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Gary Vaynerchuck is a Belarus-born (November 14, 1975) America-based entrepreneur, author, artist, speaker, and internet personality. Vaynerchuk is the sole founder of VeeFriends and co-founder of VaynerMedia; Resy, the restaurant reservation software company; and Empathy Wines.
After graduating from Mount Ida College in 1988, Vaynerchuk took over the management of his father's liquor store. He changed the name from Shopper's Discount Liquors to Wine Library, and by 2003 he had grown the business's sales from $3 million per year to $60 million per year by launching online retail sales of Wine Library inventory. In 2006, Vaynerchuk started a weekly webcast on YouTube called Wine Library TV, where he would review different wines. In 2011, Vaynerchuk left the family business to become the founder of his first company, VaynerMedia.
VaynerX is a holding company for communication and production properties. It houses various subsidiaries, including VaynerMedia, Tracer, Gallery Media Group, The Sasha Group, Vayner Productions, VaynerTalent, VaynerSpeakers, VaynerCommerce, and VaynerX Presents: Marketing for the Now. Gary Vaynerchuk serves as Chairman of the Board.
VaynerMedia, a social-media-focused digital ad agency, was founded in 2009 by Gary Vaynerchuk and his brother, AJ Vaynerchuk, to provide social media and strategy services to Fortune 500 companies. In 2015, VaynerMedia was named an A-List agency by Ad Age. In 2016, VaynerMedia employed over 600 people and grossed $100 million in revenue. Gary Vaynerchuk continued to serve as the company's CEO in July 2021.
In 2014, Resy was founded by Gary Vaynerchuk, Ben Leventhal, and Michael Montero. The software provides an application that allows users to make restaurant reservations without having to physically contact the establishment. The company was acquired by American Express in 2019.
In 2017, Vaynerchuk developed The Gallery, which was later renamed Gallery Media Group. The media company is a subsidiary of VaynerX, which serves as an umbrella for various media outlets like PureWow, ONE37pm, Mom and Brain, The CMO Podcast, Card Talk, The GaryVee Audio Experience, and more.
Founded in 2019, Empathy Wines is a direct-to-consumer wine brand developed by Vaynerchuk. The company was acquired by Constellation Brands only a year later, in 2020.
In 2021, Vaynerchuk founded VeeFriends, a non-fungible token (NFT) platform offering 10,255 tokens that were hand-drawn by Vaynerchuk himself. The tokens are backed with NFT technology and many act as redeemable vouchers for one-on-one time with Vaynerchuk, via FaceTime. Additionally, each token provides its holder with a three-year admission to VeeCon, a super conference for the VeeFriends platform.
