Interview with Neil Cohen
Who are you?
I am Neil Cohen. I live in San Francisco, California. I have a wife, Lauren. I am a proud dad of a 26 year old son, Carter, who works at NASA. I'm a lifelong entrepreneur.
That's who I am technically. Existentially, I'm 66 now. I don't consider myself old, but I'm older. It's not so much experience but I have the privilege of hindsight.
I am a puzzle solver and a teacher by nature and also a leader from behind.
Before I became a consultant I have been an executive at Hilton Hotels Corporation and Sega.
Later as an entrepreneur I raised $ 125 million for both of my startups.
Today I call myself a marketing therapist – technically I’m a consultant. I see myself as an economic catalyst because I have the privilege of working with a lot of top accelerators around the world, Unicorn Factory and Startup Lisboa being one of them but also in Mexico, Chile and the US.
What should the people from our community know about you?
I am a curious, lifetime learner, interested to hear all their stories and then if they'd like, help them improve them.
I prepare people that are out there in the front line to be their best to win – the CEO, the product team, the marketing team, and the sales team. I'm not out there selling, but prepare them for that competitive moment.
I bring people clarity on who their company is and what they are to the marketplace. I reinforce their success based on understanding their customers' pain, how to go to market, how to communicate to potential customers and close deals. The narrative is key, it’s the driving force for everything we build together.
At the beginning, most startups struggle with: how to hit the right message in a competitive environment? How to stand out? This is the age-old problem for every entrepreneur, even experienced ones.
Entrepreneurs tend to be so close to what they are doing that they can't see it, hence the marketing therapist! I bring that fresh perspective based on empathy with their customers – that's really where the therapy is. There is no better way to do it than to talk directly to them yet very few entrepreneurs know how to. They tend to sell or talk about features customers would like to see, instead of just listening to understand and asking why things matter to them?
ABOUT YOUR MISSION
Anyone who meets you can tell you are a passionate being. What really drives you and what do you get out of it?
Back to being a lifelong learner. To me this world is so amazing. I am fueled to meet and learn about people who are taking an idea and just bringing it to life. They are special people changing the world and it is a privilege to be part of their journey.
I've been here in San Francisco since 1995, I had the privilege of seeing the birth of and working on every major trend in technology. Some of the companies I worked with are very successful. Some of them are seminal companies that no longer exist, but were category creators for things like programmatic media buying, corporate sponsored accelerators, social media, mobile advertising, and today, GenAI adoption & user management.
Early in my career I was in the agency business – going from intern to partner at my first company. I’ve also been an executive at Hilton Hotels Corporation, Arby’s and Sega.
Later as an entrepreneur I raised $ 125 millions for both of my startups.
I worked on Friendster. I did one of the very first business to business exchanges, Adauction. That was the first to auction media on the internet, the forerunner of what is now Programmatic Media buying. I did one of the very first e-business accelerators that had corporate sponsors, with Dow and Accenture as partners and investors.
Since 2001, when everything blew up in San Francisco during the dot-bomb era, I've been consulting – everything from travel to life sciences and deep tech.
While I've worked with many startups, I’ve also got to work with some big companies – for example, Yahoo! on a travel acquisition, and Alibaba on their entry into the US market.
Whether it is a start up or a big company, the process in creating a North Star is still the same, listening to understand people and learning the most incredible stuff just by being curious – that excites me. Lisbon & Redbridge is full of those people. As a mentor for startup Lisboa, Unicorn factory the people I've met, and their ideas, are awesome.
The United States doesn't own all the good ideas by far. There are better ideas across the pond, just less funding, less audience and less attention – and I think that is clearly changing.
If we look medium, long term. What would make you proud?
Aside from just being healthy and happy?
That's really what life is all about.
How do you envision your future?
There is no retirement. I will continue to work with interesting people with interesting ideas. I just want to work with people who are open to self introspection, to look at their company, listen and take new ideas. Ones that are ready to put aside their personal feelings and conformational bias for the voice of the customer.
