Julie Jatlow / Fuse
Julie Jatlow is truly a queen. She is one of the owners of Fuse, a teen and young adult marketing agency helping brands reach the younger generation. Julie explains everything from working with the world’s biggest brands to strategies centered on youth culture, sports, and experiential marketing. There are so many good tips and stories in here. Take notes!
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Transcript
Nicole Eaton
Today, we sit down with Julie Jatlow, owner and partner at Fuse Marketing, an award-winning youth marketing agency that focuses on teen and young adult marketing.
Julie Jatlow
Thank you. I am so happy to be here.
Dave Bradbury
Thanks for coming back to VCET.
Julie Jatlow
I’ve been here before, but it looks great. You all should be really proud of it. Building big things.
Nicole Eaton
People like you build the stuff. We just get to try not to mess it up, right?
Nicole Eaton
I’m so excited for you to be here. And Dave, kick it off.
Dave Bradbury
So can you just jump in and tell us what is Fuse Marketing, please.
Julie Jatlow
I would love to tell you, and I was hoping you would start with that. Fuse, we are a youth marketing agency. We’re actually full service. Youth marketing is teens and young adults. Brands come to us when they want to reach young people, essentially, and we help them engage with their audience, their target audience, and speak and talk to them and show up in an authentic and credible way.
Nicole Eaton
Wow. I mean, I have so many questions about that just being…
Dave Bradbury
This is an interview show.
Julie Jatlow
You can shoot. Keep going. I was gonna say also with Fuse. I think it will help as we talk today, we’re full service agency, and so what that means is that we don’t specialize in just public relations or just social media. We do everything from brand strategy so brand positioning and campaign development, marketing strategy development. We also have an in-house experiential team. They do activations at all kinds of events, I always say, from farmers markets to the Super Bowl. And then we have an in-house Design Studio. Design, production, creative, all those good things. PR, digital, paid media, earned media the whole thing. Brands can come to us and they can hire us to do one thing, or they can hire us to do a lot of things, and we’re here to make it happen.
Dave Bradbury
All centered around youth?
Julie Jatlow
All centered on youth.
Nicole Eaton
I mean, just a question I have is I feel like targeting young adults and youth in marketing, I feel like that’s just a general rule no matter what age you are. I feel like everyone’s trying to target the youth, because that’s what’s trending, and everyone wants to be trendy, even if you are older. So do you have in the back of your minds how to target everyone, or is it really just specifically youth and teens? I don’t know if that’s really a great question.
Julie Jatlow
No, it is. And I totally understand what you’re saying, because I think a lot of people are curious, what is youth? I mean, we’re sitting here with Dave, but you have this youthful mindset. And I think some brands come to us and they say, Hey, we want to go up pretty far into the age demographic. But we’re looking for everyone who has a mindset like a young person. We use a lot of passion points to connect with people and young people. We use sports culture, we do a lot on campus. We do a lot of sampling programs. We do a lot of customer marketing. Those are really our specialties. And so those are good places to find young people, or young people at heart.
Dave Bradbury
It must change every five years or so, right? What youth are interested in? So what are they looking for today? What do you think are the resonating points that brands use to sort of either be relevant or fun, or ultimately to get them to buy something or try something.
Julie Jatlow
Right. Youth marketing and those insights are changing, not every five years, but almost every day. It’s hard to keep up. But I think our approach oftentimes is to really tap into passion points. I’ll go back into our history a little bit. Fuse was founded in 1995 so we are about to celebrate 30 years. It’s huge. And we started as an action sports agency so very focused on helping brands get into action sports, help them with their snowboarding and skateboarding strategies, reach those participants or fans of those sports in a credible way. And then soon after I arrived, I arrived in 2001 soon after I arrived, the agency went through kind of a rebrand, and we said, hey, there’s so much more out there if we show up at the X Games, for example. We’re not just doing things around action sports. We’re also tapping into music. Sometimes gaming was part of what we were doing. Car culture, design and creativity is always a part of what we’re thinking about. And so we were really, as an agency, able to scale up, because we were now reaching people through these passion points. So now again, our specialties are campus culture, sports, sampling, all these things that reach people through those passion points that we’re talking about.
Nicole Eaton
Wow, what is it like working with some of the world’s largest brands?
