How 'Cats Reconnect with Jake Abraham '96 and Drew Stein '96
About this Episode
Episode 165: Published on Oct 17, 2024
Digital advertising pioneers Jake Abraham and Drew Stein recently hosted the musical artist St. Lucia for their company during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, marking the first time they collaborated as concert producers since meeting as students nearly 30 years ago.
MAX HERTEEN: Welcome back to Northwestern Intersections, a Northwestern Alumni Association podcast. We'll be talking to alums about their career paths and the lessons they've learned along the way. Our guests today are Jake Abraham and Drew Stein. After first meeting and working together on campus, the pair reconnected as digital advertising pioneers. They recently hosted musical artist St. Lucia for their company during the Cannes Lion Festival, marking the first time they collaborated as concert producers since meeting as students nearly 30 years ago. We'll dive into all these topics and more in this edition of Northwestern Intersections.
Jake, Drew, first of all, thank you so much, both for being here.
DREW STEIN: Anything for the Alumni Association. And as always, Go 'Cats. So we're excited to both be here.
MAX HERTEEN: I know you guys are super fans, so we're happy to have you back. We're going to dive into Northwestern lore a lot in this episode. But let me kick it off. First of all, each of you, what brought you to campus in the first place? And what did you study?
JAKE ABRAHAM: All right, I'll start. I come from Philadelphia, so I knew kind of being in a city was a vibrant place for me. And I wanted to keep something of the city vibe. But I also didn't go to a very big high school. And I thought it was time for me to break out. So I was looking for something bigger that had academic success, that maybe had some sports teams, that was near a big city. There weren't that many options when I really took a look.
And getting a chance to visit Northwestern, and in the '90s, it didn't necessarily have all of the panache on the East Coast that it does now. And so I had a chance to get in, which was incredible. And the rest was history.
DREW STEIN: Yeah, I mean, I caught Northwestern on just the most beautiful day Marching band was playing at the Rock. The sun was beating down over Lake Michigan. And I just knew that there was an electricity that was flowing through that campus that I knew I had to be a part of. So for me, I knew the academics were great, and it was an exciting opportunity to go to Chicago and be a part of that Northwestern community.
MAX HERTEEN: And I want to ask you guys-- we'll get into this a lot more as the episode goes. Obviously, you guys working together now on a lot of projects. But first, tell me about the relationship you had on campus. How did you meet? And what were some of those activities you took part in?
DREW STEIN: Jake was just absolutely one of the coolest guys I had met. You were, Jake. You absolutely were. And we were together on A&O Productions. And I was the nerdy finance guy, and Jake was the cool media, concert buyer. And we got this extraordinary opportunity. We both had a passion for music. And we both were one of the first freshmen. We both joined as Freshmen. And then we rose through the ranks together.
And then by seniors, we were jointly running the show. And the admiration only grew from there. And we accomplished a tremendous amount in four years together, putting on concerts and speakers and movies and throwing the big events that we did. So A&O was really how we connected and formed this kind of mutual admiration and respect. But I mean, Jake is truly one of the smartest people I've ever met, and at least back then was also one of the coolest guys on campus for sure.
JAKE ABRAHAM: From my perspective, Drew was always the confidence guy. So when I was in trouble, I knew that Drew was the guy that could help out. So I mean, obviously, that continues today, but that's not always something you have at 18, 19 years old. So the fact that he was the head of finance at a concert promoting company that was really owned by the University and had a lot of structure behind how things needed to be done, I don't know that I was always the most compliant.
And Drew was the guy that, when we didn't cut the check the right way or we didn't request it from the University in the right way, Drew was like, don't worry, I know how to handle this. So "cool guy" may have been great back then, but I was much more excited about partnering with a guy that knew how to get the job done.
