Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk was born in Babruysk, in what is now Belarus, and arrived in New York at three through refugee resettlement. In 1998 he took over his father's liquor store, rebranded it Wine Library, moved it online, and launched Wine Library TV in 2006. The business grew from roughly $3 million a year to $60 million before he left it in 2011.

He founded VaynerMedia in 2009 with his brother AJ. It now sits inside VaynerX alongside the publishing arm Gallery Media Group, which owns PureWow and ONE37, and employs more than 800 people across ten offices worldwide. Client work has included PepsiCo, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Chase, and AB InBev.

He has written five New York Times bestsellers, starting with Crush It! (2009) after a HarperCollins deal that followed his 2008 Web 2.0 keynote. As an operator he co-founded Resy, acquired by American Express in 2019, and Empathy Wines, acquired by Constellation Brands in 2020. On stage he is a high-energy speaker on attention, personal brand, and where consumer behaviour is actually moving.