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Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your 

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host, Ty DeGrange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance 

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marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. 

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We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, 

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marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, 

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and have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned. 

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Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. 

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I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I'm thrilled to have Scott Jablonski today. What's up, 

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Scott? Thanks, Ty, man. Good to see you again. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

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Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Scott is a, analytics 

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growth strategist, business growth. He's been he's seen a lot of awesome 

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things in this world of sports and data, in business, and now certainly 

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investing in startups. Gonna be just stoked to dive into all 

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things, all things with Scott today. Thanks for having me on, Sam. Excited, man. It's good to 

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reconnect. Absolutely. Absolutely, man. What are some of the learnings that 

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you experienced with your time at the NBA? I'm dying to hear a little 

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bit about that that learning for you. It's crazy. So so just for background, you know, I 

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had been working for several years, went to business school. When I graduated business school, I went to the 

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NBA. And, obviously, a lot of people know what the NBA is about. They have their favorite team, their 

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favorite players. But it was a real sense of drinking from a fire hose 

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because when you know, if I say, hey. I'm a fan of the Dallas Mavericks. Hey. I know 

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this player and that player. That's great. But when it's your job, when you're going in and working 

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with personnel teams, getting to meet players, getting to meet the league executives, 

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it's a whole different ballgame. No pun intended. So I think the real learning for anybody who has 

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worked in sports is you get to see how the sausage is made. You get to see what goes into building the business. And when 

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you think about a team or a league, all the games it has to run, and you think about 

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the in game stuff that has to happen, the legal stuff that happens behind the scenes, the financial stuff that 

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happens behind the scenes, that was really the cool part of working at the NBA and later the 

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NHL. You get to really see what's going into making this game what it is. And it's really 

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complex. There's a lot of complex issues. It was a it was a terrific learning experience. 

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That's awesome. And and just kind of speaking about sports in general, and is there a 

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truth in that, like, it seems like sports, you know, has kind 

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of, like, some perceptions around, like, maybe they don't have to pay everyone as 

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much, and there's, like, a huge line of people wanting to get in because it's it's the hot thing. Like, can you 

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share a little bit about, like, some of maybe those misnomers and benefits of being in the sports world 

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and for folks on the outside? Yeah. I think the first part is what you already highlighted, Tai, is that 

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everybody has an interest in sport. Oh, wow. A lot of people have an interest in sports. Right? And I always said, 

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you never found a person working in sports who says, I'm in sports because I couldn't get into this 

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other industry. I tried to get into insurance, but I couldn't get a job. I have to work in sports. You never meet. You 

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meet people who are just loving the game, loving that environment. So what does that 

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mean? You kinda highlighted it. There's a res line of resumes at the door. Right? So everybody 

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wants to be involved with it. But I think it actually requires unique perspective and unique set of 

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skills to really succeed in sport. Because what you have to do is take away your 

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fandom and think about how the business runs, what actually makes that engine 

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go. So that was, I think, a real learning experience for me was trying to adjust 

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from being a fan into being, like, a professional in the space. And let me say that 

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you can be both. I knew a lot of huge fans who were absolutely terrific coworkers and terrific 

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leaders in the industry. And so, yeah, I mean, there are some some, you know, aspects of, like, 

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especially for a person coming out of, let's say, undergraduate university. Right? Like, okay. You want a job in sports? You're not gonna 

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be making six figures right off the bat. Right? You gotta kinda work your way up. So you do see in sports that 

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people kinda get a space that they play in, and then they develop their core skill set and 

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move from there. And I think that's really important for anybody who might be interested getting in the space. 

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But all to say, like, you can be a fan and be super sharp and super terrific. And I and I was 

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very fortunate to talk to a lot of people like that, the NBA, the NHL, and some other places as well. That's awesome. 

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The NBA seems to be kind of leading the way in certain aspects of, like, the 

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sports world of, like, operations and business and marketing, and that's my 

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outside outsider's perspective. And sometimes you hear whispers here and there of of, like, how leagues 

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are run and what's working and what's not. But do you have any observation on maybe the things 

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that the NBA seemed to do well vis a vis the other leagues? I know this isn't 

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necessarily analysis of that in particular the whole show, but I'd love to get your 

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view on that. Is there anything that you found was interesting about what they did maybe 

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differently or what you think they're they're seem to be doing well now? Well, yeah. It's it's 

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tied into something you know about marketing. I think the NBA is the best marketing league out there because 

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the NFL as a league, National Football League, is a very easily consumable sport. You 

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have seventeen games in the fall, mostly on Sundays. And then they play in the playoffs 

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in January. In the first February weekend, you have the Super Bowl. So you can set your watch to 

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it. The NBA, the teams play eighty two games a year. And then, you 

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know, NHL has a similar schedule. Baseball has a bigger schedule than that. So the NBA is caught in 

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this middle ground where it's consumable, but not as consumable as the NFL. So I think what 

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we've seen a lot with sports in the last few years is a lot of the personalization of sports. So 

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when you look at drive to survive, the formula one series on Netflix, they really personalized the 

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drivers. You know, Charles LeClaire versus Lewis Hamilton. Right? And the NBA has always been 

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very good with that, starting with Bird and Magic and doctor j in the early 

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eighties, and then Jordan, you can go walk walk right through all of those those athletes and those 

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teams. They've always done a really good job of marketing their their players and their stars. 

