Yes…that’s me floating above Shaq’s head.
One of the highlights of SXSW Interactive this year was Dr. Shaquille O’Neal (did you know he had a doctorate degree?). He joined me on stage at the Long Center for Performing Arts to a theater packed with adoring fans. Before we took the stage, we spent some time to shoot a special episode of Revolution.
Not only is Dr. Shaq an NBA champion, an Olympic gold medalist, a 15 time All Star, 6th on the all time scoring list, and an all-around icon, he’s an active investor and self-described geek. His portfolio includes Google (pre-IPO), Five Guys, Vitamin Water, Muscle Milk and a whole slew of traditional businesses and tech startups. While at SXSW, we walked through the Startup Village as part of a “Pitch Shaq” initiative hosted by real-time video network Tout. At the end of our session, Shaq announced that he would take official meetings with two lucky startups, Speakerfy and Beam.
On the technology front, Shaq is always looking for the next big thing. He bypassed traditional media and announced his retirement on Tout, a platform that at the time had only been live for six weeks. Shaq was early to embrace Twitter where he still engages with his now 7 million fans. In fact, Jack Dorsey was once asked who he thought the ideal Twitter user was and his response was Shaq. Why? Because he’s engaged, it’s him, and he believes in community. His mantra for social media is 60% to make you laugh, 30% to inspire you and 10% to let you know about this product.
Take a few minutes to watch this enchanting interview. I think you’ll agree, Shaq is not only an investor, geek, and super star, he’s also a wonderful human being.
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Did not know Shaq had a doctorate degree! It’s always great to hear that influential people take the responsibility to learn about and endorse products that they truly feel passionate about to generate that same excitement in their fans.
Thank you for watching!
go Brian ! Love Shaq !!! Excellent expose
Excellent!
Fun article, Brian! Shaq has always been an early adopter of social media technology, which is why it makes sense you’d bump into him at SXSW. Hope you had a great time!
(Also, we believe that he’d probably refer to his degree as a “Shaq-torate”.)
too funny. you should have seen the keynote we did together…
We can only imagine. (We’re also pretty sure you could dunk on him.)
You know it!
After reading the title to this blog post I was
very curious to what Shaq has to do with geekery and social media. Yes,
obviously I knew he most likely had some sort of social networking base but not
enough to base a post about him. I was surprised to find out that Shaq is
actually in the middle of all the new social media trends of this digital era.
Some people even see him as the best Tweeter. We all know Shaq is known for his
incredible basketball skills, maybe now he can bust through only being known
for that and merge into and be known for a new skill.
Big Shaqtus is one of my all-time favorites. Love watching him and Barkley on TV. However I didn’t know he had such deep roots in the business and technology world. His portfolio really is impressive and I’m glad that he’s not just bumming after retirement and going down the wrong path like many other athletes.