DREW STEIN: Yeah, and we were thrown into the frying pan. I don't know if you remember this, but the first concert we took over, like from our predecessors, lost around $65,000. We took over a show in the Aragon Ballroom that was just a bomb. And it wasn't our show, but we inherited it. And that was honestly the first of many business challenges that we had to work through together. And the University surely was unhappy with us, and we had to figure out very quickly how we were going to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
And we were calm and collected. We figured our way through it. We actually wound up working together to get Miller Brewing Company at the time to write us a check and save the day, which they did. And that was the first of many, many times where Jake and I were thrown up against something, a really big challenge, and we had to work through it.
And that was a skill that certainly came in handy. 30 years later, here we are, running one of the most exciting data companies in our industry. And that feels like old hat for us at this point.
JAKE ABRAHAM: It's kind of magical when you think about a University giving you that opportunity. I think having the academic experience, that's a primary job of a University, bringing the right professors, bringing the right academic environment, bringing the right students to campus. But this was a scenario where we really had on-the-job training, We had supervisors to some degree, but there was no direct supervision.
And so the ability to let students really manage their own arts and entertainment group, run into some pitfalls, get yourself out of those problems, I mean, that's life experience that I can't imagine we don't continue to use to this day.
MAX HERTEEN: Just a fun question-- what was the coolest project that you got to work on at Northwestern?
DREW STEIN: I know the coolest moment. I don't know about the coolest project. I think the coolest moment for me, certainly, was McGaw Hall. I mean, OK, outside of the Rose Bowl, which I would say was absolutely the most unbelievable experience, yes. The coolest moment for me was, we were there during soundcheck when a band called James, who was opening up for a band called Duran Duran, and we had booked the entire basketball arena at the time, McGaw Hall. And we sold out, I don't know, 15,000 seats for the show.
And Jake and I were in the arena. It was completely empty. And James checked with their most famous number one hit. And it was as if they were just playing for us. It was like a private concert. And that was amazingly cool, probably second only to having $45,000 of cash in merchandise after that show, and getting a police escort with the sirens going from NU police to the safe deposit box. That was the only time I was ever in the back of a police car with the sirens on. And I was like, this is pretty neat. This is pretty cool.
So those are some highlight experiences for sure.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Yeah, I think for me, it's hard to pick one. In retrospect, being able to entertain obviously friends of ours but also complete strangers on campus and trying to program diverse programming. And in the '90s, we were in the height of the grunge moment. Pearl Jam was probably like the biggest band in the world at the time, and yet we were programming conscious hip hop, like Black Sheep and the Farside and A Tribe called Quest and De La Soul. Or we were doing the early days of the jam bands, like Widespread Panic.
These were all bands that were willing to come to campus, were willing to do private shows, essentially, because, well, we had the money and we had the audiences. And so I think that it's hard to pick one, but being able to look across four years, I was also able to program Dillo Day for, I think, at least two of those four years with some great artists. Some of them aren't alive anymore, some of the classics of jazz and soul that we got to program while they were alive. I mean, it's all fantastic highlights.
MAX HERTEEN: Let me ask you this. When you guys were in school, especially being seniors, being in these sort of leadership positions, did you think you'd go into concert management, touring, stuff like that? What was the dream job at the time? And then, eventually, how did you get into your current industry?
DREW STEIN: For me, I didn't think I was going to go become a concert promoter. I wound up going to work for an investment bank, like many kids out of school wind up doing. CS First Boston gave me an opportunity to work in their Chicago office, and I jumped at the chance. So what I knew was that my time at Northwestern had really given me a broad education far more than the academics. And I really had a sense of business that I wouldn't have had I just gone there to study.
And so the major I studied, I made up my own major in comm studies called organizational communication. They gave me the flexibility to do that. Actually, I hear there's actually a major now that does almost exactly the same thing. It's a multidisciplinary major across schools that approximates what I had done at the time. But I used the experiences that I had there to study things that I thought were interesting. And all of it was applicable when I went out into the real world.
And I feel like I used what I learned there every single day. 30-plus years later, there's absolutely no doubt about it. So there wasn't a direct tie between my time there and A&O Productions, or even my major. And yet, at the same time, there's not an aspect of what I learned there that I'm not using every single day throughout my career.