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And even though we had incidents like the mouse, the palace, and other things that, you 

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know, we have, like, the away crisis, financial crisis when I was working at the league, there's a lot of stuff going on then. The NBA is financial crisis when I was working at the league. There's a lot of stuff going on 

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then. The NBA has been very good about working its way through there and still developing 

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this broad base of talent to play these games, and fans love the games 

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and and the players. So I think that's been the strength of the NBA day in, day out. They've always been 

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very, very good at that. And, honestly, for me, that was a learning experience because I had not worked around 

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markers like that before. So to see them in that element succeeding, it was it was really, really 

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cool. So I think that's where the NBA has always been very good. And I do think the NBA too, 

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just basketball in general. You know, I had a chance to travel a bunch and meet a lot of people from other 

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places. Basketball's a very approachable sport. Like, you need a basketball. You need a 

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hoop. Maybe two hoops. That's it. And it's like soccer, right, or national football. You 

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only need a ball. So because it's so easily consumable, you have a lot of passionate fans 

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in Europe, in Asia, and other places. I remember the, Olympics in Beijing, 

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and and Kobe at the time was on the US team. He was it was like the Beatles coming to China. So, 

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like, in that sense, the NBA has a very good product, and they're very good at marketing it. So that's that's definitely 

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one of the takeaways I had in my experience there. That's so cool. I I think that I 

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speculation here, but I've always thought that basketball is a special sport because in 

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in the live experience is very unique. You're kind of it's almost more intimate. You're closer. There's 

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less players. You're kind of feels like you're almost up close and personal with some of them. 

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Obviously, TV and video and and tech has has enabled a lot of that. 

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You know, football, it's a little bit more. You've got helmets and maybe it's a little bit farther away. And, 

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yeah, the tech has been able to zoom in. But I think I feel like basketball can maybe benefit 

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from that a little bit, and and that's that's helped them. At its core, it's kind of interesting. 

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It's interesting too, Ty, because, like, working at the leagues, you know, especially as a league employee, you 

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technically work for the league, but you really work for the teams. So at the NBA, we 

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had sixty teams at the time because we had the thirty NBA teams. We had the, WNBA 

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teams. Then we had the g league teams, the minor league teams. So sixty teams are you're working 

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with sixty businesses plus the league, sixty one, on a daily basis. And Same with the nhl 

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where I went after that. We had thirty teams at the time So that was also a terrific learning 

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experience because you get to see how a lot of teams are trying to chase the same goals a championship 

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selling tickets big sponsorships, signing a big player, and they're taking radically 

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different ways to get to that that solution. So, yeah, it's it's another thing about 

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learning, you know, to work with a league and a team. You get to work with a portfolio of companies, which is probably 

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hopefully for me later in my career with other work I've done. But, yeah, that's a very good learning experience as 

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well. Yeah. Probably a good segue into some of the the portfolio companies that you're you're 

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counseling and advising, at some point in our conversation today. You know, back on the 

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learnings kick, which is a favorite theme of the pod, similar to the NBA, tell us a 

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little bit about NHL. What were some of the learnings there? Yes. The National Hockey League, it's similar to 

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the NBA. A lot of the employees have gone between the two leagues like myself, but it's a much 

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different sport. It's harder to play. You need a sheet of ice. You need a lot of pads. 

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You need ice time. So any parents out there who've had kids play hockey, you know the the 

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struggle of getting ice time and and pads and all that stuff. But what I'd say is there's 

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a a much deeper appreciation for hockey. It's sort of like a more narrower funnel and a deeper 

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funnel compared to the NBA. Because a lot of people watch the NBA and just consume it just as general 

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fans, but the NHL has hardcore diehard fans. And it's primarily you know, 

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the NHL obviously is in North America, but with seven teams in Canada, and then there's Lintrest obviously in 

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Europe as well. It's sort of a different fan base than than the NBA. But for me, I got to 

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take part of those basic learnings in the NBA and seeing how they did such some things so well. 

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And then now apply this to a different sport. So then it was for us at the league building out 

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a consultative arm that could work with the teams on their business and 

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analytics. So it's saying, hey. How do you sell tickets? How do you price tickets? How do you think about selling 

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sponsorships and doing other things around the business? But, also, for me, personally, it was 

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terrific to work with the owners. So, you know, working for a league, you work for the owners. And, 

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going through collective bargaining, which is this process where the owners and the players get together and 

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arrange a labor agreement to then work and play seasons and everything else, I get to 

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sit next to very, very bright people in the legal space, in the business space, and work with these 

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owners who have large s and all tons of exciting, 

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successful experiences and see how they do things. And that's inspirational at some 

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level because you find very successful individuals who have done things really, really well, but 

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at the same time might not know everything about running a sports team because a lot of these owners don't make their 

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fortunes running sports teams. They they make their fortunes in other industries, and then they take it to sport. 

