Summary
Director: Web Services at Knucklepuck Founder and CEO, No Treble website
Information
Web: Knucklepuck coreyweb page notreble page LinkedIn Twitter: @coreyweb
Email: corey@coreyweb.com
Phone: (703) 967-1738
Address: DC Metro area
Biosketch
Corey is Chief Instigator at Coreyweb LLC, a creative agency based in the Washington, DC area and Fort Myers, Florida. He’s consulted clients on a variety of web-related projects.
As founder and CEO of No Treble, Corey built the most-read magazine for bassists, online or off. No Treble reaches 240,000 people a month and boasts more than 200,000 Facebook fans. Interviewers have tapped his knowledge in radio features like “Great Bass Lines And The Science That Makes Us Love Them” He also oversees the website of the late, Grammy-winning bassist Jaco Pastorius, who is often referred to as the “Jimi Hendrix of bass.” Corey worked to completely revamp the Pastorius site and introduced new revenue streams, product design and development, e-commerce and social elements. Today, the Jaco Pastorius Facebook page has over 630,000 fans, routinely reaching 500,000+ with Facebook posts. His relationship with the site led to a connection with Metallica bassist, Robert Trujillo, who produced the “JACO” documentary, which, with the help of the Jaco Pastorius website/social efforts, became the #1 best-selling documentary on Amazon on Black Friday 2015, and throughout Thanksgiving weekend.
Corey also co-founded and served as COO of the popular user-generated content platform Squidoo.com, established in 2005 with best-selling author/speaker Seth Godin. Squidoo consistently ranked in the top 200 sites for traffic in the U.S, peaking at #35. HubPages acquired Squidoo in August, 2014.
Chico’s FAS recruited Corey to provide web strategy, technology, social media guidance, workflow improvements, consumer app strategy and more for three of the company’s sub-brands in 2014. He proceeded to design a complete atomic library of front-end code used by multiple sub-brands and built a team of contractors. He and his contractors created blogs for two of the sub-brands, designed to attract new customers and retain existing ones through content that resonated with the interests of customers and visitors. He also improved workflow, revamped vendor relationships for cost savings and efficiency and provided guidance in a variety of areas, from social and search engine optimization to consumer app design and development and A/B testing.
Corey led Washington, D.C.-area web strategy, custom content, design and development firm Solutions Factory from 1998 until 2003. During his tenure as CEO, Solutions Factory worked with companies such as Raytheon, Time Warner Cable and Columbia Energy Group on a wide range of web-based initiatives. In the process, he created an entirely new sales and marketing channel and opened new revenue streams for Raytheon Marine.
Even during the go-nuts-now, make-money-later 1990’s, Corey remained on an even keel, running the highly profitable web division of Another Universe, and spearheading development and design on a contextual commerce platform. He also led business development on e-commerce partnerships with The Sci-Fi Channel, Marvel and Sony. Corey was one of the first to use Paul Graham’s Viaweb, and soon generated the highest sales of all Viaweb stores.
Additionally, being a community builder by nature, Corey consolidated a fragmented tech community in his former hometown of Winchester, Virginia, establishing both Bright Cowork and Refresh Winchester in 2009. He regularly speaks on topics including Design Systems, building web traffic, publishing, technology and more.
As a guy who has stared at a computer screen for hours on end since the 1980s (first, a VIC-20), Corey keeps his eyes from crossing by goofing off with his daughters, playing bass and piano, writing music and tinkering with an idea list that gets longer every day.
Timeline
I built my first website in 1995. It has been a long and exciting journey since. Here are some highlights…
Smash! Magazine / Mania Magazine / AnotherUniverse.com
1995-1998
In 1995, I joined American Entertainment Group as their Creative Director. The direct response company was the leader in the comic, sci-fi, pop culture and collectibles space. In April, 1995, we launched a static web magazine designed to attract an audience we’d hoped would opt-in for our printed catalog. It worked. We kept iterating and analyzing, and our part-time web operation became a full-fledged contextual commerce platform in less than three years. I became VP in charge of this new web division, eventually leaving the catalog and print materials to a new art director. Along the way, I worked with Paul Graham and his excellent ViaWeb platform (which became Yahoo! Store). This was during the crazy dot com years of getting ridiculous funding. We did not. But we did generate millions in revenue on the web. Good times, phenomenal team.
