Chief Officer of Optimism

Gary Vaynerchuk Plays the Long Game

If Gary Vaynerchuk didn’t exist, Silicon Valley would have had to invent him. No algorithm could code the combustible cocktail of clairvoyant intuition, East Coast hustle, and monastic work ethic that powers this entrepreneurial polymath. He is part futurist, part corporate therapist, and wholly allergic to the anemia of safe ideas. As for subtlety? That’s for people trying not to be noticed.

We meet on a morning thick with high-frequency buzz. “Attention,” Vaynerchuk tells me from behind his signature kinetic warmth, “has always been the asset. But now it’s fractured,...