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But, yeah, working at the NHL, working with the owners, working on, you know, the Vegas Golden Knights joining the league 

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and the collective bargaining and building arenas and repricing arenas, like, all those 

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things definitely was kind of a step, the next step in my career after the NBA, which was a a 

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good complement to the prior experience. That's awesome. And and maybe, you know, just based on 

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what you just said there, are there people or teams 

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or processes that jump out at you that really wowed you to, 

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like, maybe an example of someone who came from, you know, hey, built wealth, did 

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well in business, transitioned into sports ownership or management, and did a really 

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good job of making that transition and doing it the right way and doing and running a 

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really smart, well run business. But but knowing that it's sports and it's different, 

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is there any maybe examples or or people that kinda you've maybe 

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looked to over the years or or just heart you know, thinking back of were were 

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there any, things that kinda jumped out at you from that experience where you're just like, wow. I was really impressed by 

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that. Yeah. I'd say a couple owners come to mind. One is Ted Leontes, who owns 

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Washington Capitals and then, you know, the sports, group, Monumental in in Washington. Just 

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a scrapper. He was just always doing something. Right? Always working on this or that. I got to work with him a little 

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bit on collective bargaining process. So really sharp guy. He's built a heck of a kind of empire 

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there in the sea area. And then, you know, another person I threw out there is Jeff Vinick. So Jeff 

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Vinick, ended up buying the Tampa Bay Lightning. And I think one of the difficulties 

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that the NHL had for a lot of years was bringing hockey to warm areas like 

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Texas and like California, like Florida. And Jeff, very bright guy, very 

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successful guy, bought the Tampa Bay Lightning and ended up winning the Stanley Cup with that team. And 

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not just winning on ice, but they were developing a lot of things around their business, developing 

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area real estate area around Tampa Bay. And it goes to show you how, you know, 

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a smart individual and his team that were really accomplished people as well kinda broke 

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the mold. And in that sense, it's cool to see. You can kind of 

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challenge those assumptions and and test those assumptions and and maybe break them and then say, hey. 

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How do we think about this? So both working with Ted and Jeff, they were terrific 

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individuals, really, really accomplished individuals. And it was great to see them take businesses in new 

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ways, and that's what good leaders do. I love that. Great comments. Great suggestions. 

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Going back a little bit to the educational experience you had, Harvard Business, 

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What were some of the moments that you gathered from that experience? Yeah. So I 

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was fortunate to go to Harvard Business School. I think, the biggest moment I had was 

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how different we all were. I think if people were to look outside and say, hey. Here's a class at Harvard Business 

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School or Stanford GSB or Wharton or Booth or any of these locations. 

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You'd say, oh, they're dime a dozen. Everybody's kinda the same. But, honestly, like, for 

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me, I'm the first person in my family to go to college, so I was unique in that sense. Or being from upstate New 

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York, I was unique in that sense. Or coming from technology, I was surprisingly unique in that sense, at least when 

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I graduated in two thousand seven. So when you get to meet other people and you're 

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literally meeting people who are bringing water to faraway villages, It it really challenges 

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your assumptions. And in that sense, I think we can't judge everybody with one 

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paint everybody with one paintbrush, right, or judge the book by its cover per se. But I 

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think that was the coolest part for me was seeing how I felt unique given 

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my personal background, but seeing how we were all unique in our own ways. And that, I 

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think, is actually the engine for the business school process because you put individuals in a room 

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and you give them a case or you give them a situation. You say, what would you do? And if you have 

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ninety people in a room all looking at each other in their exact cup duplicates of each other, copies 

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of each other, it's not very dynamic conversation. But to say, hey, I am from this rural 

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area, or, hey, I do have experience in this space that no one else in this room has, that's where you get 

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to hear the other perspectives. And I think broadening that up to management, the important thing here 

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is we have to have personalization with management. We have to treat people in 

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different ways. We can't just have a a you put your dictum out there and then not everyone subscribes to that. 

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So it's a balance. Right? You can't customize everything every day for everybody. 

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But when you get to see how people think about things in different ways, you do need those 

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different voices in the room. And I really believe a lot of these business school programs, their success is 

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based upon having the differences in the room. Because I think more broadly, businesses need differences in 

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that room. And that's something I experienced for a couple years at business school. So that was that was terrific for 

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me. I love that. You have some awesome experiences around data, 

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analytics, advising massive companies, making assessments 

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for pro sports teams that that are major to their future and and 

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present. Right? What are some things that maybe people get wrong about, like, 

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the functions of what you do and kind of the nuts and bolts of how you operate and help 

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businesses make better decisions. Yeah. I think, you know, I I love the title of the podcast, always be 

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testing. And I'm a data guy, and you're a data guy too. So I think sometimes when people say, oh, 

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you're a data person. You must be really, like, very hard edged. Like, it's yes or no or that kind of 

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stuff. No. I mean, there's always some rounding of the edges that have to occur. And so if you 

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were to look on the face of it to anyone, like, you were like me and say, well, you're always testing and you're always 

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doing your tool data analysis thing, That's an input in the process. It's never the 

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full basis of the decision. So any good business decision needs a little bit of 

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quantitative and a little bit of qualitative. And I think that's where some businesses and I've seen this in sports 

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too where it's like, oh, well, you know, the the war of this baseball player is this, so we we 

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sign him or we don't sign him. No. There's a little bit of balance in all of those things. And I think it's important 

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to recognize that people who are in the quantitative side of things, the analytical side of 

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things, they need to have that balance. But they might have better analytical skills per 

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se, which is great, but they also need to build the qualitative skill. And that's something that, you know, I 

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realized in my career, and I had to work on and I continue to work on to this day. Because, hopefully, 

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if you get that balance, then you can challenge yourself and say, hey. The numbers are saying this, but we gotta think about this 

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cultural context piece of it, right, or or some other contextual piece of it. That's where maybe 

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people get that wrong about me. I'm not sure, but that's a no somewhere where I haven't built myself in my 

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career. No. I love that. I love the transparency and sharing that that part of the journey for you. It's 

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awesome. You've been exposed to a lot of the investor community, the startup 

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community, especially recently, after some amazing experiences. What are some of the things 

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you've observed? I mean, we we we see how things have changed a lot, but what are your 

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observations in the venture and and start up community, maybe in the last couple 

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years? Yeah. You bring up a good point the last couple years. The last eighteen to twenty four months 

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have been crazy for venture capital. So if you look at investment in venture capital, at least in the 

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US, it was basically skyrocketing up through twenty one or twenty two, and then the wheels kinda 

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came off. Why is that? Because interest rates rose. So we had a hot economy, 

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so the Fed would raise interest rates to kind of slow and tamp down the economy. 