Julie Jatlow
I love what I do. I do a lot of interviews with people who are either considering working at Fuse or there’s an open role, or just talking to people on a daily basis. I still love what I do, because we get to work with the biggest brands on the planet, and live here in Vermont. We do a lot of work with PepsiCo and maybe a dozen brands within that portfolio, everything from Mountain Dew, which you might know and love, to brand Pepsi, we work with their sparkling water, which is called Bubly. We’ve done work with Starbucks and Pure Leaf Iced Tea. All of those types of brands. We do a lot of work with Amazon. We’ve worked with TikTok and Puma and Pandora jewelry, and the list goes on, and I think it’s one of the reasons Fuse is so great again. We can live in Vermont and work with the biggest brands on the planet.
Dave Bradbury
And you travel a lot?
Julie Jatlow
We travel a lot. I wanted to quickly mention University of Vermont is one of our clients. Everyone at Fuse loves working on that account because it’s close to home. It’s right here, we do our in-person meetings. And I just wanted to shout out to them.
Nicole Eaton
No I was literally just gonna say, I remember when I was working with UVM at the Rise Summit with Fuse, and you guys were talking about traveling, and I think just launching the—is it Starry?
Julie Jatlow
Yes, Starry.
Nicole Eaton
You were going to an NBA All-Star game. I was like, they’re in Vermont, this is insane.
Julie Jatlow
So much fun. We’re gonna be at F1 next month. We’ll be in Breckenridge at the Rockstar Energy Open in December. We’ve got X Games in January. You definitely have to travel a lot when you’re at Fuse but it’s to do really fun things.
Dave Bradbury
Like how many people work for you?
Julie Jatlow
We have about 40 full-time employees around the country. We’re mostly here in Winooski. Stop by our office because it’s very cool. So most are here in Burlington. But we do have a few people across the country. And then, of course, we tap into more folks as needed when we’re doing some really big activations.
Dave Bradbury
Wow. Okay, so most of your clients are outside of Vermont. A lot of the activities are out there. So what are sort of the touch points that are part of your company’s culture or the commitment of the team, like giving back. I know you’ve been mentoring, gosh, you’ve helped us so many times with other founders that come in the door that are trying to come up with a product idea or reach youth.
Julie Jatlow
We’re doing a lot at Fuse for our employees, which they’re our biggest asset, and it’s something we take a lot of pride in, is not only having the biggest and best clients around the world, but having the best employees, and I can truly say wholeheartedly right now, that we probably have our best team that we’ve ever had in the history of Fuse, which is 30 years. We spend a lot of time actually thinking about employee benefits, things like stipend for a ski and snowboard pass. We have a gear room. We do Winter Wednesdays, which I need to talk about, because I don’t know any other company doing it yet. Listeners, please call in if you know of anyone who is doing this. But in the winter, we have the morning off to get outside and to hopefully hit the mountain, if you’re a mountain person, but also to just get outside in the winter. Vermont long winters, we want to encourage some come in later. Beanie on, and get to work. Dave, I’m pinching him under the table.
Dave Bradbury
It’s sort of like condition dependent, if there’s this much fluff on the railing, every day is a Wednesday.
Julie Jatlow
You would take advantage of that I think so.
Dave Bradbury
But it has to do with your teammates or just not feel like you’re letting down your teammates, if you do that everybody else’s sort of at the office, hustling around.
Julie Jatlow
It all works out. It definitely all works out. Dogs in the office. I love cold brew on tap. Great benefits for our employees. In terms of community engagement, we have a culture committee, a DEI committee at Fuse, and then also an environmental and sustainability committee. What I love about that too, is that we rely on our employees to really drive those initiatives forward. You volunteer to be on them. We don’t say that’s mandatory to partake, and those meetings are very full with people who want to help the company really engage with those three platforms.
