[quote style=”boxed”]You have to try, try and retry. Never refrain yourself.[/quote]
Marc-Henri Magdelenat is a serial French entrepreneur who lives in New York City with his wife and 3 kids. He is one of the Founders of TimeToSignOff, the new, free, nightly and curated email for the Sophisticated Individual. Magdelenat is successfully involved in numerous ventures as a business angel. He is a News, Media and Technology addict as well as a wisely investor.
Prior to Founding TimeToSignOff, Magdelenat started ScreenTonic, the Mobile Advertising pioneer acquired by Microsoft in 2007. ScreenTonic developed the largest European mobile advertising network by partnering with Tier 1 carriers such as Orange in France, UK, Spain.
The company sold more than 2000 mobile advertising campaigns to 200+ advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Reebok, HP, and Peugeot and many others.
Prior to ScreenTonic, he spent close to ten years in the media and marketing industry at Le Figaro (First French Newspaper Group), Unilever and Coca-Cola where he gained strong management, marketing and advertising skills. At Coca-Cola, he developed all in store activation plan during the 1998 World Cup in France.
Magdelenat has been Board Member of the French and of the US Mobile Marketing Association.
Magdelenat has been Officer in the French Navy, serving in the Pacific Ocean.
What are you working on right now?
We started end of last year TimeToSignOff.com, a new free email newsletter for the Sophisticated Individual. It is sent every night in NYC, LA and Chicago, with more cities to come.
TimeToSignOff features daily:
– What you missed today: the selected and prominent news of the day from the world, the US and your city.
– What you can’t miss tomorrow, scooped by our team: who’s next in your city, the track others haven’t heard yet, The 9 to know: a unique and original ranking our subscribers discover once a week.
– In case you can’t sleep: a witty selection of books, movies and new places to go out
We develop this service for all the people, like us, who work hard all day and have no time but want to stay on top of the news and what is happening in their city. We select the right topics, write our stories and add “Fact Bombs” to each of them: a great fact, a figure related to each topic to make our users feel smarter!
What does your typical day look like?
Mostly two things: I concentrate on building the company visibility across our different audiences and targets and I focus on analyzing the news with my editorial team. We spend a lot of time identifying which relevant stories we are going to pick for our evening’s edition. If you want to be able to find the sharpest news, you have to do an extended search at every level, world, national and local.
This is highly exciting, interesting and fun.
TimeToSignOff development is a huge priority as well as improving the product. We measure daily our user’s satisfaction (which is really high today). We are considering launching in new cities in the US and in new geographies.
3 trends that excite you?
First one is the fantastic growth of curated content and services. This is based on this trend that we are building TimeToSignOff.
Second is I think the Cloud. It is really impressive to see what’s going on here. Growing importance of streaming for Netflix illustrates greatly this situation.
Third is the importance mobile has finally taken. I remember my first meetings with big advertisers CMO in 01, 02, selling mobile as a universal and marketing tool… They did not believe into mobile at that time, or did not know… No doubt it is really here today.
How do you bring ideas to life?
You have to try, try and retry. Never refrain yourself.
What inspires you?
Adventurers. Historic characters. Entrepreneurs. Such as French writer Joseph Kessel, Yachtsman Eric Tabarly, Winston Churchill, … They all had the same motto: “Never give up”.
What is one mistake, and what did you learn from it?
Sometimes, I do not trust and follow enough my first intuition. Never be afraid to be different and think on your own.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Do not be afraid of sharing ideas and projects with others, risk that they take your idea is minimum, opportunity that they help you improve it is maximum.
What do you read every day, and why?
TimeToSignOff every night, to stay on top of the news, of course!
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read, and why?
The Art of War from Sun Tzu. Interesting, wise and still useful, even in our modern world
What is your favorite gadget, app or piece of software that helps you every day?
My smartphone. I could not imagine living without it.
Who would you love to see interviewed on IdeaMensch?
Arthur Ceria, the CEO of CreativeFeed, one of the most brilliant advertising and social media experts.
Why do you think you’ve been successful with your first company?
In addition to being at the right place, at the right time, with the right product,
Having been a fantastic team of 3 founders, respecting each other, from the first to the last day.
Having the capability to be nimble in a very fast moving environment
What would you do if you had more time?
I love to go sailing and would definitely sail, race and cruise more!
Connect
[email protected]
www.timetosignoff.com
Marc-Henri Magdelenat on Linkedin :
Twitter: @magdelenat
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.