is time that we understand that
not all impressions are equal.
You can make a bad impression.
Not all press is good press,
regardless of what you're thinking right now.
And so, there are so many macro trends,
$80 billion spent on television,
and there's not...
You want to see something crazier than the standing up?
By show of hands, how many people here
now watch television, outside of live sports,
not when that TV show airs, but on DVR, TiVo,
whatever your country's version of that is,
or Netflix, HBO Go, how many people
now watch television on their time?
Not when the show airs, raise your hand.
Raise it high.
Oh, weird. All 12,000 of you.
(audience laughter)
And how many people here, when given the option,
fast forward every single commercial?
Raise your hands.
Go figure. Everybody.
And even if those brands, that are spending
$80 billion to sell you some fucking soap
get lucky, because, I don't know,
your remote control fell off your fucking bed...
Every person here, when that happens,
grabs this, and comments on what they just saw,
or checks their email.
My friends, it is about attention.
It is about attention.
The way we have to storytell
is predicated on attention.
I'm sad that Twitter's not the number one
social network, I spent all, and some of you know this,
I spent all of 2009 through 2012,
spending 13 hours a day, replying to every
fucking person on Twitter.
I was the 30th most followed person,
I'm sad that it doesn't have everybody's attention anymore.
But I did not do what so many people do in this room,
and start crying, and dwelling, and hoping
that it held on.
I started understanding what was happening,
on Snapchat, and Instagram,
and sometimes I figured out what was going on
on Vine, and SocialCam,
and they may not be around anymore, but the fact
that so many in this room are scared to take the risk
to learn new platforms, because they might not be here
in a couple of weeks, or a couple of years,
without realizing that only once
do you have to actually buy the beachfront
property on the most important platform,
and you make all your time ROA possible,
is wild to me.
You have to wrap your heads around,
in this entire room,
that this is now the television,
and the television is now the radio.
And Facebook, and Instagram, and Snapchat,
are ABC, NBC, BBC and Sky,
and whether you're a startup,
or a B2B company, or an entrepreneur,
or a corporation, you need to figure out
how to make the best shows on those networks.
(audience applause and cheers)
There's something I said in a video on my YouTube channel
that really has just continued to strike,
and so I want to share it.
It's probably the most tangible thing
that I can leave you with at this conference,
and I wanna give it to you.
A lot of people hear that spiel that I just said,
a lot of people realize
that I've spent a lot of years advertising,
creating content, and nothing,
nothing trumps building a brand.
There's a lot of digital marketers in here
that understand quant conversion.
They're mathematicians, and that's phenomenal.
I love math.
But marketing is not math.
It's a mix of math and art.
It used to be a whole lot more art,
it's a lot more math,
that makes me happy.
I love when art and math have a kid
and it's the greatest thing.
Right?
That's what we're in right now.
That's why so many people struggle.
Some of you are really artsy fartsy and love the creative,
and want it all subjective
about the color of the fucking teal shirt.
And other of you love math so much,
you can't look anybody in the god damn fucking face.
You think it's all math, and you don't give a shit
about what's on the other end of it.
You're both wrong.
It's the combination of the two.
The reason Facebook is such a big platform,
and the reason Facebook as we sit here,
outside of Russia and China,
is the number one platform
for every single person here to sell shit,
regardless of age and demo,
B-to-B or B-to-C,
is because it is the one platform
that combines the two at a scale that we've never seen.
But creative is the variable.
If I came up here today, I've got the attention.
I've got the attention right now.
But if this keynote sucks for you,
I did not convert.
And if it did, it did.
And so creative, my friends, is the variable of success.
What's important about that is people are crippled
by the creation of content.
You're sitting right now and thinking,
"But what am I gonna make?"
"I'm not as handsome and charismatic as Gary."
"What am I gonna do?"
(audience laughter)
"What am I gonna do?"
(audience applause)
And so, there was something I said to a kid
and there's so many of you that are so smart and get this.
You realize making videos on Instagram and Facebook
can change your business.
You realize writing articles on Medium and LinkedIn
can change your business.
But you're stuck.
You don't know what to say.
And so I will tell you what I'm most,
you know it's funny, I'm building it up
because I'm building it up for myself
because I know in two or three years, like many other talks,
I'll get emails from many of you saying this was the thing,
and so I'm excited,
so I'm building up the drama for myself.
What I said to the kid was, and he was stuck, I said,
"Look. The problem is everybody, and everybody in this room,
"is trying to create content."
If you can make this slight shift in your head tonight,
we've got a real shot, which is the following.
I believe that all the upside over the next decade
in storytelling in a mobile first environment,
driven by video, is predicated on documenting,
not creating.
If you understand that you could just talk
about your meetings,
or picking up oranges from that bullshit app,
or whatever it may be,
that documenting the journey...
There are actually startups in this room
who are totally fucked.
They're not good enough.
Their idea's straight shit.
They will go out of business.
However if those two entrepreneurs,
Karen and Rick,
actually documented their daily journey
of trying to buy the business or build a business,
they would actually have other people eventually,
if they're good enough, interesting enough,
they would have other executives and entrepreneurs
actually watch that journey and maybe lead
to an acqui-hire for talent, maybe an acquisition,
and if nothing else,
more leverage for a job after the aftermath.
We need to start documenting.
We're all media companies.
