Cole Rubin on Building FanFeed and Outpacing Industry Giants

FanFeed functions as a centralized repository for live-event history, allowing users to track concerts and games while offering teams and artists first-party data to personalize fan engagement. Rubin, who describes himself as a non-technical founder, credits the platform’s viability to his partnership with co-founder Jack Phifer. While Rubin provided the vision, Phifer engineered the proprietary technology necessary to automate data collection, removing the friction of manual entry that previously stifled such concepts.

Rubin advocates for a leadership style focused on hiring experts and delegating ownership rather than attempting to oversee every technical detail. This philosophy extends to his approach to fundraising; he specifically seeks investors with domain expertise in sports, music, and digital marketing who offer transparency during inevitable business headwinds. Regarding the threat of established industry incumbents, Rubin maintains that a startup’s primary weapon is speed. He argues that while large firms possess vast resources, their decision-making layers often hinder the agility required to iterate and execute effectively. For Rubin, the success of FanFeed hinges on the ability to move faster than competitors and prioritize execution over mere ideation.