Justin GordonFounder, The LA Grind & The SF Grind

How Jay-Z Helped Inspire a $100M+ Startup

1 May 2025 · 1 min

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1:18

In this interview excerpt, Speaker A recounts his first entrepreneurial venture—producing concerts in New York City, including a landmark hip‑hop show at Lincoln Center featuring Jay‑Z and The Roots. He explains how that experience taught him that gathering people and creating community value is a fast way to launch a business, especially in tightly‑networked markets. Speaker B reflects on how the founder’s community‑first background informs the current startup’s strategy. Speaker A then describes the startup’s deliberate community‑centric growth model: hiring a head of community who blends PR and community work, hosting low‑barrier IRL meet‑ups (e.g., coffee‑shop chats about e‑commerce) and VC‑focused events, and using these gatherings to combat founder loneliness and accelerate customer acquisition.

Chapters

I was— I had a— when I was really young, I started a company that did concerts in New York City. This was my first attempt at entrepreneurship. So, you know, briefly lived, but I went out on a high note. I produced the first hip-hop concert at Lincoln Center with Jay-Z and The Roots. Wait, what? We can talk about that later. But, but, but for me, yeah, it was— it was— this is how you get stuff going, right? You just— you figure out how to get people together, you create value through community, and then ultimately you can amplify that through marketing channels. But That's the easiest way to kind of get things going in a market where you know people are pretty well networked and are you know talking to each other.
That's just like a perfect example of companies being like a reflection of their founder. I think like that community approach because you have that background makes so much more sense now because I was always thinking about that and knowing that you did that, I'm like why? Because everyone doesn't think IRL right away.
Yeah, I think that I think that it's a mistake. IRL is great. Like and one of our first hires was the head of community and. She did PR and she did community. And we would start with just really easy, fast— I'm at Momon Coffee Shop. Come by if you guys want to chat about e-commerce. Or we would do events with VCs. I think being a founder can be a lonely journey, especially in the early days, but really throughout. And so one of the things you want to be able to do is bring them together.