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Well, what happens is venture capital looks for unicorn returns. It makes a bunch of bets, and, 

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ultimately, a venture capital fund that's, you know, gonna return investment after ten years. 

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Venture capital fund has to be what an investor could get in other ways over those ten years in 

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terms of returns. So when you're looking at seven to ten percent returns per annum compounded year over 

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year over year, VC needs some big winners. And so what happens is VC goes 

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out and says, let's find these big winners. And you find businesses who say, look. The interest rates are low at this 

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moment. We'll go out there, and we can use these assessments and these assumptions, I should 

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say, and then say, look. You can achieve x revenue in y years 

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or z profit in y years. And that has changed because interest rates climbed so much 

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in the last twenty four months. So that has been a shock to the venture capital system. And there's a 

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really complex web of things there because you have investors called LPs who are in the venture fund and 

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then all these other parts. And so venture is a continual process. It's not 

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just like you make a bet and that's it. They're making bets. It's like having wine. There's vintages 

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of venture capital investments. Right? And so when twenty one twenty two, the peak kind 

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of then went downward, you had a lot of businesses with lofty valuations who 

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at that point couldn't do it anymore because the whole game had changed financially. So you saw a 

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lot of later stage investments. So series, maybe b, but c, d, 

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e, and you saw those valuations plummet. And that has a material effect in venture capital. So 

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then that was a shock to the venture capital system, which was still trying to make investments to the newer vintages coming 

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in. So all of this has changed a lot in the last eighteen to twenty four months. What I 

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hear from friends and and colleagues in the space is that we're getting to a point of stasis. We're kind 

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of stabilizing a little bit, but, really, it's a question of exits. So can you find the companies who 

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were invested in who will still IPO? We saw Instacart IPO in late twenty 

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three at a fraction of their former valuations, so that wasn't great. And it feels like everybody's 

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waiting for the other person to jump in the pool first in terms of an IPO. So that's just in, like, 

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macroeconomic things that are going on with venture capital. With that being said, I think on the 

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founder side, you're seeing some tech firms do layoffs. There are a couple hundred thousand 

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tech layoffs in the US last year. We saw, I think, another thirty thousand in January here in the US. 

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So you're finding a lot of really good talent who's sitting there not working for a big tech 

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firm anymore and saying, I have an idea. And we're back to the days of two people in a garage. 

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And especially with the advent of artificial intelligence and how that can really scale businesses 

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much more quickly now, you're seeing tons of founders out there doing all kinds of things. And 

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in one sense, it's a little bit maddening because there's so much innovation going on. But in the other 

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sense, it's, like, freeing. It's amazing. You're seeing people take chances again, and that is really exciting to 

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see. So I think we're at this very interesting point of investment where, hopefully, the institutional 

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investor environment is stabilizing a little bit and more angel investors are coming in to the fray. 

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But at the same time, you're finding these younger companies, this new talent coming in with new 

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ideas, and these two things are kind of converging. In a sense, there's a sense that there's 

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an excitement. Like, there's some really cool stuff around the corner. We're already seeing really great companies and startup companies 

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in the space, but we're on the verge of something great. So that's exciting to me, and that's what 

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I've seen the last two years. So it's been I love it. Little bit of the bad, a little bit of the good. Hopefully hopefully, we're approaching more 

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good now. Yeah. And I think we've all seen some really amazing companies come out of, you 

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know, lean or challenged times, and I think there there could be maybe some truth to that 

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where some return to normalcy, but also some headwinds for for certain sectors and 

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individuals. But I think you're right to be I like the optimism, and I 

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think you're very balanced and you're you're very reasonable in your, you know, pessimism and 

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and optimism. And I think that there's there's a lot to be optimistic about from what you're seeing in the community, so that's 

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that's positive. Are there startups that you're kinda jazzed about that you wanna share? 

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Yeah. I mean, there are startups out there, but sorry. I was gonna go back for a moment and say, the other thing too is the corollary 

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between working in sports and working with these founders is that there is 

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this sense of optimism. And and so when you work in 

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sport or any field with a lot of passion in it, it could be music, it could be 

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food. It could be, you know, a whole bunch of things. Fashion. You're working with people who are 

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inherently motivated to come to work every day. And it's not just like, I'm here to collect a paycheck. No. 

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They're like they love that industry. And that's the same thing I'm seeing on a 

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day to day basis with the founders I get to interact with because they are people 

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who have some core knowledge in a certain area, and they are very excited 

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about telling you about it. And they're very excited to tell potential investors about it 

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because they see they can follow this passion into something that's becomes more than a 

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passion, becomes a profession. And it can become a an ongoing concern, a large business 

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potentially. That's what's refreshing to me. And, honestly, like, the the drip of energy in 

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my veins every day because when you get to work with inspired people, it's contagious. It 

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inspires you. And, hopefully, everybody gets a chance to do that in their respective careers, but it's 

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really important to take note of that because without that inspiration, without that optimism, 

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life becomes a lot more dull. So I guess Yeah. Two cents of free advice here. 

