How did a relatively recent Coronado resident manage to entice 350 of his “financial friends” to take over the Hotel del Coronado for a 3-day “profit and joy” conference? If you have spent any time with Howard Lindzon, you probably already know the answer. For those of you that haven’t sipped from the cup of $Lindzanity, keep reading.
Howard isn’t your typical Coronado transplant. Wait a second, maybe he is…let’s see what we know about him so far:
- He moved here from Phoenix Arizona to Coronado back in 2009 (#zonie)
- He’s been extremely successful in businesses he either owns or is an investor (#baller)
- His typical business attire is “Coronado casual” – jeans and Nike kicks (#swag)
- He enjoys running on Coronado beach chasing the SEALs and spotting seals (#fit)
- He calls moving his family to Coronado the “best trade of my life” (#blessed)
Perhaps he does resemble more than a few “typical” residents in Coronado – especially the ones that have moved here in the last decade.
Back in 2011, when eCoronado.com first covered Howard and his newest company StockTwits, he was operating it here in Coronado and had around 120,000 members. Stocktwits is an online community of investors and traders that share ideas with each other – it is a HUGE social hub for crowdsourcing financial-related information. Now he has offices over the bridge in San Diego (Little Italy), New York. Stocktwits’ membership has swelled to nearly 700,000.
Howard serves as the chairman of Stocktwits and has a very talented team to keep it humming. That team allows spend time getting pitched to invest seed capital in early stage companies with the help of his partners Tom Peterson and Gary Benitt. That venture capital company is called Social Leverage and they have had a lot of successful exits with those investments. Just last week, one of their companies (Ticketfly) was purchased by Pandora for 450 million.
eCoronado.com sat down with Howard at a company he recently invested in called DeskHub. A group of desks in that location serves as the West Coast offices of StockTwits, including an office combination of brick and glass for Howard. The building itself is the company. Located in Little Italy, DeskHub is a shared office space building that allows people to rent space on a month to month basis.
The company also has DeskHub locations in Scottsdale, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Portland. If eCoronado.com wasn’t already based in Coronado, we could easily see ourselves working from this prime location. As entrepreneurship and startups continue to blossom, so will the need to find affordable space to work.
What makes Howard likable and even sometimes annoying is his ability to be incredibly candid and just tell it like it is. Whether in business or social settings, Howard pulls no punches and usually lands more than he takes. Just don’t let him discuss Citibank on live TV.
Being direct is a good quality for making investment decisions and after so many successful outcomes, it’s working. It’s also made him one of the most followed financial people on Twitter (250,000 followers) and a healthy network of traders, investors and entrepreneurs. That network made it possible for Howard to host a huge in-person group event called Stocktoberfest – Investing for Profit and Joy. It’s a 3 day gathering of some of the top business and financial minds in the world. 350 people (Howard refers to them as “his friends”) are attending and it’s taking place at the Hotel del Coronado from Sunday to Tuesday.
The main topic of the interview was around trends. Howard’s tells anyone who will listen to “find them, ride them and get off”. The interview was recorded and below are some clips of the financial insight he shared:
Discussing Work Habits and DeskHub:
Discussing What Trends Are:
Discussing San Diego Trends:
Discussing Social Leverage Investing Trends:
Discussing Stocktoberfest 2015:
Discussing Coronado Trends:
We enjoyed our time learning about trends with Howard. To learn more, click the below image of him in a rare moment of checking his phone. Kidding aside, he is a welcome addition to Coronado and congrats on bringing another successful Stocktoberfest to the island.
