Entrepreneur, consultant, creator of opportunities for startups, enterprise and non-profits, Garth Holsinger has spent 15 years helping brands, agencies, non-profits and orgs engage with emerging technology and startups to create understanding, innovation, growth and positive change. Built businesses at fast-growing startups (Klout, Livefyre), both acquired for $200MM +. Garth is also the founder of Pilot44, a startup and innovation consultancy (acquired) and co-founded GoCard (acquired), the free-postcard media buelter.siness, called by Adweek “one of most innovative new advertising mediums of the decade.”
More about Working Man Digital and Garth’s experience as an entrepreneur can be found below:
What’s the story behind Working Man Digital?
When I was building businesses in Silicon Valley (Klout, Livefyre), engaging mainly with F500 companies, the people at those companies started to ask me to help them navigate the startup world. This was 2008, the beginning of the boom that is still going strong. I began, on a casual basis, meeting with execs and helping them understand emerging tech, the startup landscape, and how that might impact their own businesses. Since moving to New York in 2012, I built a consulting practice to expand this work – no one was really doing this in a meaningful way. There were innovation shops popping up left and right, and big consulting started to get in the game, but most (90%) of the work they were doing devolved into traditional “management consulting” models and ways of working – the opposite of what is needed. I’ve built a good business around helping large companies understand, connect, and pilot emerging tech. I now work mainly with founders and startups, helping them with four things: business development, talent, fund raising and marketing / design.
What was the most difficult part of your experience in the early beginnings?
There really was no difficulty as I was reacting to demand from clients – help us understand, build us a process that works, help us test and learn with startups, etc. – except for the difficulties associated with being self-employed, the ups and downs of that, whether you are a baker or an engineer or a designer or a consultant. The other difficult part is related to large company clients – the bureaucracy, the stagnation, the fickleness, the wasted opportunities.
What are you most proud of regarding your business?
I go against the grain and the corporate nonsense.
What is your vision for the future of Working Man Digital?
I am re-branding in January (Enterprise Alpha) and scaling the startup side of the business. The corporate side takes care of itself, and I’ve become much more selective about corporate clients. I take on projects that have real potential to change culture, open minds, create new things, explore new frontiers. And I’ll work more with non-profits, helping them in the same way that I help F500 companies.
What’s your advice for the businesses that are trying to adapt to this economic climate?
Get your digital house in order. Large companies have been trudging along the digitization path for a long time, moving too slowly. Accelerate the digitization (ecommerce, digital tools, apps and platforms, integrations, mobile, AI, security, etc.). The other thing I’d emphasize is education for the workforce.
What books do you have on your nightstand?
In my email signature, I always have “What I’m Reading”: Blockchain Chicken Farm, Xiaowei WangHow to Create a Mind, Ray KurzweilPossibilities, David GraeberAnnals of the Former World, John McPheeComplete Works, Samuel Beckett.
Our publication has started a series of discussions with professional individuals meant to engage our readers with relevant companies and their representatives in order to discuss about their involvement, what challenges they have had in the past and what they are looking forward to in the future. This sequence aims to present a series of experiences, recent developments, changes and downsides in terms of their business areas, as well as their goals, values, career history, the high-impact success outcomes and achievements.