Nicole Eaton
Wow, I wanted to ask so as Dave mentioned, a lot of your clients are outside of the state, but you do a really good job at giving back to the community here in Vermont. Can you just speak upon the importance of staying in Vermont and staying local? Because I’m sure maybe someone at Fuse is thinking, why aren’t we expanding or going to New York or—
Julie Jatlow
We do go to New York often. You can do it in a day. I do it often. But Vermont is a hotbed for all the things that we love, and I think that’s really important. Isa, my business partner, he’s the best. We love it here. Isa and I are out Winter Wednesdays and on half-day summer Fridays out on mountain bikes or hiking alongside different employees. But for us, Vermont is the perfect place for innovation, for creativity. We do a lot in the sports industry still, I talked about that being part of our roots and our heritage, and we’re in the middle of all of the things sports related, when it comes to outdoor sports or action sports. It’s really important to us.
Dave Bradbury
So you all have such insights and focus on what youth and young adults want, or maybe what they’re seeking. And layer that with sort of this Vermont narrative of all the youth just want to leave, and we don’t have enough of them, what should we be doing?
Julie Jatlow
I applaud everyone, including yourselves, for spearheading a lot of those efforts. I’m curious myself about it, because for me, it is the ultimate way to live, and I think especially as people want to have a purposeful career, the opportunities are just becoming so more prevalent here in Vermont. We’ve got great big brands. We have employers who are offering great benefits. You have the mountains, you have the water. I think it’s a great spot. And I think we often find that some people leave for a short amount of time or for a longer period of time, but they sometimes work their way back. We’ve recruited people from out of state to Vermont, several people, but it’s gonna take a lot of us to work towards that goal.
Dave Bradbury
I mean, our two boys went to Stowe high school, one still in college, the other one away. But now is back like I’m thrilled I get the mountain bike with my son, right?
Julie Jatlow
Kind of amazing. Go Blue.
Dave Bradbury
How was the first football game?
Julie Jatlow
There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing quite like that. It’s so energizing. You know, it’s almost like you want to sign up to go to every game, and then you realize, no, that’s not a good idea. I don’t think I can do that every weekend in the fall, but it’s fun, pretty fun. We’ll get you out there (Nicole). We’ll get you out there.
Dave Bradbury
Not the Yankees go to like a football game college towns in the Midwest.
Nicole Eaton
My friends on the soccer team at Michigan.
Julie Jatlow
That’s great. Make it out there. Good.
Nicole Eaton
What has been your favorite campaign to work on?
Julie Jatlow
I don’t know that. I might have to keep that to myself, because there are so many. How do you pick? There are so many good ones. I will say, we have worked with TikTok, and I remember Fuse getting that new business call and not really knowing what they were at the time. They were that small, where people didn’t know who they were exactly. And what we did was we actually started to help them generate awareness on college campuses. They hired us to generate awareness for TikTok on college campuses.
Nicole Eaton
That’s crazy. It sounds like that happened so long ago, like decades ago, but it did not.
Julie Jatlow
No, it did not. And so that’s just one example where you start off this, Hey, can you get us a few brand ambassadors? Maybe we start with 20 of them across the country, and you do it, and then the next semester, can we increase that to 100 and the next, and it just kept growing. I think at the end of us doing the campus program, at some point you don’t need to do that anymore, right? I think we had about 500 brand ambassadors working for us.
Dave Bradbury
Can you imagine like colleges without TikTok. There wouldn’t be so many rushes anymore, right?
Julie Jatlow
Right. I wouldn’t say favorite, but I do love seeing results like that, where you say to yourself, we’re on the cusp of something kind of incredible, and generational changing, or a huge transformation for how young people were consuming all kinds of content and other things.
Dave Bradbury
How do you let down, I assume you’ve had this like, let’s say I’m a stodgy old brand. Been a while. Hire you to get cool again. It’s probably not for everybody, right? How do you map the opportunity to sort of introduce yourself to this generation that just sniffs up bullshit really quick. The filter for calling it out is instant. Are there other brands should just not go there?
Julie Jatlow
That’s funny, probably, but no. When brands come to us some brands come to us, they have an aging problem, they haven’t filled that funnel. And so there are so many ways to go about it, but I think the first thing this can be kind of sound generic, but the first thing is not too different than a person is they really need to know who they are and what they stand for, or have aspirations if they’re not there yet. And so for me, that’s really the starting point for all of us, that’s the starting point is really understanding who you are, what you want to be, and then building your plans around that.
