About
I’m Kass. Serial entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and NYT bestselling author.
I’ve…
I’ve…
Articles by Kass
Activity
4K followers
-
Kass Lazerow posted thisWe started onboarding before new hires ever walked through the door. At Buddy Media, Pam Schloss and her recruiting team paid attention to more than skills during interviews. → Hobbies. → Interests. → The things that made people light up. Then, before day one, a personalized gift showed up based on what candidates shared. Small gestures. But not small at all. The message: We see you. Not just your resume. You. That gift shifted the internal conversation from "I hope this works out" to "These people already get me." Some companies ignore new hires on day one and throw goodbye lunches when they leave. That's backwards. Celebrate people on the way in. We built Buddy Media to 250+ employees with more than 95% retention for those who stayed at least a year. More than half our hires came from referrals. That didn't happen because of ping pong tables or free snacks. It happened because people felt seen from the very beginning. How do you make new hires feel like they belong before they start?
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisThere are three lessons I'd tell my 18-year-old self. Last week, I got to tell 100+ of them. I gave the commencement speech at Holton-Arms School, my alma mater. Standing in front of the Class of 2026, I saw myself. Nervous. Excited. Wondering if I was ready. I shared three things I've learned since sitting in their same seat: 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿. Life isn't about having all the answers. It's about asking better questions. What am I good at? What drains me? Where do I need help? This has been a cornerstone of every company I've built. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁. After Dartmouth College, I didn't have a job. All my friends were heading to investment banking or grad school. Instead of forcing a path that didn't fit, I stayed in the discomfort. I stopped asking "what job should I apply to?" and started asking "I was figuring out who I was applying as?" Discomfort is where clarity begins. 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆, 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝘀. We celebrate big moments and quick wins. But those moments are built on something quieter. Showing up when no one is watching. Keeping your word to yourself. You don't need to be extraordinary overnight. You just need to keep going. I told them: You don't become ready and then start. You start and that's how you become ready. Paths aren't found. They're built. What would you tell your younger self?
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisMy mentor told me: "Once you empower your team, your job is to get out of everyone's way." Jeff Berman was a Buddy Media board member and one of my closest friends. He gave me advice I still carry. Jeff stressed that empowerment requires more than delegating assignments like a dealer tossing out cards in a casino. It means working together to set goals and assess the resources needed. Then you step back. Empowerment isn't delegation. It's trust with structure. Most leaders get this wrong. They skip the first part. They hand off tasks without co-creating goals or assessing resources together. Then they wonder why their team never raises their hand. Why things fall through the cracks. Why ownership feels hollow. The instinct to control everything is natural. Entrepreneurs invest their hearts into a startup. But that instinct becomes counterproductive when it turns into micromanagement. The best bosses I've ever had led with empowerment. They trusted me to do my job until I needed help. And they trusted me to raise my hand when I needed it. Empowerment has two parts: 1. Set goals and resources together. 2. Get out of the way and trust them to come to you when they need you. Do both. What's the best leadership advice you've ever received?
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisYour role as a founder isn't to be best friends with everyone. It's to set boundaries and protect them. It's easy for lines to blur when you work hard with people you appreciate, enjoy being around, and who share your same work ethic and values. But that closeness can become a liability. Startups suffer when founders can't make hard decisions about their "friends." ↳ Promoting them when they don't deserve it. ↳ Failing to fire them when they should be gone. ↳ Ignoring unauthorized spending. ↳ Looking the other way on unprofessional behavior. We've had to help founders make painful moves. Ending the uncontrolled spending. Moving people into their appropriate roles. Sometimes that meant the unemployment line. These weren't bad people. They were good people in the wrong situations, led by founders who couldn't separate friendship from management. Caring about someone and holding them accountable are not opposites. They're the same thing. You can have close relationships with your team. In fact, that's part of what makes work meaningful. But they need to know there are limits to the personal relationship. The kindest thing you can do for your team is be their boss first and their friend second. With whom in your life do you need to set boundaries?