Solutions Factory
1998-2003
I was a happy web consultant for about a year. Solo. One of my clients was Raytheon Corporation, and they asked me to work on the e-business strategy for Raytheon Marine. Once it was done, they couldn’t find an agency they felt could build out the idea, so they asked me to build a team. I hired five people, bought the computers, set up payroll, 401k, health insurance and the rest. A year later, the dreaded dot com fallout began. We survived another three years and eventually merged clients and employees to another company.
Squidoo
2005 to 2014
In 2005, I responded to a blog post by Seth Godin. He was asking for help with an idea he wanted to try. Codenamed “Plexodex”, the idea was actually what Squidoo is today. I spent the summer of 2005 writing the spec and producing all wireframes. We hired Viget Labs in August (2005), and then our Editor in Chief, Megan Casey, followed by our Chief Engineer, Gil Hildebrand some time after that – the founding team. Squidoo launched as a closed beta in October, 2005, followed by our public beta in December. Seven-plus years later, I’m as thrilled to be working with Seth as the first day. There’s never been a more generous, thoughtful, inspiring, genuine person I’ve met. Our team grew with even more people I loved working with, but we always remained lean and mean. Squidoo has remained in the top 100 most visited sites in the U.S. for some time now, reaching a rank as high as 35. Squidoo was acquired by Hubpages in August, 2014.
Bright Cowork
2009 to 2014
I became aware of the coworking movement early on, with the launch of Citizen Space in San Francisco. I lived in a place I moved to for a slower pace of life. But it turned out I got more than I bargained for. If there were any web people around me, I had no idea who they were or where they were. We had nothing in the way of meetups or anything else. As Twitter grew, I started noticing signs of hope. So instead of moving to a place where coworks already existed, I decided to start one in the tiny city of Winchester, VA. We opened the doors January, 2009 and we’re still open today. More than one person told me it wasn’t going to work, which is probably one of the reasons why it did: I wasn’t going to let it fail. Not without a big fight.
Refresh Winchester
2009 to 2014
Refresh was the thing I wanted to start at first (not Bright Cowork). But I couldn’t find anyone willing to host it, so we needed a space. Nine months after Bright Cowork’s doors opened, we kicked off Refresh Winchester. For three-plus years, the community grew and lasting friendships developed.
No Treble
2009 to present
What started out as a pet project has grown into a full-fledged business and one that often requires a lot more of my time than I ever thought possible. No Treble in a phrase is this: the online magazine for bass players I wished existed but didn’t. There were plenty out there, and many bigger names participating. I don’t like entering spaces where there’s no chance to be #1, and while I knew it would be a big climb, I felt it was possible. It took about three years to get No Treble to that spot, and we’re not looking back. This niche site now gets over 180,000 unique visits a month, with a Facebook page followed by more than 218,000 people. Even better than all those stats: I met Kevin Johnson, who has become No Treble’s Managing Editor and even better than that, a person I consider one of my best friends. I hope Kevin and I get to work together for a long, long time. Plus, we get tons of CDs, backstage passes, write-offs for attending the annual NAMM show, and other shenanigans.
See Interviews and Talks on coreybrown.com
Podcasts
Jaco Pastorius, and the opportunity of being first
Sept. 26, 2016 | Jason Heath
Corey Brown started out on the “traditional” music school path.
Starting out at the University of North Texas, Corey left and became a graphic designer. He began developing on the web in the early 1990s.
Fast forward a few years, and he created Squidoo with bestselling author Seth Godin. Squidoo became one of the most-visited websites ever with over 85 million monthly visits.
Corey fused his passion for the bass with his passion for the web in unexpected and impactful ways. First, he created and ran the official Jaco Pastorius web site, working on it from 2002 to 2007 and again in 2014.
Next, worked on the Portrait of Jaco… the Early Years box set. He designined and produced the packaging for the release in 2003.
But Corey wasn’t done with innovating for the bass. In 2008, he founded no treble, which turned into the most popular online bass magazine on the web.
With over a dozen regular contributors and hundreds of thousands of monthly visits, no treble has re shaped the way bassists worldwide connect with and learn from each other.
Learn about Corey’s fascinating career fusion of music and design in this interview!
