Alex Gelman's guest appearances

Alex Gelman

Happy Market Research Podcast

David Garcia

Steve Portigal

James Taylor

John Martin

Tom Anderson

Matt Lucas

Don Golden

David Wolfe

Richard Merrick

Nick Graham

Jessica Richards

Kristi Zuhlke

Harry Brignull

Emmanuel Probst

Stuart Crane

OwlTail

Today, my guest is Alex Gelman, CEO of mTAB. mTAB has a platform for integrating and analyzing data so that brands make the most informed business decisions. Prior to founding mTAB, Alex worked as business consult at McKinsey and KKR.FIND US ONLINE:www.happymr.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/happymrxpTwitter: @happymrxpInstagram: @happymrxpLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch/FIND ALEX GELMAN ONLINE:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-gelman-2373034Twitter: @Alex_GelmanmTAB: https://www.mtab.com/[00:00:00]Hi. I'm Jamin Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. Today, my guest is Alex Gelman, CEO of mTAB. MTAB has a platform for integrating and analyzing data, so that brands make the most informed business decisions. Prior to founding mTAB, Alex worked as a business consultant at McKinsey and KKR. Alex, thanks very much for being on the podcast.[00:00:24]Thank you so much for having me, Jamin. It's great to be here.[00:00:27]So I don't think a lot of people in the industry know much about you. I thought it would make sense to maybe look kind of at your early days. Could you tell us a little bit about your parents, and how they affected your career?[00:00:39]Sure. So my parents are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. They immigrated to the–to the States, and as good Soviets, they were both engineers by background. In the US, my mom was an engineer at a hospital, a plumbing and HVAC engineer, and at nights and weekends was a real estate agent, and my dad built houses. He had a small construction company where we lived, and with his bare hands and a–and a few workers, did house renovations and built houses with his bare hands.[00:01:13]It's interesting–and so the entrepreneur elements of how–sort of your DNA, I guess, clearly started from them as an example.[00:01:23]Oh, absolutely. So hard work was always–was very much the immigrant mentality, and very much the American dream. I mean, they came over with nothing, worked hard, and were able to provide my family, my brother and I, a very lovely middle-class life. And so hard work was always drilled into us, and then math. Like very good executives, they had a clear KPI and it was one KPI and that tracked, and that KPI was our math scores. So I was–my brother and I were always pushed to have great math scores. And here's a–here's a–one little anecdote that you will–you'll appreciate. They used to drive around–they used to put me and my brother in the backseat of the car, and drive to not particularly–I grew up in Long Island, right outside of New York City, and they would drive to not particularly nice areas in New York, or not very high-income, and tell us, "Would you like to live here?" And my brother and I would say, "No, no, we don't want to live there," and they'd say, "Well, this is where you live if you don't do well in school." And then they would drive–I'm not making this up–and they would drive then to, you know, the north shore of Long Island past the mansions, and say, "Would you like to live here?" And we would say, "Yes, we want to live there," and they'd say "Well, this is where you live if you do do well in school." And so math and hard work were always drilled into us, and now my brother runs a quantitative hedge fund and I'm the CEO of a data analysis company, so I guess it worked.[00:02:50]That's so funny. My best friend is from Romania. His mother moved him and herself here when he was in seventh grade. The culture–he didn't actually speak any English at that particular point in time, and then moving right at that middle school period, which is such an inflection point for, you know, everybody, but, you know, for him, even more so, he has that exact same mentality in terms of his work ethic, and how he has really bootstrapped–like 100% of bootstrapped his life. And, I mean, this year, he's going to make–I can't tell you how much,

Today, my guest is Alex Gelman, CEO of mTAB. mTAB has a platform for integrating and analyzing data so that brands make the most informed business decisions. Prior to founding mTAB, Alex worked as business consult at McKinsey and KKR. FIND US ONLINE: <a href="http://www.happymr.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.happymr.com</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/happymrxp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/pg/happymrxp</a> Twitter: @happymrxp Instagram: @happymrxp LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch/</a> FIND ALEX GELMAN ONLINE: LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-gelman-2373034" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-gelman-2373034</a> Twitter: @Alex_Gelman mTAB: <a href="https://www.mtab.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.mtab.com/</a> [00:00:00] Hi. I'm Jamin Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. Today, my guest is Alex Gelman, CEO of mTAB. MTAB has a platform for integrating and analyzing data, so that brands make the most informed business decisions. Prior to founding mTAB, Alex worked as a business consultant at McKinsey and KKR. Alex, thanks very much for being on the podcast. [00:00:24] Thank you so much for having me, Jamin. It's great to be here. [00:00:27] So I don't think a lot of people in the industry know much about you. I thought it would make sense to maybe look kind of at your early days. Could you tell us a little bit about your parents, and how they affected your career? [00:00:39] Sure. So my parents are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. They immigrated to the–to the States, and as good Soviets, they were both engineers by background. In the US, my mom was an engineer at a hospital, a plumbing and HVAC engineer, and at nights and weekends was a real estate agent, and my dad built houses. He had a small construction company where we lived, and with his bare hands and a–and a few workers, did house renovations and built houses with his bare hands. [00:01:13] It's interesting–and so the entrepreneur elements of how–sort of your DNA, I guess, clearly started from them as an example. [00:01:23] Oh, absolutely. So hard work was always–was very much the immigrant mentality, and very much the American dream. I mean, they came over with nothing, worked hard, and were able to provide my family, my brother and I, a very lovely middle-class life. And so hard work was always drilled into us, and then math. Like very good executives, they had a clear KPI and it was one KPI and that tracked, and that KPI was our math scores. So I was–my brother and I were always pushed to have great math scores. And here's a–here's a–one little anecdote that you will–you'll appreciate. They used to drive around–they used to put me and my brother in the backseat of the car, and drive to not particularly–I grew up in Long Island, right outside of New York City, and they would drive to not particularly nice areas in New York, or not very high-income, and tell us, "Would you like to live here?" And my brother and I would say, "No, no, we don't want to live there," and they'd say, "Well, this is where you live if you don't do well in school." And then they would drive–I'm not making this up–and they would drive then to, you know, the north shore of Long Island past the mansions, and say, "Would you like to live here?" And we would say, "Yes, we want to live there," and they'd say "Well, this is where you live if you do do well in school." And so math and hard work were always drilled into us, and now my brother runs a quantitative hedge fund and I'm the CEO of a data analysis company, so I guess it worked. [00:02:50] That's so funny. My best friend is from Romania. His mother moved him and herself here when he was in seventh grade. The culture–he didn't actually speak any English at that particular point in time, and then moving right at that middle school period, which is such an inflection point for, you know, everybody, but, you know, for him, even more so, he has that exact same mentality in terms of his work ethic, and how he has really bootstrapped–like 100% of bootstrapped his life. And, I mean, this year, he's going to make–I can't tell you how much,

Ep. 114 – Alex Gelman, CEO of mTAB