JAKE ABRAHAM: For me, it was a much tougher choice. Those years at Norris, I had an office at Norris. I had a fax machine, I had a phone number, and agents were calling every day, pitching us bands. And I was really into it. I was also a radio TV film major. I had transferred in, but most of my time at Northwestern was spent in radio, TV, film. So I was interested in the film world. I was interested in radio. I was interested in music.
But I think essentially when I really started promoting larger shows in conjunction with Jam Productions, who's the big promoter in Chicago, and got a sense of what was really happening at the larger stages of the promoting industry and thinking about becoming a talent agent one of the major agencies which I seriously considered, it just didn't seem right to me. It didn't seem like the right move. I just thought, I love the music. The closer you work to the artists, sometimes you realize, geez, I really like being a fan more than I like being in business with some of these artists.
And I really gravitated toward the film side more. So, I was very lucky to transition into the production world and had a successful kind of early career in music, video producing and TV commercial producing. But being able to get back together with Drew 30 years later and promote a show was certainly a blast. But I can't say I missed the last 30 years not being a promoter.
MAX HERTEEN: I'm going to ask several questions about the show, but let's talk about the company just more broadly. Talk about the advent of the company and how did you guys reconnect at work?
DREW STEIN: Sure So I think the fact that I had worked on A&O Productions gave me quite an entrepreneurial bug. There was no doubt about it. I had experienced a taste of something at Northwestern that was so intoxicating that I think it really influenced me in terms of some of my career decisions. I spent a couple of years on Wall Street. And for me it was an interesting experience, but it wasn't one that I think I knew I was going to do long term, because for me, it felt like I remember what it was like to run A&O Productions and feel like you're involved in all aspects of the business and have a kind of a much broader mandate.
And so I wound up kind of leaving the finance world and taking a job with a creative company in advertising that I had interned for when I was at Northwestern, who was owned and run by a Northwestern Alumni. So when I was at Northwestern, somebody gave me an opportunity to be an intern at their company, and I then came back to become the COO of that company at a very early age. Given my finance background, I was then able to LBO that company. That gave me the money to start my own companies.
And the rest was kind of history. So I went from finance to the creative side of advertising, was always very entrepreneurial. And as we started those companies, I kind of had a front row seat to how creative was really changing, how media was changing, and how technology was affecting all of it, and had some great opportunities along the way to start some companies that did really well. I've also had some companies that were rocket ships that exploded along the way. So I kind of really rode that roller coaster as an entrepreneur.
And what I would say is the successes and failures that I had set the groundwork for Audigent. I had, by the way, sworn off that I would never do another technology company again. I went back to the creative side of the business. And I got a call from an old friend from growing up, and said, hey, I know you're not going to do technology companies anymore, but maybe you and I will just invest in this company. I'm coming up from Philadelphia. Just meet. The rest was history. And I met with them.
I wound up wanting to be a part of the company and kind of refounding the company, being the CEO. And here we are eight years later. But early into the company, the company was growing very rapidly. And there was a lot of opportunity. And the board of directors kind of came to me. The chairman came to me and goes, listen, you've got to duplicate yourself, and you've got to bring someone into the company that can see the world the way you do.
And literally I said, well, there's really only one person I know who is going to have the same perspectives as I do, because he's the only person I know that has a deep understanding of creative side, a deep understanding of the digital side, and would really understand how data is really the nexus of the two. And so I was on a plane that was far overbooked at a busy airport.
I was sitting on the ground, on my cell phone, waiting for this plane to board. And I called Jake. And I'm like, listen, I'm working on something that I think could be tremendous. I think you're the only person that could possibly get it. And I started the process of begging him to come on board and be a part of Audigent. Rest was history from my perspective.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Yeah, I mean, it's so funny to hear it from your perspective. I had spent the early 2000s as a pretty successful producer. We had a finance company in the feature film business, and it was really fantastic. I got to make movies with some of with great talent and great directors and really, like, in the indie scene in New York. And I was in my 20s, and it felt amazing. And then like in the mid aughts, the economy was tumbling. And I was trying to figure out where was I really going to fit into the producing world.