Nicole Eaton
I wanted to kind of go back to the TikTok thing for a second. How did you guys, or how do you generally speaking with different projects, where do you start? Do you go in a room and you’re like, all right, what do we think? Or because I’m just thinking in the startup world, although entrepreneurs like they do have to take a leap of faith and just do it, even though they can’t see the whole road ahead. So very similar with planning at Fuse of like, Alright, let’s try it and see what works?
Julie Jatlow
You’re on to something right there. And I love marketing, especially today’s marketing. And building brands for that reason is so much of what we do, first of all, it’s insight based. You know that this is going to work, but oftentimes we do have pilot programs that we do and it’s similar to it, so you test it out. It’s test and learn, test and learn. Sometimes you’re like that’s just going to be a home run. But sometimes you say, hey, let’s try this.
Dave Bradbury
Let’s go test it out in an uncool place.
Julie Jatlow
You can do one campus, or you could do 100 campuses, right? I think it’s a little safer to maybe start on one sometimes, but that’s exactly what we do, not too dissimilar from what you all see with startups, but oftentimes there’s a pretty set strategy, and we’re working with very well established brands going back to them really understanding who they are and who they’re going after and maybe what drives the business, and we help make that a reality with proven tactics.
Dave Bradbury
Wow.
Julie Jatlow
There it is.
Dave Bradbury
Well, it’s kind of neat to see again, just focus on a certain demographic and what is sort of trending or culturally relevant, what kind of stuff do you read like, how do you is it reading or watching like? How are you worrying about what’s going on here is this an aberration or something we need to focus on? Really curious.
Julie Jatlow
That’s a common question. How do you all at Fuse stay relevant and understand kind of what’s happening in the marketplace? It’s a number of things. One is, I have mentioned insights, and I think again, going back to what you all do here, I think insights and listening to your consumer are so key. And so not only talking to consumers, but also we subscribe to third party data as well. We also go to a lot of the events, or the campuses, the activations. We go out into the universe to see with our very own eyes what’s happening. I just mentioned all of those events that we’ll be going to. We were just at NASCAR a NASCAR event this past weekend. We were on several campuses, doing some sampling this week, and at every one of our events we’ve got someone from Fuse HQ, for the most part, going out, observing, reporting, bringing it back to the team. And that’s so helpful. Me personally, I do a lot of reading. A lot of industry stuff, Event Marketers of the World, Sports Business Journal. Love New York Times. I love LinkedIn. I learn a lot on LinkedIn, following a lot of brands or properties, different sports organizations or what have you.
Dave Bradbury
What sort of weighting do you give you know, you can get the data right, get all the digital inputs right, or buying this right, and then you get the in real life experiences through the interaction at a sampling table, right at a live event. So how does that square off? The data says one thing, but gosh, we’re seeing something else. They’re coming up talking this way or wearing this stuff. Their biggest concern is this, just that blend is sort of what is it 50/50 dependent? Do people lean more heavily toward their bias of who they meet and talk to, or the data?
Julie Jatlow
You really need a balance. I wouldn’t say there’s a percentage, but I do think a lot, and I’ve had this conversation with a lot of my friends who are in the industry as well is there’s intuition, and there is always not trying too hard, so not jumping on those trends. But observing and talking about what’s happening in the field, in the landscape, often is very important, and to pair that with the insights is always helpful. But they’re both kind of the magic. And I think as you start to think through creative ideas, I think you need to it all needs to be grounded in these human truths, if you will. And that’s where you really have the magic.
Nicole Eaton
Have you seen those change over the years? If you think of like a consumer and just what they need, has that changed, or has it been pretty consistent in terms of the human truth, I feel like in a way probably hasn’t changed, but also, coming from a branding perspective, maybe it has with our attention span specifically.
Julie Jatlow
Gosh, it’s so interesting. We’re all kind of nodding our heads like, we’re living it, but I think every day that is also the beauty I think of what we do is knowing that every day at Fuse is a different day. I love that. It’s so true. You guys have that too. Every day is a different day. We do work on Wednesdays. It’s a delayed start in the winter months. But that’s what makes this exciting, is that it’s constantly evolving. And I think you really lose out if you have kind of that set mindset versus the growth mindset, where you’re like, things are evolving as we speak, must be curious about that and learn about it and put it into action. That’s really important.
