How Jason Yanowitz Built Blockworks into a $150M Business

Before Blockworks became a $150 million media force, Jason Yanowitz was just a kid flipping baseball cards on eBay - discovering early what it meant to build leverage online. Raised in a countercultural, entrepreneurial family, Jason never saw the traditional nine-to-five as the only path. In 2017, Jason went to an event that'd change his life, as a result he quit his job, partnered with co-founder Mike Ippolito, and within 60 days, BlockWorks hosted its first event. Every success since has been iterative: from cold-emailing thousands of people to sell tickets, to surviving an 80% revenue drop, to now to raising $12M to go all-in on building at the intersection of media and tech. Blockworks was bootstrapped and survived and has become a $150M powerhouse. I sat down to talk to Jason about his founder journey, lessons for company builders, frameworks for hiring and scaling a company and how BlockWorks is on a clear trajectory to do over $100M a year in revenue. Follow: Wouter - @WouterTeunissen on X Jason - @JasonYanowitz on X Blockworks - @Blockworks_ on X Timestamps: (0:39) What its like growing up in an entrepreunerial family (15:06) When to Double Down on an Opportunity (20:22) The Blockworks Origin Story (29:32) Why booking bigger speakers mattered  (37:29) How BlockWorks survived an 80% Revenue Drop (57:15) Jason’s Advice for New Entrepreneurs (1:01:49) Identifying Which Data is Valuable Data (1:07:20) What is the (Clear) Path to $100m/Year in Revenue? (1:10:40) The Account-Based Seller Structure (1:14:54) How to Hire as a fast growing startup  (1:21:17) Do Things That Don’t Scale ;)