Tag Archives: Startups

Full circle: consulting, Silicon Valley start-ups, co-founding the TSA, venture capital, and back to Kearney

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Ben T. Smith, IV

Full circle: consulting, Silicon Valley start-ups, co-founding the TSA, venture capital, and back to Kearney. The story of how I ended up around Kearney for 25 years from a small town in Alabama.
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Wanderful Media Raises Another $9 Million to Fuel Rapid Growth

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

We’ve been heads-down, busy working, and I am very pleased with the team’s accomplishments so far in 2013. Wanderful Media recently announced raising an additional $9 million from our existing investors, bringing our total funding to $36 million. This additional … Continue reading →

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The Dumb Things We Say in the Startup World

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

I recently co-authored an article, “The Dumb Things We Say in the Startup World” with Mark Menell, a former partner at Rustic Canyon and the past COO & CFO of ShopRunner. Having worked together on several ventures, Mark and I … Continue reading →

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Love the Ones You’re With. Why Startup Success Depends on Relationships | SiliconANGLE

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

I recently wrote this post with Doug Kilponen, COO at Wanderful Media. Having worked together on two different startups over the course of several years, it has become clear to us that loyalty is the secret ingredient for success. The media … Continue reading →

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Pinterest – Pinning Down Its Value For Retail | MediaPost

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

This is a great piece I wrote with Ron Adams, VP of National Sales at Wanderful Media. The Wanderful team is focused on connecting local retailers with consumers, and we see a huge opportunity for retailers to capitalize on areas … Continue reading →

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Retail is not dying… just transforming.

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

By Seema Sud and Ben T. Smith, IV VHS was going to be the cinema killer in the late ‘70s; and yet, 30 “DVR, Blue ray and big screen TV” years later, cinema is more popular than ever and the … Continue reading →

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Wanderful Media raises $5 million in new funding round

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

It’s been an incredible year for the retail and e-commerce industries, especially when it comes to discovery shopping. For Wanderful Media, 2012 will be defined as a year of building, and the theme for this year will be delivering. We’ve … Continue reading →

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2012: A Year of Building

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Ben T. Smith, IV

If you think about it, every year takes on a character, or theme, of its own depending upon goals we’ve set, decisions we’ve made and unplanned events that take place along the way.  2011 was driven by a few great … Continue reading →

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The newsonomics of Amazon vs. Main Street » Nieman Journalism Lab

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Ben T. Smith, IV

A great piece on the importance of retail advertsing to the newspaper business and the indirect fight between Amazon and the papers happening now. “Classifieds has decimated by interactive databases. National has migrated strongly digital. Retail, which made up of … Continue reading →

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The Newspaper Industry and Digital Ads

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Ben T. Smith, IV

 Newspapers are probably never completely going away.   In fact, they are never going away.  Newspapers have traditionally supported themselves through advertising. Advertisers pay newspapers to publish their ads, which gives the papers the money they need to publish the paper, … Continue reading →

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