Alexander Taub

Bio:

BD at Aviary. Born, raised (and still living) on UWS. BA in Economics from YU. Other Fun Facts: I have a blog: http://alexsrandomtechthoughts.tumblr.com, Board member of NYVC, #13 on Hashable leaderboard (shout-out to Emily and Yavo), Missed my college graduation for a meeting with senior executives at Hulu in LA, Defeated Time Crisis 3 at Dave and Busters....twice, Mentor at iMentor (they match you up with students who are interested in your professional field)

• Title: Business Development at Aviary
• Age: 23
• Location: Upper West Side
• Contact: @AlexanderTaub

Aviary’s Flash-based tools are an example of the great things you can accomplish with Adobe’s proprietary platform. Does the release of your new HTML5/JavaScript photo editor mean the start of a flood of cool JavaScript apps?

We are working on a lot of cool things at Aviary and HTML5 apps are definitely on our mind. I can't get too much into exactly what we are working on, but 2011 is going to be a great year for us.

We have three Dave and Buster’s Power Cards in the office because we’re too busy to go anymore. I don’t know how many points are left, but what would you do with them besides play Time Crisis 3? Also, would you like the cards?

I would love the cards! Thanks. Truth be told, I haven't been to D&B for a few months. I am due for another visit, probably over the holidays. I like to play the Supershot Basketball and Virtua Tennis. Depending on which basketball hoop, (the second to right one is best) I can hit up to mid-80's (which usually wins over 100 tickets). In Virtua Tennis I can't really get past the French Open. I think I got by once, with Nadal. If I took the cards, I would try to beat Time Crisis 4, it's on my bucket list. My favorite video game is Fifa. They don't have it at D&B but we have one in the office and I dominate with Chelsea. I accept any challengers.

Your blog gives great advice on how to create mutually beneficial relationships between people and companies. With so many events, blogs, tweets, and hashes out there, how do you prioritize which relationships to pursue first and which are worth extra persistence?

That's a really good question. A few months ago I was going out to 4-5 events a week. I was starting to get burned out by trying to be at every single networking event in NYC. A good friend of mine told me to start prioritizing events and only go to 1-2 events a week. At the same time I also started working on my digital identity. I became active on twitter, put out blog posts 2-6 times a week, etc... Since then people have started reaching out to me to connect. So now I try to balance time spent on going out to networking events and being active in the digital world.

In terms of prioritizing which relationships to pursue first and which are worth extra persistence, it really depends on what is going on. For example, right now at Aviary, we just launched the photo editing widget, Feather, and will be looking to work with 3rd party companies (that allow for photo uploads) to integrate the tool. The relationships with potential partners is my highest priority now. However, in a few months it could be on a new tool or product we put out.

Someone famous once said, hook the people you know up, help pimp their shit, and then work really hard so that you have something great to show when the karma comes back around. Besides iMentor, how else do you help others out?

I like this quote :) I definitely believe in helping fellow entrepreneurs. I try to help out by making introductions to various people that can assist in furthering their business (whether for investing or BD).

In terms of being involved with events that help people out, I am a board member of NYVC (New York Venture Community) and co-organizer of the Digital Learning Meetup with Startl. For the NYVC I am in charge of the speaker series. We are looking to put together some great speaker events in 2011. For the Digital Learning Meetup, I work with the amazing women at Startl to put together great digital learning demo events. We had our first event on 12/16 at Dogpatch Labs and it was a great success. Over a hundred people came to see Aviary Education, Zooburst, Better Lesson, Red Rover, Neverware, Easel and Kno. We plan to put together an event every few months.