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Like, I think it's going out there and finding those passions, whatever it is, and chasing those passions 

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and working around other people who have those passions because that is just this addictive thing that 

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gets you going every day and gets you really interested in finding out more about the industry, that 

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company, that founder. And I'm blessed to to experience that every day. I 

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love that, man. That's huge and definitely feel very similar. You did mention 

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wine, so I'm compelled to ask you about your, your wine, 

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how you view wine, how you track it, how you think about it. Can you share a little bit more about about 

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that? I never thought this would come up. Yeah. So wine is this interesting thing 

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because it's subjective and objective. The wine industry has gone through periods 

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of boom and bust. But here, I live in the Bay Area, and we're not too far away from from one 

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country here. You're very familiar with that too, Ty. And, yeah, it's like, look, 

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Good bottle of wine. It's like sitting around the campfire and trading stories. It's a good social lubricant, as they 

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say. And so for us, you know, we, of course, enjoy a glass of wine now and again, but also there is a sort 

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of business around this. And what you're finding is at the end of the day, you have small mom and pop 

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vineyards, wineries that have product, and they have to price that product. And how do you 

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price something that you think tastes well, but I think is, a little titanic, right, or something like that? 

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So, I created a wine model a while ago about pricing and stuff. So gives you an idea 

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of me, always be testing. And, you know, having the chance to kinda look at wine and say, hey. 

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I like this kind of wine. What is this priced at? And I can kind of use that as a a buying guide because 

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there's a lot of wine out there. But, look, I think with anything, it's experimentation and figuring out what you like and don't 

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like. And, inevitably, I think there's some wines I might like that you might not like and vice 

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versa. So it's the combination of subject and objective that, again, gives you a 

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view into my life when I'm sitting there trying to figure out, is this bottle of wine priced correctly? Yes. I think it is. I'm 

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gonna buy it. I love that. It's just such a great reflection of your, 

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you know, data driven nature. And it's also I think you're kinda selling it short because I also view 

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it as you basically are able to, with data and and in your models, 

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kind of kinda say, okay. This wine is probably worth a heck of a lot more than it's being 

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priced at. And, conversely, this wine's probably really overpriced. So I think it's just such a cool 

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confluence of, like, getting value, getting into something that you enjoy. It's 

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it's almost like an asset for some people, so it's almost like a stock. It's it's just fun stuff, and I think 

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it's commendable that you you took it that far. Totally. Look. We could be talking about art. 

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We could be talking about baseball cards. Like, these are all collectibles, but we can't drink a baseball card. That's the 

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difference. So the enjoyment of something, that makes a little bit different. But, yeah, that's the 

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fun part of it. Right? I love it. I think you kinda touched on this earlier around, like, leading 

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of t leading teams and, you know, what are some of the things that good leaders can 

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get wrong about leading teams? You talked a little bit about personalization, themes of 

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empathy, and value of diversity. But what would you is there any other things 

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that you would share around, you know, leading teams that you think, you know, sometimes good people 

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miss? Yeah. Let me go back to diversity for a moment. Diversity can be kinda 

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the back of the baseball card. You can say, hey. This person is this race or this gender 

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or from this area. But I think there's also intellectual diversity. And what 

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I mean is the teams that I've seen work well usually have somebody on 

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there who's a little bit of the black sheep, a little bit of the thumb to the forefinger or the other fingers. Right? And 

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what teams need is somebody to challenge them. And I've seen very successful 

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individuals and teams, especially in large organizations, this happens, where groupthink becomes 

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a disease. It says, hey. The leader said we should do a, and 

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everybody else is like, yeah. We should do a. A makes a lot of sense. Let's do a. Let's do a. And sometimes that's right. 

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And sometimes you have a visionary leader who just can't get anything wrong and just nails it every time, 

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and everybody does a, and everybody's okay. But, man, there are other times when you should've done 

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b or c. And I think that is something that is just inherent in 

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business that will be there forever and forever unaddressed. That sometimes there are other voices 

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in the room who do raise a hand and say, hey. I know we should all be thinking about a, but have we thought 

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about the impact on b or c or d? And that's just one of those short sighted 

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moments that only experience can kind of address over time. And I've done it too. I've sat there and said, yeah. 

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Let's do it. Let's this makes sense. And then only afterwards, I was like, well, you know, actually, probably a little bit more 

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intellectually honest with myself and maybe a little more experienced or had more context or 

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nuance, I would have seen this coming, and I was wrong. And so any 

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team, especially one that's being formed where you're saying, hey. Let's start a company together. Or, hey. We've got a company with a 

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couple of people. It's we gotta hire a few more. Don't be afraid to have somebody who's disagreeable on that team 

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because that person can be seen as, it's just Ty saying this Ty stuff 

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again. You know? That's unfair. I think what's is fair is to appreciate 

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that someone wants to challenge that status quo because status quo is the normal baseline for 

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everything. Everybody wants to settle into something. You gotta shake it up every once in a while. So to have that 

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disagreeable person, oftentimes, that person's analytical too. Right? Because they're seeing a different view of the business. 