ABOUT REDBRIDGE
What represents Redbridge for you? And you chose to support this movement?
My wife and I were nomads for two years from 2021-2023. During that time we were in Portugal for 6 weeks, in Lisbon for a month. I had met with Startup Lisboa and toured the Unicorn Factory as it was under early construction.
Then, a good friend of mine, Peter Leyden (former managing editor of Wired and currently at the center of AI thought leadership), introduced me to Jon Littman via LinkedIn just as Redbridge was getting off the ground. I was actually in Lisbon the day before Redbridge launched. Back in the US, I closed the loop with Jon – we met at Shack15.
I joined at the time because at some point in our life, the dream is to live in Lisbon.
I love Lisbon. It's one of my favorite cities in the world, a place where I could see us living.
It's international. It’s vibrant and social, people gather to talk and nobody's looking at their phones.
I found in Redbridge like minded people who are entrepreneurial. And it's not transactional networking. People are kind, they lend you an ear, they might give you a piece of advice. People want to share, people don't want to take. And that's what I like about it. It's a community of givers.
Redbridge it's a wonderful way to have a built-in community. I feel like I’m part of something.
You know Portugal and you have lived in the US your whole life. What do you think Portugal has to offer?
First of all, I live in California for a reason. California is really different from the rest of the United States. And San Francisco is really different from the rest of California. It embraces new ideas, new ways of thinking. It's inclusive. You can be who you are, come as you are.
It's like anywhere else. If you go to Spain or Portugal, not every part of the country is the same. For me, it’s the same with Lisbon in regards to Portugal. If you want to be a citizen of the world, live in Lisbon. If you want to be really dialed into the entrepreneurial ecosystem, live in San Francisco. That said, with Redbridge, I don't think those things are mutually exclusive – from Lisbon you can do both.
Where do you see synergies between the US And Portugal, but mostly San Francisco and Lisbon?
I think we can learn more from Portugal than Portugal can learn from us when it comes to quality of life. Look, the whole world has the problem where their heads are downwards to the phone. But you want to go to places where people are more heads up than heads down, And my interactions in Portugal have been all heads up. People are present. I wish more folks were like that in San Francisco.
What would be your call to action for this community?
My first call to action is to quickly mourn, then learn from your failures.
In my career I've been effectively fired five times, and I've been proud of every single one of those moments.. You know there's all good reasons for it, and I don't regret anything that's happened in my life. I love this saying:
“When you look ahead, it's a windy road, but when you look behind you. It's a straight line. It all makes perfect sense.”
I wouldn't be who I am today or where I am today without all of that experience and learning from my biggest failures. And not only have I been fired five times, but my two early startups never made it over the finish line, even with all the money they raised.
You can't learn if you don't fail. And dwelling on failure – well – people can sense it and it leaves a negative impression. The only failure that's truly a failure is if you didn't learn something.
In some cultures, failure isn't celebrated, if you fail, you're a pariah. But bankruptcy, like failure, means nothing here in the US. It doesn't matter. You always have another chance.
There's nothing wrong with mourning. You know, you should mourn your losses. You should mourn your failures. Be introspective, try to understand it a little bit, and learn and apply it to your next project. We should all give ourselves some grace – again and again! Then move on.
My second call to action is: “talk to your customers deeply with empathy. Don't sell them. Don't ask them about the features. If you haven’t talked to your customers in a while, you should just ask them, “tell me about your day” and understand:
What they're going through on a daily basis?
What are your biggest challenges right now?
What are you wrestling with? Why, is that important to you?
How do you get measured for success for that thing? How do you do it?
What tools do you use? Why do you use those tools? Would you change tools? Why? What would make you change? Have you changed? What was the rubric like?
Understand them, understand their life.
And better yet, don't just do it with your customers. Do it with your kids. Do it with your auntie. Do it with your uncle. Do it with your wife, your husband, your best friend.
When we ask somebody”how was your weekend?” and they say, “Oh, it was great” – we don't ask, “why was it great? What is great about it?” That’s how we learn and connect. We could all be better at that.
