Hoo.be dooby do

I always find in interesting when a local kid makes it entrepreneurially good. Even if I don't really appreciate or completely get what they're entrepreneurying about.

This is the case with Jordan Greenfield who was profiled recently in the Boston Globe. 

His company, Hoo.be (pronounced “who-bee”), creates a single landing page for the online activities of celebrities and influencers — Instagram or TikTok accounts, e-commerce stores — so followers don’t have to hop around from site to site. It’s still small, but thanks to Greenfield’s persistence, the company has landed some notable users: Tom Brady, Jeff Bezos, actor Chris Hemsworth, the DJ Diplo, the Boston Celtics, and Forever 21.

Greenfield is a natural born hustler, and I mean that in the most positive way - even though the very idea of hustling/self-promoting is both exhausting and antithetical to everything I hold dear in myself and in the people I love. 

I mean, I saw the movie How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee) when I was in high school, and I'm still recovering from my fatigue.

Greenfield would no doubt not have even wasted any of his 2 hours and 1 minute time (I checked the running time on IMDB) on it. After all, he didn't want to climb someone else's corporate ladder. He wanted to make his own. 

He broke into the industry in his mid-twenties through a series of side hustles while working for a biotech company. One time he brought 50 Cent to a New England Patriots game to introduce him to owner Robert Kraft, so they could discuss selling the musician’s line of champagne at Gillette Stadium. In another case, he invited a couple from “The Bachelor” to a Boston nightclub, hoping the owners would notice.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the thought of 50 Cent and Bob Kraft in a convo about selling champagne at Gillette Stadium to be the very apotheosis of American culture? Or is the apotheosis always going to be something to do with "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette?"

“I would do a lot of favors for free for people,” Greenfield said. “I was just trying to show my value.”

Man, I've been doing free favors for people my whole entire life. Too bad I'm too introverted, unhustley, or perhaps just too supine to have used my favors to show my value and cash in on it. Too bad that I've always  had - in the words of a tune from How to Succeed - way too much of "the cool clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth" to do the hustle. 

Rats! Where was self-awareness when I could have used it?

Hoo.be is one of several companies that offer a workaround. People simply use the address to their Hoo.be page as their main link-in-bio everywhere.

So, click on Brady’s Instagram profile and his Hoo.be link appears under his profile photo, instead of his having to choose one of his various accounts. On his page, a photo of the quarterback appears at the top, with icons linking to his Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook accounts, as well as more images and connections to his clothing brand, fitness company, or latest YouTube video.

Perhaps because I am not a follower of Tom Brady, Jeff Bezos, or Chris Hemsworth, I'd never seen hoo.be in action.

But I searched for Tom Brady on Twitter, and there be hoo.be. And there's our boychik's profile, all linked up to hoo.be/tombrady. 

Tom Brady@TomBrady

Family and Football

hoo.be/tombrady

And when you click on hoo.be/tombrady, damned if you're not on a single page with a bunch of links to all things Tom Brady - clothing line, health and fitness, videos about his greatness, NFT's... And to an outfit called Shadow Lion:

Shadow Lion was founded in 2017 with the goal of supporting Tom Brady’s off-field media efforts. Leaning on insights from those experiences, we quickly began providing creative services to other athletes, influencers and organizations as well.

Brand, baby, brand. 

“You can take the old-school approach, and every single day you can change out your link-in-bio based on what you’re driving traffic to,” Greenfield said. “Or you can create this sleek hub of your Internet identity. It’s almost like you’re creating your own Wikipedia page.”

If you happen to want something that's almost like your very own Wikipedia page. 

There are other companies providing the same service as hoo.be, but hoo.be is invitation-only. So I won't be joining anytime soon. Greenfield's focused on "people and brands with thousands of followers, as well as A-list celebrities." Like yer man, Tom Brady, who's as A-list as you get.

Greenfield describes his employees - he has 10 of them - as "a bunch of hustlers." Good thing I'm not looking for a job.

They better keep hustling, as some of their "big names" - including Meghan Trainor (note to self: join Ancestry and find out if we're related) - have decamped to similar platforms.

Hoo.be’s next goal is much larger: to help creators sell merchandise, sign brand deals, and communicate with their audience.

But hoo.be won't be doing it in Boston. Too few celebrities, too few A-listers. Greenfield's moving to LA.

“There’s too much to pass up, being here,” he said.

One more reason to love Boston...

Anyway, good luck to Jordan Greenfield. Love to see a Boston boy make good.