And through a sequence of events after television, I ended up at the Hearst Corporation, building production companies there, and spent five years there at a time when digital magazines was just starting to become a thing and Hearst was kind of struggling through what would be the transition from print to digital. How would they keep-- how would all of these publications keep their moat as the access to information became instant across the world?
And I was just witnessing all of this change around advertisers and data and Google and Facebook having all of this power, and just kind of being on the sidelines, witnessing it as a producer at the time that Drew was starting to get in touch. So it was an incredible sequence of events where he said, hey, I'm building this business around like the data side of entertainment. And I was thinking, that's crazy because I've been watching for five years at Hearst wanting to be-- I've always been, how do I help creators create?
How do I help them get projects to screen? And now I'm at a company where I'm trying to figure out how do I help this magazine business and these advertisers connect in ways that make sense. And Drew's offer was kind of incredible. I mean, we had actually tried to start one thing a few years before, Drew, if you remember. We had this kind of crazy idea about bringing writers from the television business into the advertising business. And we worked with some great writers that were friends of ours, some from Northwestern, actually Ed Herbstman, and that was really fun. But ultimately, we decided there wasn't really a business there.
So this was kind of second crack at the bat. Much, much better.
MAX HERTEEN: My next question is also business-related. But this is really the big one I've been wanting to ask you about. You reconnect at this company, and you put together another concert all these years later. For those people who might not know what it is, first of all, tell me, tell people what is the Cannes Festival? How were you involved in this? And then how did the how did St. Lucia come to be?
DREW STEIN: Yeah, so Cannes is certainly a celebration traditionally of creative awards that happen in the advertising industry. But the truth is the pendulum has swung dramatically over the past 10, 15 years, whereas when it started, it was 99% creative and 1% technology, that's all been flipped. The companies that are doing the biggest activations are the media agency and technology companies that are there. And they represent the bulk of the most exciting activations that are happening around Cannes.
So it is now still a celebration of creativity, certainly, within advertising, but it's just as much an opportunity for all of the media agency and tech companies in the industry to come together and to get a lot of business done, frankly. So it's our Super Bowl, that is the Super Bowl of media and tech and data. It's where all of the C suites of all of the major companies come together once a year. There's a lot of deals that get done there. There's a lot of business that gets exchanged there.
And it's really become a core kind of nexus event for our industry. And tech is leading the way. So as one of the fastest growing one of the largest data technology companies now in our industry, we have a very big presence there. And part of that presence is being able to put on events that are going to be exciting and bring people together. And we decided with our partners at LG and Experian that we were going to put on just an incredible rooftop concert, a venue overlooking the Mediterranean, very dramatic venue.
Imagine a massive rooftop, all glass walls, over open air, looking out onto the Mediterranean with dramatic views. And we had been big fans of this band, St. Lucia. I had known Jean and Patti from my time on the creative side of advertising, and they had both worked at our creative production companies. Jean at the music company, Patti at the ad production company. That's where they actually met and fell in love and eventually married. And they left to join Columbia Records and formed the band St. Lucia.
So we've always stayed in contact with them. And for us, it was one of these big moments to do something cool and make a big splash. And Jake and I had the opportunity to come back together and 30 years later put on an epic concert on with our partners at Experian and LG ads, and could not have been more exciting.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Yeah. I think for me, when you run these businesses-- I mean, I hadn't been part of a startup before. But in the early days, I mean, I joined in 2017, Drew. I mean, there wasn't a lot here. And so the first year we went to the Cannes Festival, we're sharing an Airbnb, seven of us, dorm style, was like a hostel. And I was giving out cards, trying to get business at the festival. And every year, kind of incrementally, you would see some of the growth.
OK, this year, I'm only sharing an Airbnb with one other person. OK, that's pretty good. And some people know me here at this festival, like this company has-- we've got an office now that we're going to take out for the week. And I feel like every year, you see the festival is like the incremental change. I think day to day, it's so hard to see the change. Day to day, it just feels like grinding it out, or there's wins and losses. But this year, I feel like that concert, in some ways, was such an amazing moment, to say, wow, hard to believe that we got there from where we were.