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To have that balance, that diversity of intellectual approach, I think, is super, super 

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important. And even the most successful leaders, way more successful than I am, deal with 

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this and and suffer from it. So it's just something I see a lot, especially more with the younger companies because they're going through a much 

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more dynamic, burgeoning situation than more established companies might. Love that. So 

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so great to have the contrarian view and devil's advocate and, 

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you know, push for alternative ways of thinking about things. I think that's a a stellar 

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point. Is there a book or a resource that you've, you know, had recently that, 

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you know, really inspired or or changed a view for you that you wanna share? 

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Yeah. It's, it's a book I read several years ago. It's, The Paradox of Choice by Barry 

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Schwartz. And the basic gist of the book is that you have sort of this 

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abundance of options. Right? And especially in the United States. Right? I remember taking an Italian friend years 

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ago to a supermarket, and we were in the, like, the chip aisle. He's like, I can't believe it. You have, like, sixty 

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kinds of potato chips. We have two kinds, Nui. And having that abundance of choice, 

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which we see as a great thing here, especially in the United States, actually requires a lot 

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more effort to come to a decision that can leave us with angst. Right? You're like, ah, what kind of chips 

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do I choose? I don't know. There's barbecue. There's this one. Right? I think that really opened my 

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eyes to a couple of things. One, trying to be more focused in what I do 

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and what I'm looking to enjoy or choose or whatever. But, secondly, I think more importantly, maybe 

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for you too, Ty, is, like, in the services industry, for a long time, I thought the 

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correct service to provide was optionality to my client to say they're saying, hey. I've got options 

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a, b, and c. What should we do? And I'm like, look. We can make a work. We can make b work. We can make c work. We can make it 

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all work. Right? We're here to make it work. But that leaves them with angst because they've asked 

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you what you think they should do, and you have not told them. In 

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fact, you've probably made it more complex. So the Paradox of Choice was this eye opening book for me 

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because I got to understand that some of the things that I was doing, especially in the services side, 

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wasn't being helpful to clients. So it is better for me to go out 

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there and say, you gotta choose option b because here's what I think because of my experience and 

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what data is saying and how I'm reading the situation. Might be wrong, but I'm gonna remove that 

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paradox of choice and give you an informed opinion. At the end of the day, it's up to you, Ty, if you're my 

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client, to work with it or not. You say, I agree with it. Let's go, or let's not do it. But I think 

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that's what's important, especially in the services space. And services can be you can be your own consulting firm 

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or marketing agency. But, also, if you work in a company, you're providing a service to that company. 

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Be more focused in what you're doing and have an opinion on that. An opinion might differ, and that's totally 

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fine. But make sure you're removing that paradox piece, the angst around that because you're coming 

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out and saying my experience and the data, the whatever, is suggesting we 

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do this. That's, I think, a book that really shifted my mindset. Now I read that several years 

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ago, but it stuck with me since. I love that decision fatigue and simplicity 

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and clarity. And, hey, knowing you're you're the paid expert in this situation 

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or a contributor, you can have a real impact. And I think cutting through some of that noise is 

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super valuable. So I I definitely love that great suggestion. As a data 

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junkie, as a data expert, you've helped data teams, you've helped analytics and 

396
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insights teams. What are some maybe errors or fallacies or things that 

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come up with data and data teams? And how do you kinda coach people to 

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avoid those and improve upon data and data analysis? Yeah. You 

399
00:32:42,500 --> 00:32:47,500
highlighted exactly where it's gonna go with data analysis. When people hear that, they think, oh, I gotta take some 

400
00:32:47,500 --> 00:32:52,400
stuff and analyze it. But we have to separate that into two pieces. We have to separate into the 

401
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data and the analysis. The analysis are skill sets. Right? It's like, hey. I know 

402
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Excel. Hey. I know, regression and, you know, all these multivariate regression and other 

403
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things. Fine. Those are teachable things. The data, though, has to 

404
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be right, and that's where I see a lot of analysis fail. And what we're 

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seeing that in spades right now is in AI because artificial intelligence is based on 

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data. And it's saying, hey. Here's what we can draw and machine learning as well. It's based on data. 

407
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So how do we think about the dataset, and is that a good representative 

408
00:33:26,300 --> 00:33:31,200
sample of what it, you know, true means? Right? That's a very good 

409
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question. And it's something I think a lot of companies are struggling because let's say we use an 

410
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LLM based on social media data. We're gonna look at everything that was posted on Twitter x. I can tell 

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you a lot of stuff on Twitter x is false, and a lot of it's true. But there is 

412
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some falsehoods in that dataset. So anybody who's thinking about data, whether it's marketing 

413
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data or any other kind of data, needs to have recent, 

414
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informative, verified data. That's the important part. And so no matter 

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what analytical skills you might have, if you have a bad dataset, it's not gonna 

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help. And I've seen that happen. I've suffered through this as well. And so it's one of those things I think 

417
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we kind of look past because we say analysis. Well, can you do in Excel? Can you make these numbers 

418
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sing and all this stuff? Yeah. There's a famous line. There's there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. 

419
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You can make the data the same way you want. But if you really wanna get to the core nexus of, like, what 

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a decision has to be made about, that data has to be correct. And we're seeing that, again, in spades right now with 

421
00:34:30,700 --> 00:34:35,700
artificial intelligence because we need verified data. And there's actually a whole cottage industry around 

422
00:34:35,700 --> 00:34:40,600
that now. How do we get unstructured data out of a PDF with a table? Right? We can't right now. 