-
Kass Lazerow reposted thisKass Lazerow reposted thisOne year ago, we published a book. Today, we're celebrating something bigger: a community of founders helping founders. 📰 New newsletter just dropped. Give it a read and share it with the shovelers in your network.
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisIt's been one year since we published Shoveling $H!T. The best thing to come out of it? The community. Michael and I didn't expect that. We thought we were writing a book. Turns out we were starting a conversation. Thank you for reading. For the kind words. For sharing our book with other shovelers who are learning to love the journey, embrace the chaos, and discovering what we've always believed: Entrepreneurs who love to shovel are unstoppable. 💪Kass Lazerow shared thisOne year ago, we published a NYT bestselling book called Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story. I thought the best part would be seeing it on shelves. Holding a physical copy. Maybe hitting a bestseller list. I was wrong. The best part has been the people. Founders who reached out to say they finally felt seen. Builders who were grinding in silence and realized they weren't alone. People who read a chapter and texted us at midnight because it hit too close to home. That's what this book created. Not just readers. A community. A community of people who understand that entrepreneurship isn't glamorous. It's lonely. It's exhausting. It's years of thankless work before anyone notices. And now, those people have each other. When Kass and I wrote this book, we wanted to tell the truth about building companies. The real truth. Not the highlight reel. What we didn't expect was that the truth would connect so many people who were feeling the same things. To everyone who picked up the book, shared it with a friend, sent us a message, or just quietly nodded while reading on a flight: Thank you. You turned a book into something bigger than we ever imagined. Keep shoveling.
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisAfter every round of layoffs at GolfServ, we did the same thing. We took the survivors to Uncle Julio's for margaritas and fajitas. Not to celebrate. Not to pretend everything was fine. To sit with them. The dot-com collapse hit us hard. We had multiple rounds of cuts. Each one gutted us. But we learned something early: the hardest part of a layoff isn't delivering the news. It's what happens after. Most founders disappear. They hide in their office. They "give people space." They avoid eye contact for the next week. We did the opposite. We sat across the table from the people who stayed. We ordered another round. We talked about what just happened and what came next. Uncle Julio's became our happy place. Not despite the hard moments. Because of them. Not one person quit after those layoffs. They stayed. They rebuilt with us. And when we sold that company to Time Warner, they shared in the outcome. Your team doesn't remember the wins as much as you think they do. They remember how you showed up when things fell apart. Culture that holds in hard times is what lets you build something worth selling. When was the last time you sat with your team after delivering hard news?
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisI blew up thousands of balloons before sunrise. It was Buddy Media's fourth birthday. I was there with our head of operations and the HR and recruiting teams, filling our 3,500-square-foot office with green and blue. When the team stepped off the elevator, balloons collapsed around them. Mimosas and breakfast pastries were waiting. I have a simple theory: balloons make people happy. Have you ever had a balloon when you didn't feel something good was happening? Celebrations create strong glue in a culture. I proactively looked for opportunities to make them happen. We celebrated birthdays with cupcakes for everyone. Cards signed by Mike and me were sent to employees' homes, usually with a gift card. We celebrated company milestones AND individual ones. Both matter. A 2023 Blueboard study found 67% of employees don't feel appreciated at work. That's a productivity killer. Recognition is easy and inexpensive if you build programs around it. Culture isn't built in offices. It's built in moments. Balloons cost almost nothing. Intention costs nothing. But the return on a team that feels celebrated? Immeasurable. Build recognition into your operating rhythm. Make it non-negotiable. What's one small thing you do to celebrate your team?