But you see these incremental changes. And yeah, having the biggest brands and data companies in the world partner with us, having a rooftop event like that, and having other companies that want to be in business with us, I mean, I want to believe they like us personally, too, and they wanted to come hang out with us. But I think the truth is they know that Audigent is an important company to be in business with. And that wasn't the way it was four years ago. So, it's a great personal story, because I love that we got back together, and we could take selfies on the roof with the band and say, remember 30 years ago at McGaw, when we were like, we didn't even have selfies.
There were no cell phones, I don't think. Anyway, like, but we're taking little Polaroids maybe. But it was so great on a personal level. But also, I just feel like, professionally, the opportunity you gave me seven years ago to say, like, hey, I think there's something here, it's so hard to see a day to day, but sometimes, when you have those moments looking out over the Mediterranean, you can say, I can see the horizon here. There's a lot here.
DREW STEIN: When over 2,000 of the most important people in your industry RSVP for an event with 450 slots, and you're picking and choosing who's actually going to be let in, it's a big deal. And yeah, certainly, the dramatics, the theatrics of the venue helped create that moment. But for us, it was definitely a moment to really look back on in the last 30 years in our journey together. And you can't help but feel like you've accomplished something absolutely extraordinary.
Two of the biggest companies in the world, not just in our industry, are partnered with us for their opening night event in the biggest, festival of our industry in the year. That's a very meaningful moment for us. And I think you're right, Jake. It's hard in the day to day. You get lost sometimes in how far we've come over all these years. But it really comes together in a moment like that. It's a great moment.
MAX HERTEEN: You guys have teed me up perfectly for this next question. Let's look ahead to the next horizon. What are some projects that you're working on now? What are some goals for this year, 5 years, 10 years, whatever it might be?
DREW STEIN: Yeah, I mean, we're in a very interesting position. We've been industry pioneers and industry leaders. And we have been absolutely fearless with respect to how we continue to invest in the technology stack that we've built and how we evolve, not just our company, but our industry. I used to think what Jake and I did wasn't important. Oh, well, we have this great data company. It makes a lot of money. It grows fast. We win a lot of awards and a lot of recognition.
I don't feel that way anymore. I think what Jake and I do is more important than ever before. We're living in a world that someone has to really stand up for the free internet. Someone's got to be the warriors for great content that's out there. And someone has got to protect not just our country, but our world from all of these social media silos that are, frankly, taking over the hearts and minds of an entire generation of kids.
Like, I got to tell you, unless you want your kids getting all of their news and information from TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat, the free internet's a really important place these days. And what Jake and I do, and what Audigent is so good at, is making sure that we are driving monetization around the content for the biggest content creators in the world so that they can continue to create outside of these silos. I look at what Jake and I do right now.
When I think about the next couple of years, I think about the importance of what we're doing. And if we do a good job, the free internet gets to thrive. The discourse, the political discourse, the cultural discourse gets to thrive as well. I think we're playing for the biggest stakes that we've ever played for. And what I love about our journey is I think we've gone from a place where maybe we weren't so important, to, as we've grown, never forgetting that what we do, the bigger we get, certainly, we have tremendous responsibility in acting responsible.
And I think we take that mission very seriously. And I think we have a very exciting future ahead of us.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Very well said. I never thought I would ever end up in a place where I wasn't just reading the headlines, but feeling so invested and involved in them. I mean, when you think of privacy, antitrust, social media, AI, these are issues that we're confronting every day. Now, we're not on the same frontlines as the publishers. They have the hardest of the hard job. But we're there to support them in every way.
And I think it's not just me reading articles about, how is AI going to impact publishing, how is social media going to impact misinformation, but these are issues that we deal with our partners every day. And I find that absolutely fascinating. And it's a huge responsibility. So it's a privilege really to be able to do it, and that they trust us to be side by side with them, knowing that we have to help drive revenue, we have to do it in compliant ways, and that the consumers have to trust that we're doing all the right things.