We have it right in our hand.
We're shy, we're scared,
we're worried about what other people are gonna think.
Fear...
Is not an option if you've raised your hand
for entrepreneurship.
Fear is not an option.
I prefer to lose.
I sometimes secretly hope
that my companies go out of business to zero,
I lose everything, all of you write things on social media
that I actually suck, that I was full of shit,
and then in the dirt, with the fucking pain,
I'm gonna rise like a fucking phoenix
and kill all you mother fuckers.
(audience applause)
I mean it.
Yeah.
I mean it.
If you do not have that,
or some version of that in your stomach,
then find somebody to work for that does.
Because we've lived through seven to eight
unbelievable years of economic bliss.
If you think this shit lasts forever,
you're either super fucking young,
clap it up for the youngsters one more time.
(audience applause)
They don't fucking know.
They were like seven the last time shit was bad.
Or you forgot.
You don't want to deal in reality.
All my friends talking about all these changes,
and Brexit and presidential,
you don't have to deal with the reality of the situation.
Dwelling, and pondering,
and crying doesn't do shit.
And it especially doesn't do shit in this echo chamber.
In this arena, there is no crying.
You can cry, you're just gonna lose.
And I have bad news about complaining and crying.
Let me tell you something about complaining and crying
that's really, really gonna hurt
for all you complainers out there.
Nobody gives a shit.
(audience applause)
And let me give you a preview who gives a shit.
The following people give a shit when you complain:
The other losers around you.
(audience laughter)
Your sick, broken parent
that secretly wants to hold you down
so that you're not more successful than them.
And let me remind you one more time,
the other fucking losers around you.
So, here we are.
Heading into 2017.
People are asking all sorts of questions.
We still clearly are close,
or it has to happen sooner than later,
economic crush.
Many people here, rich on paper.
Go talk to a lot of 40 to 50-year-olds
that were rich on paper during Web 1.0
back in 99, 2000, 2001.
It's sitting, it's flustering, it's here, it's upon us,
and now we have to, more than ever,
we have to start deploying self-awareness.
If you leave here and start your process
of really knowing what makes you happy,
of who are you really?
If you could stop chipping away the voices from the outside.
If you could start figuring out what you're scared of.
If you want to actually do something,
even in the light of the picture
that I'm painting right now,
who are you scared to fail in front of?
The reason so many of you are not doing what you wanna do
is you're scared to fail in something.
You're scared that your brother will judge you,
your wife, your girlfriend, your husband,
and most scary, your mom or your dad.
You need to eliminate that, and/or own that fear,
and put yourself in a position to succeed.
Because with all of this,
with all of this, we are now in the greatest era.
For the first time ever, with no fucking money,
with no god damn connections,
this can put you on the map, if you're good enough.
If you are good enough to be up here,
to make bling bling,
if you are good enough, nobody's stopping you.
Not fucking Donald Trump, not the fucking Russians, nobody.
(audience applause)
If you are a minority,
if you are a female,
if you are transgender,
if you're a fucking alien, the market doesn't give a fuck.
If you make the best shit, you will win.
Do you know how sucky it was to be a nerd 20 years ago?
But now the market is rewarding fucking nerds,
and now they're rock stars.
Clap it up if you're a fucking nerd.
(audience applause and cheers)
The best part about that
was some dude was clapping for it,
and I said, "Clap if you're a fucking nerd,"
and he was like...
That's awesome.
I don't know.
I'm so grateful.
I was born in the Soviet Union.
Both of my grandfathers spent ten years in jail
for being Jewish.
Right?
Like, more people in America died last year
because a coconut fell off a tree and hit them in the head,
than from terrorism.
I'm just gonna say that one more time.
Yeah, true.
Funny thing about data, it doesn't fucking lie.
More Americans died last year
because a coconut fell from a tree, hit them on the head,
they died,
than terrorism.
As somebody who aspires to be
one of the great brander and marketers of his generation,
I refuse for hate and horseshit and negativity
to out-market me.
I will sit here today, I will sit here on the slides,
on every one of those platforms when they put it up.
I hope they do.
Follow me back there, you told me you would.
Thank you very much.
(audience laughter)
On stage,
on those platforms,
every day, 24/7/365,
I will remind you that life is phenomenal.
That nobody gives a shit,
so the government or your mommy's not gonna help you.
You've gotta do it.
Own your shit.
But it's never been better.
We've got a bigger chance than ever.
We can do our thing.
And so I flew from London, I just flew in.
I barely fucking made it to this talk.
All the fucking guards here are fucking gangsters.
(audience laughter)
Right?
Fuck those guards. - Yeah!
- I barely made it here and I don't know,
I've got some other talk now for 45 minutes
about marketing on another stage,
and then I'm flying home.
And the only reason I wanted to be here,
only reason I wanted to be in Lisbon for four hours today,
is 'cause I knew there was a lot of you.
I knew there was a lot of youngsters,
and we are choosing what to listen to on social media now.
So we're going into what we want to hear.
And a lot of people need to hear
one of two things today, which is:
This is the greatest era to ever be alive
and be an entrepreneur or executive if you want it.
And stop complaining and dwelling
'cause nobody gives a fuck.
Thank you.
(audience applause)
(Gary laughs)
Yes.
A coconut!
Can you imagine?
Kids!
Get your shit together.
(upbeat music)