Dave Bradbury
I’m interested in terms of sort of youth and youth culture globally, right? And I recall back in the ski, snowboard industry was like, Hey, we got to see what’s going on in Germany and see what colors are using. Or maybe it was in Japan at the time, and that was influencing us like in the US, are we followers or leaders?
Julie Jatlow
By the way, I did just book a trip to Japan, and so I will a winter trip, but we’re gonna go city style. It won’t be, I think our first one’s gonna be run around the city. But I think it’s both. I think there’s some things that we start here, and then some things that are happening around the globe that come back this way, I will say, I think the world’s so much smaller now, and content helps everybody kind of stay in touch with what’s going on. And so to that end, it’s kind of like we’re all in this together type of thing.
Dave Bradbury
I’m really interested on the value or the attention you give sort of youth creators, right? There could be street wear, could be song and words like those are always. Is that the voices that sort of fought for change or injustice, or what a commercial appeal like, are they getting heard because there’s so much noise right? TikTok, everybody can get it right, or Facebook for older folks and all the rest. Like, is that still where the kernels of influence are popping up? Particularly the creators.
Julie Jatlow
Yes. 100%. I believe in creators, creators content. And we do a lot of that at Fuse, and the results are huge. I do think that, and we take a lot of pride in vetting the right creators for the right brand. These are big statements. Does a creator strategy work for everyone? Yes, and you must make sure that they are creating content that’s relevant to your audience, and make sure that they’re going to help you accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish. There are often times where that’s not a good fit and it doesn’t work. But creators are a big part of everything we’re consuming, you must follow creators that you love. How many pieces of content are you sending out to family and friends every day?
Dave Bradbury
I mean, it’s sort of like craft beer, right? A great IPA was awesome. Now there’s like 500 of them. So you have to try 450 shitty ones to get to the right one.
Julie Jatlow
Haha.
Dave Bradbury
It bums you out and puts on idle calories. The magic I love the fact that it’s accessible to all. But sorting through it to find maybe the real gem.
Julie Jatlow
Are you somebody who goes and tries a new one every time you’re out? Or do you go right back to the same one every time? Are we talking about beer? We’re telling out now we’re talking about beer. Got it.
Nicole Eaton
So you’ve been at Fuse for roughly 25 years. How I’m just thinking of the listeners here who might be really committed to a company that they’re working at, or having this mindset of, Oh, I’m going to work here for three years, and then I want to jump and what has it been like for you being at the same company for such a long time, but still feeling this sense of, there’s something new every day I want to go to work. What is your mindset behind that? And why Fuse for so long?
Julie Jatlow
It’s such a good topic, and it’s so relevant to hopefully all the people listening who are here. I only have my personal journey. But for me, I was always feeling for the most part very great about my work. And I think you have to advocate for yourself. I say that to my employees too, and they do. They’re good at it, but you have to continuously advocate, make sure that you’re feeling very fulfilled, which isn’t easy for everybody. And I think we have Fuse have had a lot of people maybe leave at certain times and come back the boomerangs. And at Fuse, what I love, this is crazy, but we have some employees who have been with us for over 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. And then we have a whole bunch of employees who have been there for one to five years too. And that mix is so critical. So I imagine early in my career, it was those people that I was looking up to so much. And then you become more proficient, and you’re doing more and taking on more, and then you become that person. I think that connection has always been really strong at Fuse, and I think that’s one of the reasons I stayed for so long.
Dave Bradbury
I love that you’re coming to be a challenge, and you never know who walks in the door.
Julie Jatlow
Right? And isn’t that it makes it so much fun. You sit in these rooms and you’re having new conversations, and it just feels really fresh. And I think that’s ultimately what keeps things really fun.
Dave Bradbury
That keeps you young, youthful and curious. We met with 300 people last year we met with and like the range of that, stunning from newbies to serial entrepreneurs.
Julie Jatlow
Because you’ve been here now for three and a half years. That’s amazing. That’s very cool. I love it. You are crushing it. That’s amazing. (Nicole)
Dave Bradbury
She’s one of the latest rising stars.
Julie Jatlow
Oh really, congratulations. Was this year? This cohort? High fives. I’m so proud of you. The celebration anything’s coming up? It is okay, well, you have to go and support.
Nicole Eaton
They just told me this morning they’re getting a whole table.
