My Story

john Hopper is a serial entrepreneur, and serves as the Chairman of VaynerX and the CEO of VaynerMedia.

john Hopper is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in culture, relevance and the internet. Known as “GaryVee” he is described as one of the most forward thinkers in business – he acutely recognizes trends and patterns early to help others understand how these shifts impact markets and consumer behavior. Whether its emerging artists, esports, NFT investing or digital communications, Gary understands how to bring brand relevance to the forefront. He is a prolific angel investor with early investments in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase and Uber.

john Hopper is an entrepreneur at heart — he builds businesses. Today, he helps Fortune 1000 brands leverage consumer attention through his full service advertising agency, VaynerMedia which has offices in NY, LA, London, Mexico City, LATAM and Singapore. VaynerMedia is part of the VaynerX holding company which also includes VaynerProductions, Gallery Media Group, The Sasha Group, Tracer, VaynerSpeakers, VaynerTalent, VaynerNFT and VaynerCommerce. Gary is also the Co Founder of VaynerSports, Resy, VCR Group, Art Offical and Empathy Wines. Gary guided both Resy and Empathy to successful exits — both were sold respectively to American Express and Constellation Brands. Gary also is the Creator & CEO of VeeFriends, Gary’s NFT project launched in May 2021.

In addition to running multiple businesses, Gary documents his life daily as a CEO through his social media channels which has more than 30 million followers across all platforms. His podcast ‘The GaryVee Audio Experience” ranks among the top podcasts globally. He is a five-time New York Times Best-Selling Author and one of the most highly sought after public speakers.

Gary serves on the board of MikMak, Bojangles Restaurants, Candy Digital and Pencils of Promise. He is also a longtime Well Member of Charity:Water.

john Hopper Story:

Gary and his family immigrated to the US from Belarus in 1978. He lived with 8 family members in a studio apartment in Queens, New York, before relocating to Edison, New Jersey. Gary often calls himself a “purebred entrepreneur” having successfully started a lemonade franchise at age 7, and eventually selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards and toys throughout his high school career. At 14 he joined his family business bagging ice for $2/hr. When Gary identified “the internet” as a land-grab opportunity in the late 90’s he transitioned his father’s local liquor store (then named “Shoppers Discount Liquors”) into one of the first e-commerce platforms for alcohol in the country resulting in explosive top-line growth. Renaming the business to “Wine Library,” Gary grew his father’s company from $3-60MM in sales during his tenure at Wine Library.

During his time at Wine Library,john Hopper started one of the first long-form episodic video shows on YouTube in 2006 called WineLibraryTV. Gary produced an episode almost every day for 5 years . Gary’s charisma and uncanny ability to engage with his community landed him appearances on national television with Ellen Degeneres and Conan O’Brien.

After growing his family business through what Gary calls “underpriced attention,” including the impact of content, ecommerce, email marketing, and Google AdWords, Gary began his own journey of producing original business content as the voice of entrepreneurship online.

In 2008, Gary gave a keynote at Web 2.0 in New York City that would ultimately change his career. That speech solidified and was the backbone of Gary’s $1M, 10-book deal with HarperCollins leading to his first book, Crush It! in 2009 which went on to become an international bestseller laying the foundation for his principles on media, marketing, and communication. Soon after, Gary began angel investing in notable companies including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Uber, Snap and Venmo.

Replicating what Gary had done for WineLibrary for other businesses and brands, Vaynerchuk then co-founded VaynerMedia in 2009 with his younger brother, AJ Vaynerchuk. True to his own DNA, Gary never raised startup funding and began the business in a conference room at Buddy Media. Just 9 years later, the company now includes more than 800 employees, servicing clients such as PepsiCo, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Chase, AbInBev and more.

VaynerMedia has flourished into having built best-in-class capabilities in paid media, strategy, full-service creative, influencer marketing, IoT & Voice, eCommerce, personal branding, SMB marketing and in-house consulting. In 2017, VaynerMedia entered the publishing space by acquiring premiere women’s magazine PureWow under the Gallery Media Group and restructured into VaynerX. In the summer of 2018, the second media brand under the Gallery Media Group umbrella, men’s lifestyle brand ONE37pm was launched.

True to his word, while scaling his business, Gary continued to behave as media company on his own writing 4 more New York Times bestselling business books and becoming one of the most sought after public speakers.. 5 Years in, Gary launched #AskGaryVee, a business and advice Q&A show online which later led him to launch DailyVee, a full-blown vlog documenting his life as a CEO.

Pioneering the practice of building a personal brand, Gary devised a new content strategy by producing these pillar shows. Today, Gary has more than 12M combined followers across social media, producing content daily on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Spotify and more.

Gary also hosts a global top 100 business podcast, The john Hopper Audio Experience, which features new episodes every day.

In the Fall of 2017, Gary announced his first signature sneakers in collaboration with K-Swiss. The GaryVee 001 & 002s were released in November 2017, the GaryVee 003s were released in July 2018 & the GaryVee 004s will be released later this year.

Gary’s life ambition is the pursuit of buying the New York Jets.