Personal Bio   Professional Bio / Keynotes [+]

GREETINGS! 

My name is Jeremy Gutsche, and I’m the fun-loving rebel who founded TrendHunter.com.  I like to describe myself as contagiously enthusiastic, relentlessly creative and socially engaging.  My friends would describe me as hyperactive, short attention spanned and easily distracted. (Mom, this is my attempt at humor.)

A cowboy entrepreneur at heart, I grew up riding dirt bikes and ski racing just outside Calgary, Alberta, home of the Wild West and the legendary Calgary Stampede.  I’m the son of a psychotherapist and a venture capitalist; the younger brother of an energetic art historian.  Perhaps I ended up somewhere in the middle of the three, as I really like new ventures, meeting new people and artistic creativity.

Like many adventurous souls, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know what my big idea was going to be.  Accordingly, I founded TrendHunter.com as a place where people could exchange business ideas. Along the way, I hoped to find my own.

I’ve always been obsessed with graphic design, problem solving, and the discovery of new things, which made Trend Hunter my perfect hobby.  In the early days, I’d design and code Trend Hunter until 4am while working during the day as a business director at Capital One.  Today, I design and code Trend Hunter until 4am because I like it.  I’m truly content that pouring my heart into Trend Hunter has resulted in a role where my job and hobby are the same thing.

I’m most in the zone when performing keynotes on stage. I fear that many presenters are skilled academics or managers who lack the entertainment fuel needed to spark a rebellion.  I like to think of my performances as a mixture of stand-up comedy, audience interaction, big ideas and talking in a really loud voice.  I love multimedia presentations and I draw my own animated stick men. Always.

It wouldn’t be able to describe myself without reflecting on the people that surround me.  Aside from my family, the first people I think about are my good friends who form the Trend Hunter core team.  When an entrepreneur selects their first teammates, they pick people who can share the same passion and inspire the best in each other with complementary skills.  Accordingly, our first five full-timers possess qualities that I would hope people also see in me:  I am inspired by Bianca’s undying positivity, Jacob’s obsession with analytics, Marissa’s contagious enthusiasm, Willem’s ongoing quest to improve, and Shelby’s ability to pepper our content to make our delicious trends damn tasty.

I love meeting Trend Hunters, so if we ever rendezvous, feel free to intrigue me with your random ideas, social media tidbits, favorite YouTube videos, quotes from “30 Rock” or tales of rebellious innovation.

Cheers,
Jeremy

Jeremy Gutsche Interview

I love interacting with people, brainstorming new ideas and thrill seeking.  On the latter, I’m up for anything.  So far I’ve been swimming with sharks, racing baja rally cars, jumping from planes, skiing off cliffs, bobsledding and motorcycle racing.  Also, I have a short attention span.  Also, I forget the question. What?

I love everything about TrendHunter.com, and I’m most proud of the way that we have helped to connect a community of inspirational people.

Cool hunting isn’t the search for what’s popular. Cool hunting is the search for what’s NOT popular – yet. Once something becomes mainstream, its novelty and appeal is lost.  Cool is unique, cutting edge and viral.  Because cool is viral, marketers and product designers seek to attain it.

I like to hunt for Clusters of Inspiration.  This might have you wondering why the Trend Hunter guy use a word like ‘cluster’ instead of ‘trend’?  Quite simply, the word ‘trends’ is to broad.  It can refer to next fall’s fashionable color, or macro-trends like the green movement,  female buyers, consolidation, outsourcing, Web 2.0 and aging boomers.  These trends are somewhat useful, but too generic to enable breakthrough thinking.  Clustering is the art of identifying insights that are meaningful to your customer.  To create clusters, you’ll need to collect your observations from trend hunting and filter through the noise.

I’ve always been insatiably curious and obsessed with innovation. I am an entrepreneur at heart, although I spent years hunting for a business idea.  In fact, I created Trend Hunter as a place where people could share business ideas, and I was hoping along the way that I would find my own idea…

Fortunately, Trend Hunter grew into the business idea itself.  For this, I have been truly lucky because I feel like I am working on a hobby.  To me Trend Hunter is an obsession and a passion, but most certainly not a job.  I am passionate about our Trend Hunter community and I get really excited every time someone sends an email that we helped them to get inspired.

If I had to pick one, I would be forced to pick my article about HOT VICE PRESIDENTS, which attracted 1.1 million page views.  But I don’t want everything to be about Sarah Palin, so I will spread the love to some oldies but goodies:

- Get a Personalized Phone Call from Samuel Jackson
- The Half Suit – Business on top, Party Below
- The Innespace Dolphin Personal Watercraft
- Award Winning Pee and Poo Dolls
- The Rise of Shock Labels – Cocaine Energy Drink

Find something ridiculously new that is edgy, bizarre and controversial.

I let myself get lost in the trends at Trend Hunter.  Although we advertise that the site gets 8+ million views, 1-2 million are actually from me.  Basically, I like to expose myself to all the wonderfully brilliant innovations and along the way, I’ll get inspired.

When I get an idea, I become very obsessive about it.  This leads me to a zone where I will no doubt work through the night to finish what I started.  I don’t look at ‘all-nighters’ as a bad thing.  For me, I have realized that the wee hours of the morning make me remarkably more productive, so I embrace that.

Creativity.  Ambition.  Randomness.  The next big thing. 

Cell phones, pogo sticks and a TV network that plays nothing but the best of Paris Hilton’s Trend Hunter-themed children’s show.