Daniella Jaeger is a Jill-of-all-trades and a firm believer that focused passions combined with diverse talents is a winning recipe for executing brilliant ideas. She recently picked up and moved to New York City after working in publications at a nonprofit in Washington, DC, where she oversaw production for environmental and chemistry news and learned how to copyedit esoteric, often-incomprehensible articles while grasping a concept or two along the way. She has written articles on topics as varied as inhaleable chocolate, translucent concrete, digital collages, and sardine cans, and also enjoys getting her hands dirty in design, analytics, and social media.
Daniella is an urbanite, having lived in Montreal, Jerusalem, Seoul, DC, and now Brooklyn, and she takes photos wherever she goes. Her new toy is a Canon DSLR camera, with which she plans to take many more photos.
What are you working on right now?
• Outreach for IdeaMensch
• Brainstorming for ICON conference—where creatives and entrepreneurs collide
• Pitching to Kickstarter
• Networking my way through NYC
• Experimenting with my DSLR camera and Photoshop
3 Trends that excite you?
• Grassroots marketing
• Celebrity bloggers and chefs
• Pork-centric restaurants, and the general trend of “real”, delicious food in everyman—but still classy—settings
How do you bring ideas to life?
I wait for ideas to become unstoppable passions before delving into execution. First comes the idea, then comes the hunger, then comes the execution. Don’t forget the hunger.
Also: Choreographed randomness.
What is one mistake that you made, and what did you learn from it?
Always looking to others for advice. Seeking advice is essential, but sometimes too many opinions can cloud your own. Choose the people you seek guidance from wisely, and always pay the most attention to your own instinct when it’s calling to you.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Streamline. A business should be constantly analyzing the nuts and bolts of how it’s run, anticipating obstacles, and minimizing clunky workflows and convoluted processes.
Where do you see yourself in a year or two?
Working at a startup that I’m passionate about and contributing to its evolution and growth in as many ways as possible.
Why do you love cities and how does this love translate to the internet?
Humanity began in the country. What drove us forward as a civilization were the advances that moved us away from the primitiveness of a purely primal existence: science, technology, medicine, the arts, paved roads. Cities are the playgrounds for these collaborations. Metropolises face the common challenges of dense population and housing; pollution and clamor; business, money, and confined recreation. And yet each one handles these features in radically different ways, and with varying aptitudes. Meanwhile, every city must deal with different climates; they are either blessed or dismissed by architects; they attract and expand and change; they gentrify and degenerate.
The internet is a new such playground, a cyber-playground. It’s another platform where survival of the fittest runs its course, and in turn allows a new kind of civilization to be born. What’s not to love?
Connect
Daniella Jaeger on LinkedIn
Daniella Jaeger on Twitter (@Piztachio)
on Flickr
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.