What’s one thing you can’t take away from Anthony Frasier? Passion. Anthony is a tech entrepreneur and the co-founder of The Phat Startup. Hailing from Newark, NJ, Anthony’s success is a testament to embracing the struggle, and loving your hustle. He is the former co-founder of the mobile startup Playd and game review site TheKoalition.com. He’s been profiled in Black in America: New Promised Land – Silicon Valley, featured on CNN Money, and listed in NBC’s The Grio’s 100: Making History Today. As you can tell, his presence in the tech scene today is due to the passion he has for tech, and helping entrepreneurs reach their dreams. He and co-founder James Lopez realized this vision when they built The Phat Startup in 2012.
The Phat Startup is a media content platform that provides knowledge and insight for up-and-coming entrepreneurs today. They empower and educate entrepreneurs through insightful interviews, events, and conferences. They have really made a dent in the way premium content is distributed to entrepreneurs today. They have done power moves with big names in hip-hop and tech, getting up close and personal with the likes RZA and Alex Ohanian.
I got a chance to chop it up with Anthony about his vision, building his business and tips for budding entrepreneurs. Check it out!
How would describe your platform for the public audience if they’ve never heard of you?
We are an education company for aspiring entrepreneurs. We help create media and events that helps you best understand how to create, build, and grow your startup.
How do you maintain a stable workplace infrastructure?
We have meetings every other day. We work like most distributed teams work, even though we are all based in NYC. We fell in love with getting things done this way.
What is the most important quality necessary for a company like yours to thrive and succeed?
I think it’s a quality brand. People have more choices than ever. So if you want people to learn and spend money on you then you have to put certain qualities to the forefront. Such as transparency, truthfulness, consistency, and great effort.
What social media platform do you find most useful and why? (Facebook vs. Twitter)
Twitter is our favorite channel because it helps engage into any conversation we want. Facebook is still a great platform for advertising and getting the word out to your fans.
What makes your company unique and different from the competition?
Our culture makes us different. We didn’t invent entrepreneurship education and media. People gravitate towards our brand because of our laid back and human approach.
Is the vision and mission of your company sustainable, or do you find it something that will evolve and continue to improve over time?
I think every great company evolves in some way over time. But yes, we are very strong on our vision of providing inspirational and educational media. We are still a very early stage startup, so we constantly test and try new things.
Was there a moment in time when building your company in which you thought to yourself “this is really going to take off?”
When we started getting emails from people thanking us. We get these emails a lot. It made us realize there was something special here.
What are your goals for the rest of the year, and how do you make sure they get accomplished?
Our goals is to launch our online membership and throw our conference Tech808 on November 21st at NYU. We keep each other accountable all the time and use a special technique we learned from experience on keeping consistent with our assignments.
What can lessons or advice can you give to startups that you’ve learned along the way?
This is such a hard question, because the answer always changes and grows. Right now I would say the only bad idea is taking no action. Over time I learned bad ideas become good ideas eventually through failure and learning. So just take action and respect the process.
Make sure you stay up to date with Anthony and the Phat Startup via their blog, Google+ and Twitter. They throw all type of dope events around the NYC area, so join their Meetup to stay in the know.
P.S. The Phat Startup is hosting an event, in partnership with The Alley NYC, this Tuesday June 17, with legendary Jason Calacanis entitled Digital Hustle: Monetizing on Your Idea & Efforts. Be sure to make it out, I’ll be in attendance so definitely say what’s up!