And so it's a big responsibility. But I never expected to be here. And it's a real pleasure and an honor.
MAX HERTEEN: Are there any Northwestern shoutouts that you'd like to give?
JAKE ABRAHAM: Well, I can just say, quite honestly, that the academics for me were great, but I think A&O And the components that I was given by having an office at Norris, and I don't just mean because of A&O. That means that my office was, I think it was called the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Alliance at the time. I don't know what it's called now. Because I spent eight hours a day, just to give you a sense. I spent eight hours a day in my office at Norris. And those were the other kids that I met and I was hanging out with.
And I don't know that I would have hung out with them if I hadn't had that office in Norris, or the kids that ran the arts magazine down the hall, or student government, or the Black Student Alliance. That was a place where I intersected with students that weren't necessarily the kids I hung out with in the fraternity or in the dorm. And so I just have to give a shoutout to the entire arts, and the entire extracurricular program that I was a part of, because I still have friends from that world.
And I don't know how easy it would have been to cross over into that. And so I'm super grateful for all the things that campus allowed me to be a part of outside of my academic experience.
DREW STEIN: Yeah, I'd echo the same sentiment. I mean, I'd say that my time at Northwestern was most defined not by my academics, but by the extracurricular activities that I chose to participate in. And the richness of my experience there was because I got involved. And getting involved meant I was meeting a lot of other people who were also getting involved. And so those are the experience I look back on now that were formative for me.
And I'm very grateful for the opportunities and the people that I met along the way. And it's a special place. It's a really special campus. And if I was to give advice to anyone coming to Northwestern, I would say, find the things you're passionate about, get involved, treat them like full-time jobs the way Jake and I did. I mean, I was working 40 hours a week with Jake on A&O, like consuming and going to school full-time. It all felt easy because I was so passionate about it.
So school's a great opportunity to explore those kinds of things. And when you meet people who are like you, and even not like you, but are equally passionate, it creates a richness of your experience that is, frankly, unmatched in any other aspect that you'll see in your lifetime. So I'm grateful for everything Northwestern afforded me in those moments. And I would urge absolutely everyone to get involved, dive deep into campus, become a part of things, join, join everything, and live life to your absolute fullest while you're there. It's just an extraordinary opportunity.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Yeah, be nice to everybody, the actors, directors, business people. I mean, the number of people that I met who I'm really glad I was nice to because it wasn't as hard to be able to go back and say, hey, remember me? We got along well. But in all honesty, it is, more than ever, as this University now, according to certain polls, top five in the world. I mean, you're talking about the future leaders of every industry. And so it's such an incredible privilege to be accepted into that university now more than ever.
And just knowing that you will have the opportunity to rub shoulders and ideate and experiment with those kinds of brilliant minds is quite an opportunity.
MAX HERTEEN: I'm going to close with this. I'll give you the situation. You've got an unlimited budget, and you can go to any venue in the world. And it's a guaranteed yes. You put this ask out. Any artist in the world will say yes to, living or dead. What artist do you produce a concert for, and where do you host them?
DREW STEIN: For me, it would be Queen in the new stadium, temporary stadium that they built on the water for the football team. That would just be absolutely epic. And, as I shared, my son is there. I've had the opportunity to not just meet a lot of his friends, but be on campus quite a bit. I think that would just be absolutely incredible. That would be a show for the ages.
JAKE ABRAHAM: I'm going to say, because I never got to see him, Prince. And I'm going to say Prince at Pick-Staiger. And just good acoustics, just a beautiful, intimate venue. And we threw some great concerts there, too, Drew. But I'm going to go Prince at Pick-Staiger.
MAX HERTEEN: Pretty good choices, either artist. And to see them on campus would be pretty special. So, Drew, Jake, thank you guys so much for being here. Best of luck with everything.
DREW STEIN: Thanks, Max.
JAKE ABRAHAM: Awesome. Thanks, Max. This was great.
