Jonathan Carson (B’95)
Founder and CEO
You’ve successfully sold a company (BuzzMetrics) to an industry giant (Nielsen) and then led within that larger organization. What were your biggest lessons from that transition, and how did it shape how you are building Antenna differently?
When I started BuzzMetrics, the only way I knew how to lead was by being the person who knew how to do the job the best. I was in the room when we wrote the original algorithms, so I understood our tech better than anyone (except my technical co-founder). I personally sold the first 20 contracts myself, so I was the best at selling. I delivered the first 20 clients’ work, so I understood our product value best.
When we sold to Nielsen, they put me in charge of a 300 employee international division, and I was the only person in the group based in the U.S. Two weeks into the job, I was flying to Tokyo to meet with my very successful Japanese team. I had never done business outside the U.S., had never even been in Asia, did not know the products they sold, didn’t speak the language. I had a panic attack on the plane because I thought “I am a total fraud of a leader, what can I possibly teach this team?” I had to learn a totally different leadership style, which was not based on telling them how to do their jobs better.
Starting Antenna much later in my career, I approach leadership in a totally different way, building out a team of functional leaders who are each absolute stars in their individual disciplines - and I would never dream of trying to tell them how to do their jobs. The scrappy, hyper-aggressive approach I took with BuzzMetrics (which is really common with first-time entrepreneurs) can work as well, but I believe that I am taking a much more scalable, sustainable approach with Antenna.
What led you to GAIN? What has been the highlight of your experience working with GAIN investors?
The first people I went to when I started fundraising for Antenna were the people who invested in BuzzMetrics many years prior. One of my best friends from Georgetown, Tim Billings, went straight into investment banking out of Georgetown, so he was the only one of my college friends who had any money to invest in BuzzMetrics! He not only invested personally, but also told me about GAIN, which he had recently joined. I had been looking for ways to get re-engaged with the Georgetown community, so this was a great opportunity. I had a couple of conversations with Peter Mellen, and then GAIN members ended up taking a meaningful position in Antenna’s seed round.
Can you please share with us a little about your time at Georgetown and how it helped shape you as a founder/start-up operator?
I always kind of knew that I was going to take a different path than lots of my fellow Hoyas. During my senior year, lots of my friends started landing jobs with McKinsey and Goldman and such, and I was like, “Wow how did you do that?” and they said “Well, I interviewed at the Career Center on their recruiting day…” and I said, “What’s the career center?”
I wasn’t being lazy, that just wasn’t really gonna be for me.
Georgetown didn’t have the whole amazing program that they have now, but there was one Entrepreneurship class taught by an adjunct, Walter Benson. Professor Benson invented the hotel minibar, and after his retirement, came to teach at Georgetown (and pro bono in DC public schools, which he was very passionate about). I learned a lot in that class, but mostly it gave me “permission” to think about startups as a viable path. I went straight into the startup world after graduating, which was just not something that a college did in 1995. Of course, a couple years later the dot com boom began, and every college grad wanted to be in a startup. But Professor Benson helped me get ahead of the curve.
Thinking back on your Georgetown experience, can you speak to how classes, friends, clubs, etc influenced your entrepreneurial journey?
I was in the business school, and learned a lot of important concepts around finance, tech, and marketing. But honestly, the biggest impact came from my liberal arts coursework. I took an amazing literature class with Professor Michael Ragussis where all of our assignments were to just write essay questions, not write the essays themselves. I learned so much about how to frame up problems, and not a week goes by that I don’t use those skills in my business life. Professor Ragussis passed away in 2010, and I am still sad that I did not have an opportunity to let him know how impactful his class was for me.
Another critical one for me was Father William Byron’s Social Responsibilities in Business. I was fascinated by business from a young age, but growing up in the 80’s, the so-called “greed decade”, the way people talked about business was really out of touch with my personal values. Father Byron’s class was focused on the “stakeholder” concept - shareholders are one important stakeholder group, but a business also needs to be responsible to its employees, customers, community members, etc. Similar to Professor Benson’s entrepreneurship class, Georgetown was way ahead of its time - no one was talking about CSR in the early 90’s, and yet Fr. Byron’s class was a business school requirement at Georgetown. So impressive.