Stanford undergrad, Harvard Law grad, and Princeton masters grad, Mark Bisnow contends for wearing the most hats in DC’s business and political scenes. A law firm partner, senior presidential advisor, and technology executive, Mark made his foray into media with a popular radio show on local business. Frustrated with boring media’s typical canned head shots, 2,000 word, dry articles on business figures and topics, in 2006 Mark set out to reinvent media with an e-newsletter built on the premise that news should be fun, snappy, yet informative. Capturing the shift from print to digital media and building on readers’ desire to feel a part of their local, niche business communities, Bisnow readership quickly exploded. On summer break from the University of Wisconsin, D1 tennis star and Mark’s biological son, Elliott, returned to DC where he started running around the Metro selling ads in Bisnow. With an ability to sell sand at the beach and a tireless work ethic, Elliott would dial every business in town from 8:30 AM to noon, crush meetings back to back from noon until 6 PM, attend three to four business networking events each night, and return home to write proposals and start over again the next morning. In just a few months, Elliott built a growing contingency of happy Bisnow advertising customers.

Back in DC, Elliott and Mark began to build a team with Aram Taghavi joining as the second sales rep. The first three years marked a formative period in which Mark perfected the editorial product using analytics and a great deal of trial and error to determine what would make an e-newsletter sate a reader’s daily guilty pleasure without the guilt. Mark found that in addition to his new breed of news, readers were also in need of a new type of business event: heavy on schmooze (networking) and short, yet informative panels with a twist of fun like the newsletters.

In 2009 Ryan Begelman joined the father/son duo to spearhead expansion working with the team to take Bisnow from a DC media player with commercial real estate, law, fedtech, women-in-business, and nightlife newsletters to a national player. Starting out, Elliott and Mike Farber settled into a NYC pad running around selling Bisnow’s new, New York CRE pub, with frequent couch crashing by Ryan. The gang experienced one tough New Yorker hanging up on them after the other. But with the publication catching fire and rapidly becoming New York’s largest CRE pub by subscribers, they began to break through. Over the following two years the company blew up launching myriad markets and taking its events business from a dozen annual events to over 150.

Today Bisnow is one of the hottest media companies in the US with big plans to further expand in one of three ways: new verticals, more geographic markets, and new products to deliver to Bisnow’s loyal readers.