The video sharing start-up founded by Newark Mayor Cory Booker and others has appointed the 14-year-old son of CNN president Jeff Zucker to its advisory board, the Financial Times reported Tuesday:
Waywire, a social video start-up co-founded by Newark’s social media-savvy mayor Cory Booker, has turned to the 14-year-old son of CNN’s Jeff Zucker for advice on how to appeal to fickle teenage viewers.
Andrew Zucker, whose father ran NBC Universal before his appointment as president of CNN Worldwide in November, has been appointed to Waywire’s advisory board while the service remains in a preliminary "alpha" phase during a seed financing round, before a "beta" launch expected next month.
"People described him to me as the Doogie Howser of start-ups," said Sarah Ross, one of Mr Booker’s co-founders, referring to the teenage medic of ABC’s 1989 television comedy, Doogie Howser, MD. "He’s a start-up savant."
Snapchat, the Doogie Howser of start-ups noted to the FT, is "pretty big," and he believes Waywire's distribution model for short video clips could be "the next big thing."
The company, still in its testing phase, has faced difficulty filtering out anti-Semitic videos, despite its socially conscious aims, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week.