Dave Bradbury
Anyways, our challenge is not to embarrass Nicole.
Julie Jatlow
Of course. I think that’s a fun night. I think you’ll have a blast. That is awesome achievement.
Dave Bradbury
So you’ve worked with so many neat brands we all know about. Who haven’t you worked with that you want to that you’d be like, Oh my God, we could slay this.
Julie Jatlow
That’s a great question. I’m gonna have to think about that one. I feel like we haven’t. I’m really into cars, and I don’t think we’ve worked with a car brand in a while. We’ve worked with car brands over the years, but we aren’t currently working with one right now. So that would be really fun. We did work with Zipcar. We worked with Bird scooters recently. So like we’re in transportation, but I think about cars a lot, going to F1 in November in Vegas, and I’m like I just like that so much. What brand would you two like to work with?
Nicole Eaton
My favorite brand right now is Base, the luxury travel brand, I just love all their campaigns are so creative. They have amazing partners, so I would love to work with them.
Julie Jatlow
There you go. I hope that comes true.
Dave Bradbury
Every time I see something that’s really cool, my boys and wife say, don’t get involved, David, or stay away, because you’ll make it so uncool. Out in Seattle. University of Washington, has a friend who has a street wear company called Secrets, really kind of happening, really good little pop up parties in like an abandoned gas station with a silk screen for people. Really kind of fun. Check it out when you’re in Seattle.
Julie Jatlow
I will. What’s the style? I know streetwear, but what—
Dave Bradbury
Like big, oversized graphics, and like stitched on stuff. Cool. It’s pretty neat. Probably should have their Instagram page handy. Secrets USA, something like that. Anyway, we’ll correct this in editing if I’m wrong.
Julie Jatlow
You’ll have to flash it on the screen.
Dave Bradbury
If you could add a new superpower to Vermont for helping entrepreneurs, right?
Julie Jatlow
I send them to you. Is that the right answer?
Dave Bradbury
We’re assuming we’re out on a Wednesday morning, right? What do you think people need? Do they need a place to go and just have a quiet chat? Or is it a more formalized, structured program, or mentoring, or just free bags of money, any sense through all these conversations you’ve had through the years that oh gosh, that’s so Vermonty we can do it, and it might really help.
Julie Jatlow
Mentorship is so critical. But really, whether you’re in Vermont or anywhere in this state, I just like hard work. It’s hard. But consistency, and I think that the most successful people in Vermont and outside of Vermont are the people who can get through any challenge. Not by themselves, of course, but with the help of people around them, with help with funding, with the help of innovation or creativity and so that’s my recommendation to everyone out there, young people, old people, everyone in between. Just keep going come up with fun solutions. That’s like the key to success really. I also think that connections are critical, and that’s where you guys come in. I know you help people. You’re connectors. That’s a big part of what you do. I think that’s so valuable exposure. There is something, and I’ve thought about it a lot. I have a daughter who’s a freshman at Michigan, and a son who is a sophomore in high school. And as we went through the college process, I wish Vermont had a strong shadowship program for young people. Is there an opportunity to get young people connected with big brands, at big companies, at small companies, like minded places, like at Fuse, I’d love to have this. Through internships of course, but through shadowships, people are time starved, people need to just spend a day. But a lot of Vermonters don’t have that same exposure that the cities do. So for young entrepreneurs I think the same thing because their exposure to things is quite limited even if they’ve had the best internships or traveled, I believe if they could be placed amongst organizations, whether marketing or operations I just think that huge for people, that exposure.
Dave Bradbury
Again, our boys saw how they make snowboards, whoa, and they just got them interested. And I always thought Vermont does a really good job with that for artists, the open studio day, signs all around it basically says, Hey, come on in. We’ll just talk about what we do, how to make pottery, I was like god is there an equivalent? Like maybe take the Battle of Bennington Day, which we all celebrate in our own way, just rebrand that. Sort of hey, here’s an employer day. That’d be kind of cool to riff on, figure that one out.
Julie Jatlow
What are some things that are happening that are pretty innovative? Like what are the programs in the state that are happening around entrepreneurs and getting them going?