423
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Well, that's a little clunky. So how do we extract that? How do we get really good experts in 

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the field to share their thoughts, their insights? Because that's core data. That's value 

425
00:34:50,500 --> 00:34:55,400
right now. Much like railroads were valued a hundred years ago to transport goods between points a and 

426
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b, now it's data and the accuracy of that data and the time of that data. So that's the thing 

427
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I've seen teams disregard sometimes. They're like, look. We got a really talented individual. He or she 

428
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can kind of make this data sing. That's not enough. Yeah. Well said. It makes me have 

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a spark of a moment of imagining when ChatGPT gets 

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smarter, which can be exciting and scary for some people. But 

431
00:35:19,500 --> 00:35:24,100
imagine, you know, now you're getting being barred Google, 

432
00:35:24,100 --> 00:35:29,100
obviously. You're getting you can prompt so many things, but imagine being able 

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to say, like, I need the best sports analytics, you know, pro in in the Bay Area, and 

434
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:38,800
then, like, you pop up. And it's like, I think there's ways where you we could get even more 

435
00:35:39,300 --> 00:35:43,500
not to toot your horn too much, but, like, you know, hey. I need somebody in this region or, 

436
00:35:43,900 --> 00:35:48,900
hey. I I wanna it could get kind of nuts in a way when it comes to, like, being 

437
00:35:48,900 --> 00:35:53,400
able to pinpoint specific experts, for things, not just 

438
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I think it could become there could be some connectedness there coming in the future where it 

439
00:35:59,100 --> 00:36:04,100
feels very robotic now. It's a whole another episode, but, I'll stop there. 

440
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This has been awesome, by the way, and and I think there's just a ton of learnings, and it just jam packed for this 

441
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episode. What is Scott most excited about in twenty twenty four, maybe beyond? That's a 

442
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very existential question. Look. You're a parent. I'm a parent of small kids, 

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and it the future looks a lot different as a parent. Right? If you have 

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your own person, you have a relationship with somebody, you can kinda do what you want. That's one thing. But when you 

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00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:33,600
have little youngsters and you think about what their lives are like in fifteen, twenty, twenty five years, 

446
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:38,500
it gets a little scarier. Optimism comes from is getting to 

447
00:36:38,500 --> 00:36:43,200
work with so many very bright founders who are deciding to take their 

448
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:47,900
careers into a different path to address these problems. I think when you look 

449
00:36:47,900 --> 00:36:52,800
at a very expensive industry like climate change, where you're thinking 

450
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:57,700
about how do we bring other forms of power to people, how do we think about more, reusable batteries, 

451
00:36:57,700 --> 00:37:02,700
how do we think about all this stuff, that's a big set of problems to tackle. Big set of problems as we're 

452
00:37:02,700 --> 00:37:07,700
seeing weather patterns change around the world now and other things happen, more extreme weather. So something 

453
00:37:07,700 --> 00:37:12,400
like climate change as an example or other big things like cancer and 

454
00:37:13,100 --> 00:37:18,100
these huge existential crises, we're seeing the best and brightest say, I wanna take my career 

455
00:37:18,100 --> 00:37:23,100
and do something about that. That inspires me. That makes me feel good. And for that matter, 

456
00:37:23,100 --> 00:37:27,800
I get to work with some of those those individuals. And if I can bring some experience to them and 

457
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:32,800
help them in those fights, great. That I'm happy to do that. Because even if it's 

458
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:37,800
pro bono, like, just the chance to work with somebody who's devoting his or her time that stuff, that's what 

459
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:42,800
makes me feel good about twenty four. But do I think although it's scary for some people, I 

460
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:47,700
think what AI is doing, it's it's a long discussed topic now for the last at 

461
00:37:47,700 --> 00:37:52,700
least the last eighteen months, but since ChatGPT launched publicly. What AI is 

462
00:37:52,700 --> 00:37:57,300
bringing to us, it's crazy. And, look, it it is scary in some senses, like, what it can do, but, 

463
00:37:57,300 --> 00:38:02,300
man, it's revolutionizing everything. And it'll be really fun to see this 

464
00:38:02,300 --> 00:38:07,200
burgeoning area of technology in the world develop. I mean, this is, like, twenty five years ago, the dot com 

465
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:12,200
era. This is we're here. And I can tell you here in the Bay Area, the excitement is back. Like, there are 

466
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:17,200
these meetups, and you look around the streets, and everybody's there looking for venture capital money and and everything 

467
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:22,000
else. So to be kind of at this nexus point where things are crossing over, it's 

468
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:26,900
really exciting to see this in twenty twenty four and to see what that could bring to industries and the revolutionizing of 

469
00:38:26,900 --> 00:38:31,800
them. That's really cool. I think we're at a major moment of our lives. Absolutely. Yeah. We're 

470
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:36,600
we're encouraging our our teams to explore it and and play with it. I know our clients are. I think 

471
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:41,400
it's I love what you said about, you know, supporting founders that are really 

472
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,800
making a great dent and a positive change in the world with a lot of the the challenges and 

473
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:51,800
opportunities that are in front of us. And, I love Y Combinator's verticals that 

474
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:56,800
they kinda shared of, like, you know, key areas that that need help. Cancer, you 

475
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:01,700
you mentioned, is is on that list, and I I think there's so many good ones. And so I'm of the same mindset, 

476
00:39:01,700 --> 00:39:06,700
like, hey. Hey. Let's help where we can. And, know, our view, performance marketers, we 

477
00:39:06,700 --> 00:39:11,400
can certainly do that for some of these some of these companies, and you can certainly do that from a 

478
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:16,400
business strategy and advising and data and investing perspective. So I think it's kind of exciting. 

