Startup Interview with Erik Norgaard, HOLLYFY Founder / CEO

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Former Google (Star Wars brand integration), Adobe MAX speaker, 20+ years industry experience in MediaTech, marketing & fintech

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

HOLLYFY, a branded entertainment platform that gets brands featured in TV shows, movies, video games, music videos, or collaborating with social media influencers.

What is the origin story?

After working on the Google / Star Wars brand integration for the movie ‘Force Awakens’ the founders realized there had to be a way for smaller companies to work with entertainment creators, not just the mega-corporations like Google and Disney.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Collaborative experts with a deep desire to change the media landscape.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Consulting for Fortune 500 companies and trading crypto.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

27% MoM growth rate. 437,000 users. Fastest growing MediaTech company in the US.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

Unexpectedly, grew very quickly during the pandemic.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Excited: NFTs, blockchain, big data, machine learning.

Worried: Legacy corporations, big government

Why: Challenging the status quo helps the little guy but scares the incumbents.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Empower the creator economy. Shake up the legacy giants.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Seek deeper knowledge of probabilistic/deterministic logic…also, HODL Bitcoin and ETH.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Remote work is the future of humanity. Deviate from the epicenters of power. Rather, empower the upcoming generations.