Dave Bradbury
Like micro interns, right? Micro internships. So to get over that heavy burden of commitment and make this like a project. So post to one of the schools say we need to build a web page or do a little marketing survey. It’s going to be 20 hours this month, and more people opt into that, versus trying to commit for a semester or a year. And there’s been some success with that. It’s still turning it so I think that’s a neat way and also I think TikTok and all the other short form video the reels is letting people talk about their day and careers. And it’s not always just a complaint session. You can see like, Oh, this is how we make the widget. Or we keep something safe and operating. I don’t know. It’s cracked up.
Julie Jatlow
People that walk in the door here at VCET, I’m turning the interview over to myself. I’m now asking the questions. But when they come in the door, what in your professional and expert opinions, what do they need the most?
Nicole Eaton
They just need support. They need connections. I think most people that we see are really coming in and asking, do you know somebody in this industry, or can you give me some authentic advice? And I think that’s what’s really special about VCET, is we are a nonprofit, and we have advising at no cost for any entrepreneur newer and so they’re really able to come in the door and just ask the most candid questions and know that we’re going to give the most candid response. And so I think that authenticity is probably the thing that entrepreneurs are looking for. I’m curious. Dave’s been here the longest?
Julie Jatlow
How long Dave?
Dave Bradbury
17 years that’s 20 this year. I think too, a lot of times this might be the first conversation someone’s ever come and said, Let me share my idea. To sound familiar? Like, here’s my idea, and hearing it out loud, presenting it in a couple slides. And we’re definitely informal, like our website says, Come as you are with what you got. We don’t care, no pretense or bullshit. Let’s just talk, and everybody will find their path. I think that that is a good grounding. And whether you’re a first timer or on your fifth company, and you kind of know what you need. The range of needs are, I need a co-founder. I need to just workshop an idea, or very specific, hey, I’m raising a $20 million round. Want to invest and or help me find the other co-investment. So it’s process it’s in real life, the relationships, get a sense of someone’s confidence, plan their and their undeniable ability. We look for undeniable people with a specific insight within an inevitable market. That’s sort of the funnel. It’s fun to just workshop that through all these tools and the mentor network that we have to call upon so we don’t have to be experts in everything.
Julie Jatlow
Literally expert in nothing.
Dave Bradbury
Yeah.
Julie Jatlow
You mentioned something about just getting them in the door, really. I love that. And you’re breaking down barriers. Don’t come in and formally present, but be open with us. I do think, and Fuse does a hybrid work environment, and I love it so much because, and it’s one of my interview questions is, have you ever worked in an office environment? Because I think there are so many people today who have not totally fine. It works for so many people, but there is something really lovely about being in person, being next to each other, seeing reactions, going up to the board, and workshopping ideas and also taking people, for example, at Fuse, where we have someone with 20 years of experience and someone who’s just getting started, and letting that process unfold live and in person is huge. So whether you’re an entrepreneur coming in here to talk with people who are experts in that space, or going to your first or second job. I do love that in person experience.
Nicole Eaton
Totally.
Dave Bradbury
At least the trust and just shared outcomes of some sort, whether it’s a lunch date or an exchange of business contacts or, oh my gosh, I got laid off. I need a job. Hiring like, that I think is where the magic happens.
Nicole Eaton
Speaking of magic, it’s magic one time. This is our last question. What founder or leader, past or present would you like to chat with and why?
Julie Jatlow
There are so many. For me, there’s no wrong answer. I’m gonna pick one and stick with it. I’m going into the sports landscape right now in my head, and I’m thinking about Billie Jean King, and it’s a little bit, I know it’s really interesting I’ve really admire her so much for so many things, and she continues, even to this day, to contribute to women’s sports, to female empowerment, to the game. Tennis. I’m not even a tennis player. I’m a fan of tennis, but she’s really been somebody who could offer a lot, not just in the day to day get things done type of thing, but also being a visionary and saying, I can break down some barriers and be successful at it, a little bit at a time. She’s at the top of my list right now. Maybe I’ll flag her down at the next US Open.
Dave Bradbury
Julie, thank you so much taking time out to share a little bit your journey and Fuse’s and helping us figure out how to stay relevant to all the generations out there creating the next wave of stuff.
Julie Jatlow
Thanks for having me. I love seeing you both. Let’s do this again soon. You’re awesome. Thanks.