479
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:21,400
I I think you've kinda nailed today, wrapping up here, some fun, thoughts and questions. What what's a 

480
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:26,400
purchase recently that you just can't live without that you're loving maybe a hundred dollars or or 

481
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:31,000
less? Anything that's a must have that you recommend? It's not a recent purchase, but 

482
00:39:31,500 --> 00:39:36,300
when I travel and when I sleep, I need the eye mask, man. I'm gonna admit it. On a podcast. 

483
00:39:36,700 --> 00:39:41,500
Gotta have that eye mask. And our minds are always going. There's a lot of stuff going on, 

484
00:39:41,500 --> 00:39:46,400
especially, you know, working and being a a parent and everything else. But I get that eye mask on. I just feel that 

485
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:51,400
comfort. I'm like, okay. I'm on this long flight. I can sleep now. So for me, under the 

486
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:56,200
hundred dollar category, I do every time. That's one of those things I use religiously. So I highly 

487
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:01,100
recommend it to anybody, especially who doesn't have blinds on the windows. That's how I started in the first place. I had no blinds. It was 

488
00:40:01,100 --> 00:40:05,900
really bright. I tried it. I was like, this is great. So, yeah, I will shamefully admit that. 

489
00:40:06,100 --> 00:40:11,000
Gotta have my eye mask. No. I love that. I'm I'm gonna have to look into that. I think I think I, 

490
00:40:11,300 --> 00:40:16,300
my wife, Blaine, stole mine, so I need to go go out and buy another one. Yep. 

491
00:40:16,300 --> 00:40:21,300
There you go. Love it. Anything else interesting? You've got some awesome stuff going on. 

492
00:40:21,500 --> 00:40:26,500
Is there anything that you wanna share to the audience that maybe they don't know about you, that's that 

493
00:40:26,500 --> 00:40:31,100
you wanna share? They now know I wear an eye mask, so we can cross that off the list. 

494
00:40:31,500 --> 00:40:36,300
It's more than enough. Yeah. Exactly. No. I mean, look. For me, I'm, again, 

495
00:40:36,300 --> 00:40:41,300
blessed to work with a lot of, really intelligent founders, and I'm always looking to learn too. That's that's 

496
00:40:41,300 --> 00:40:46,000
the other part of this too. Like, I I think there's a hunger to learn. I know there's a hunger to learn for me. 

497
00:40:46,300 --> 00:40:51,300
And to work with founders, not just in the sports space, that's what how I started. Right? I was like, oh, 

498
00:40:51,300 --> 00:40:56,300
you're the sports person. Great. Help me with the sports thing. But you start to realize that these founders, 

499
00:40:56,300 --> 00:41:00,900
whether it's in sports or in something completely far field of that, there are a lot of 

500
00:41:00,900 --> 00:41:05,800
similarities between them. There's a certain risk profile, certain intelligence, certain skill sets they have 

501
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:10,600
as as founders. So for me, just meeting founders of all different types of 

502
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:15,400
breeds and colors and sizes and everything else, that's what rounds it out for me because I 

503
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:20,200
get to see those sometimes gaps between founders, but also the similarities between 

504
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:25,200
founders. And so for me, I take meetings with founders all the time because I just wanna 

505
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:30,100
hear more of their business plans. I wanna hear more of their thoughts, more of their optimism in how to 

506
00:41:30,100 --> 00:41:35,000
think about this. And then also from my side, working with angel investment groups and working, you know, knowing 

507
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:40,000
people in the VC industry and everything else, then tying those parts together and making those matches and saying, hey. 

508
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:45,000
There's a real idea here. How do we actually it's funded. Like, hey. We've got it funded. Let's go. That's the exciting part for me. 

509
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:50,000
So, you know, I've already shared this in the in the pod, but for for me, it's always a chance to meet more 

510
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:54,900
founders and hear more about what they're working on and see how if and how I can help or how the network can help. 

511
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:59,700
Love it. That's fantastic, Scott. So cool. And then, yeah, for those that wanna 

512
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:04,600
connect with you, learn more about Scott, what do you suggest? Where can where can they connect 

513
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:09,600
with you? Yeah. Probably two spots. So the first one would be, I have a website. It's a company called Seventy 

514
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:14,500
Seven analytics. So seven seven analytics dot com. And then on LinkedIn, I'm 

515
00:42:14,500 --> 00:42:19,300
Scott m Jablonski. My middle initial, Michael, Scott m Jablonski. So you can find me on there, 

516
00:42:19,300 --> 00:42:24,100
and I'll be posting and and talk about things and and meeting people all the time on there. So, those are 

517
00:42:24,100 --> 00:42:28,900
probably the two easiest ways to find me. I love it. And I'm I'm loving your your updates in the investor 

518
00:42:28,900 --> 00:42:33,800
and startup and and global stuff you're thinking about that you're sharing on LinkedIn. So keep it coming, 

519
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:38,800
and, I encourage anyone, in your in your world in innovation, tech, and startups to 

520
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:43,500
check it out. And been a pleasure, man. Love the chats as always. Dude, thank you, Ty. It's great to 

521
00:42:43,500 --> 00:42:44,800
reconnect. Absolutely.