Matthew Piper Jenks 🧲@MattPiperJenks
Blog 101
My origin story
◦February 1989: Born in Rye, New York.
◦1989-1994: Lived in Cortlandt Manor, New York.
◦1994: Moved to Belgium.
◦1994-1996: Only content were the NBA VHS tapes my grandad would mail us.
◦1994-1996: Full court Fischer Price basketball court in garage, did pregame introductions and post game interviews with my brother.
◦1995: Fell head over heels in love with the Knicks and learned that Michael Jordan was the GOAT.
◦1997: Moved back to New York
◦1997: Reunited with my best friends from preschool. A couple of them had evolved into the biggest trouble makers at school.
◦1998-2007: I didn’t have helicopter parents. I grew up balancing B+ grades with minimal effort, captain of sports teams, & creating chaos with my crew of bad boys.
◦2007-2011: Elon University. Highlight was studying abroad in Florence. I plotted to move back there the second study abroad ended. Junior year, my advisor said only an English major with a focus in poetry would enable me to graduate on time. So yes, I have a college degree in writing poems.
◦2011-2012 (10 months): Moved back in with parents. The school in Italy (AEF) said if I could find more schools to work with them, I could move and work there full-time. I emailed and cold called every university in the USA until Bath Path Community College in Springfield agreed to multiple meetings and then a partnership with AEF. The Italians hired me and I moved to Italy.
◦2012-2016: Lived in Florence as the richest poor man you could ever imagine. I never had more than $200 in my bank account but everyone in Florence knew that I worked at a school and could bring them lots of students with their parents’ credit cards. I learned Italian, ate at the best restaurants, sat VIP at the clubs, and enjoyed the craziest bar scenes with a flat rate of 10 Euros everywhere. I would bike around the Duomo on the way to work, go on school trips throughout Italy as extra help, and volunteer for travel companies that took students to places like Oktoberfest. I turned 26, had no savings, and needed healthcare … it was time to find the next chapter.
◦2016: Joined a startup called Vettery in NYC. The founder found out I planned to Skype in for the first interview from Italy and asked to have the interview cancelled. Clark Winter forgot to cancel it, the founder took the call, and within 2 weeks I was living in NYC and working at Vettery.
◦2016-2020: I became one of the company’s original 3 salespeople. We had 9 million in funding while our direct competitor had $100 million. We kicked their asses, resulting in a $110MM acquisition. By 2019 we had a 200 person salesforce generating 10s of millions in revenue. I held a Monday-Friday 8:30am meeting. If you were 1 minute late, you weren’t allowed in. Founder Brett Adcock, had a tremendous impact on me. His work ethic and consummate belief in anyone’s ability to overcome anything has stuck with me ever since.
◦2020: Moved to Marina Del Rey and joined a different tech startup. Covid hit and I was isolated and sad. This is when I became a diehard Stoolie.
◦2021: Reunited with my former bosses from Vettery at their company Archer in Palo Alto. Archer is an EVTOL company. It IPO’d for $1.8 billion on the NYSE. Archer is still growing and thriving and Brett started yet another company called Figure which is building robots.
◦2022: Joined a Law Firm in NYC my friend owned as their Chief Strategy Officer. After about 3 months, it became very obvious to me that it wasn’t a fit.
◦2022-2023: Joined another startup as Head of Growth. My dates with the YAK commenced which led to meeting Frank & Stu.
◦2023: In September, I quit my job to put all of my energy into getting hired by Barstool. Many people called me a fool.
◦Today: I am sitting at Frank the Tank’s desk writing this. I am living my dream, working at Barstool, and exploring the world with Frank.
◦Future: Anything is possible.