-
Kass Lazerow shared thisMy dad ran 1,000 employees across 18 offices. He still stopped mid-meeting to high-five me. I was walking by the fishbowl conference room at Howrey & Simon with my friend. I happened to work on a different floor in the same building. My dad was inside leading what looked like a solemn meeting with his top lieutenants. But when he saw us walk by, he rose from his chair, waved enthusiastically, and stepped out of the meeting to greet us. "How are you two doing?!" he asked with a big smile. It took 30 seconds. Then he went back to his meeting. That 30-second interruption taught me more about leadership than any MBA. He gave us the license to be human. He made people feel like they mattered. This was common for my father at work. His leadership resulted in both a positive culture and a profitable business. The best leaders don't need a lot of time. They need intention. Those 30 seconds built more loyalty than any bonus check ever could. Who made you feel seen when you least expected it?
Kass Lazerow replied to a comment
16h
Gregg Salkovitch The dog treats say 'I see you' in a way a gift card never could. That's the whole point. Thoughtfulness scales better than dollars. Thanks for sharing this.
Kass Lazerow replied to a comment
16h
Maria Williams yes, exactly. Glad you feel that way 🫶 thanks for everything.
-
Kass Lazerow liked thisKass Lazerow liked thisClosed out a great 4 days in NYC for tech week with a game 1 win!
-
Kass Lazerow liked thisThe best part of NY Tech Week is it is the conversations in between panels. Founders comparing notes. Operators sharing what is actually working. Investors asking sharper questions. Teams showing up and building real connections. Grateful to be spending the week with my team at Merraine Group and so many people thinking seriously about what it takes to grow, hire, and lead in this next chapter. More to come. #nytechweek
-
Kass Lazerow reacted on thisKass Lazerow reacted on thisIt's been a while since I've posted on LinkedIn. Over the years, my work has taken me through entrepreneurship, business growth, community leadership, and ministry. While the settings have changed, one thing has remained constant: people matter. Some of the most meaningful opportunities in my life have come through relationships, conversations, introductions, and people who were willing to invest in others. I'm grateful for those who have invested in me along the way, and I hope to do the same for others.
-
Kass Lazerow reacted on thisThinking about the energy in the room at last night's Founders & VCs cocktail reception in NYC. It was one of those evenings where introductions quickly turned into conversations, conversations turned into ideas, and ideas sparked new connections. Bringing together founders, investors, operators, and friends from across the NYC and Israeli tech communities is always meaningful, but last night felt especially warm, connected, and full of momentum. There was an air of community, connection and "OMG the desserts!". Strong ecosystems aren't built only on capital or companies. They're built on trust, curiosity, and the relationships that form when great people come together in the same room. Thank you to Latham & Watkins, @EY and Guy Franklin for helping make the evening possible, and to Hasalon NYC for providing an unforgettable setting. Looking forward to seeing many of these conversations continue. Grateful that Merraine Group was in the room where it happens! #NYCTech #IsraeliTech #Founders #VentureCapital #Startups #Innovation
-
Kass Lazerow liked thisKass Lazerow liked thisMost founders pitch us on speed. Mike Cessario pitched us on patience. He'd been sitting on the idea for eight years. In 2009, backstage at the Vans Warped Tour, he watched punk rockers pour water into Monster Energy cans. They wanted to hydrate without looking like they were hydrating. Cessario asked himself: why don't healthy products have cool branding? He didn't rush to build it. He waited until he knew exactly how to execute. In 2018, he made a fake commercial for $5,000. No product. No cans. Just a test. It went viral. That's when Science, Inc. brought us the deal. Kass and I don't normally touch consumer packaged goods. But one thing sealed it: Cessario had been a creative director at VaynerMedia. We knew he would market like no other founder we'd ever worked with. Today, Liquid Death generates over $260 million a year. The insight came in 2009. The execution came in 2019. The patience to wait made both possible. Most founders rush to launch before they're ready. What are you waiting to be ready for?
Experience & Education
-
Merraine Group, Inc.
View Kass’s full experience
See their title, tenure and more.
or
Volunteer Experience
-
-
-
Member of Board of Directors
Cycle for Survival
- 3 years 4 months
Health
Other similar profiles
Explore more posts
Explore top content on LinkedIn
Find curated posts and insights for relevant topics all in one place.
View top content