The first time I met Zach Coelius was in 2011 at The Daily Deal Summit in NYC – well-documented here:

https://www.abovo.co/sean@abovo42.com/51399

The Daily Deals Summit is where I learned more about RTB/programmatic advertising from Zach Coelius in 20-minutes than I had the entire year leading up to his talk :-O

Maybe THE Best Presentation EVER on The Power of Exchanges and Real-Time Bidding:

Presenter:  Zach Coelius, Founder/CEO, Triggit, Inc. – Zach was soooo good. As usual. Just a naturally gifted and charismatic speaker that knows more about Adtech than anyone.

I did not know about Antonio until I read his book – Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

As a voracious reader – especially about tech startups, founders, entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, etc. – I purchased a copy as soon as it was released and absolutely loved it from the very first page.

Speaking of the very first page, I knew I was in for a treat when the opening quote of the Prologue reminded me of one of my favorite lines from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

COMPARED TO:

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” –Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im9N8bin7Pc

Chaos Monkeys is one of the few books that I have ever read two or more times – literally starting at the beginning as soon as I was done the first time.

I give it 10 out of 10 on my personal reading list: http://www.seanfenlon.com/reading-list-recommended-books/ and I’ve highly-recommended it to countless friends and colleagues.

I was thrilled that I personally knew so many characters in the book, particularly my good friend Zach Coelius. Antonio effectively glorifies Zach in the book:

[I’m hoping that Antoio and Harper Collins considers this reproduction of this passage to be Fair Use – if not, I can quickly take it down]

I later got the opportunity to officially comment on Zach’s Facebook Post about reading Chaos Monkeys in front of a Paris Bistro:

Zach and Antonio have also appeared on my favorite podcast This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jJR0fTmjCc

In the first week of March 2020, I was in the bay area for a tradeshow and asked Zach to invite Antonio to our Internet CEO/VIP Dinner at Harris’ Steakhouse, but unfortunately Antonio couldn’t make it:

Pretty sure that was the last business dinner of 2020 for everyone there :-O

But I did get my first chance to meet Antonio “live” in March 2021 when we were both brought on stage to an epic Clubhouse room that Zach had spun up, featuring some Silicon Valley elite and Tech high society:

I told the audience (of thousands) that night that Chaos Monkeys was one of the best books I’ve ever read – Top-10 all-time – and that they all needed to go out and purchase a copy now if they didn’t already have one.

I had no idea how prescient that suggestion would become by May 2021.

Cheers to you Zach and Antonio :-)

SPF

p.s. Less-than-modest shout-out for ABOVO here – this type of POST would by hopelessly complicated to pull off on Twitter or Facebook, and very few people have their own blog and possess the chops for all this unrestricted content in one post. For me, it was as simple as screenshots+copy/paste and sending an Email to POST@abovo.co :-)