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NY Times Ruins Career Opportunity For Connected 15-Year-old
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 8, 2013
Modified Aug 8, 2013
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 8, 2013
Modified Aug 8, 2013
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Yesterday, the NY Times published a story about Newark Mayor and NJ Senate hopeful Cory Booker's tech world connections and his involvement in a startup called WayWire. And there was this interesting detail: "Mr. Booker impressed an audience at the South by Southwest conference in March in Austin, Tex., in which he touted Waywire as a way to empower the politically disenfranchised. Other celebrity connections have helped the company: Waywire has put Andrew Zucker, 15, the son of Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, on its advisory board and given him stock options." Uhhh.
Fortune soon reported that Andrew was resigning from the board and that Booker was "not involved at all" in bringing the kid on:
Zucker is the son of CNN president Jeff Zucker, and his arrangement with Booker's venture was viewed in some quarters as being inappropriate.
The company is Waywire, a digital video curation site that has raised venture capital funding from such folks as Oprah Winfrey and Google (GOOG) chairman Eric Schmidt. Booker is one of three co-founders, alongside veteran marketing executive Sarah Ross (ex-Yahoo, TechCrunch, etc.) and former Gilt Groupe executive Nathan Richardson (who serves as Waywire's CEO).
Andrew Zucker's involvement seems to have first stemmed from a conversation that Sarah Ross had with an existing Waywire advisor, who had heard that the kid had a knack for spotting tech adoption trends among teens. For example, Andrew and a small group of his friends were known to informally advise his father on such matters, such as why some young people would be interested in the Vine video service but not in Twitter's traditional text service.
Groundbreaking! Jeff Zucker had a conversation with his son about why he and his friends like certain things! According to Fortune, Ross met with Jeff Zucker and his son and it was agreed that Andrew would get "a 'de minimus' number of stock options (at least in comparison to other Waywire option grants)."
The Post points out, "Advisory boards are usually stocked with 'seasoned folks who have been through the process of making that kind of a start-up work, or enhancing the capacity of a company so it can move to an IPO [initial public offering] or the next level of business,' said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance. 'So you’re not generally looking in the high-school age range.'" Yeah, but did Drake play at some middle-aged oldster's bar/bat mitzvah the way he did at Andrew's? (P.S. Kanye didn't perform because he wanted $1 million.)
Today's NY Times headline: "Boy, 15, Quits Board Tied to Booker Start-Up."
Tagged
andrew zucker
cory booker
drake
jeff zucker
nepotism
waywire
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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