New York, New York…If you can make it here, they say you can make it anywhere. And Scott Cooper is living proof. Scott initially went to New York following his partner and her career. He didn’t have a job or people he knew and to make his situation even more challenging, this expat thought his new life was the right time to ditch his day job in civil engineering and move into digital marketing.
But there was one thing Scott knew how to do well, a skill that is universal the world over – Scott knew how to hustle. Over his first nine months in the city that never sleeps, he met friends of friends, contacts of contacts and was at Meet-Up groups three or four nights a week. Soon Scott was representing an off-Broadway play, a guitarist and a number of small tech companies. Scott says that in the US, people are more likely to give you a go at something new if they can see you are ambitious and passionate while in Australia, people struggled to give him a go because they couldn’t see beyond his civil engineering background. In less than a year, Scott was offered his first US permanent role working for Waywire Networks, a video curation platform where he quickly worked up to the role of editor. His career in helping grow companies had started.
After New York, Scott established himself with an Australian tech start up in San Francisco, and after San Francisco after nearly five years in the US, he returned to Melbourne and continued to work for businesses in their hyper-growth phase.
Now, after a career of starting again and helping companies begin and grow their own journeys, he is the COO at Versus Merch – just one of what is quickly shaping up to be a growing suite of businesses that he co-owns and runs. Scott is still hustling but this time the confidence of a man who made it in New York.
