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5 More Things You Didn’t Know About Me (Until Just Now)

January 7, 2007 by Ben Yoskovitz

Robyn Tippins and Shawn Hessinger tag teamed me with the “5 things” meme. I’d previously been slammed with the 5 things meme bug by Leah Maclean, and I had a tough enough time with that!

But after days of deliberation I’ve come up with 5 more things you didn’t know about me…until just now (assuming you keep reading; please do…)

  1. I once wrote a book. It was called The Buzzword Bingo Book: The Complete, Definitive Guide to the Underground Workplace Game of Doublespeak. Technically it was co-written, but it’s a long story. I had 15 minutes of fame back in 1998 with buzzword bingo (more like 20-25 minutes actually.) Made it into the Wall Street Journal and everything. Before blogging took off (or even existed?)
  2. In my senior year of highschool I played football – defensive tackle. I wasn’t particularly good, but the team needed some warm bodies to play. Apparently I was warm enough. More than anything this shows you the vast difference between Canadian and US highschool sports. I don’t think there’s a single highschool in the United States where I would have been big or strong enough to play football.
  3. I’ve never smoked in my life. I’ve never even tried it, not once. Not a single puff, drag or taste. Never ever. Smoking just never appealed to me (and the peer pressure wasn’t strong enough I guess.) Having said that I was far from a choir boy…
  4. Actually, I was a choir boy. Way back when I sang in the choir until my voice cracked horribly and I sounded like a dying sheep. That was the end of that. But back in those days the Anglican private school I went to (I’m not Anglican if you’re wondering) took choir pretty seriously. We even toured around.
  5. I used to listen to Raising Hell by Run DMC nonstop. I’m not much of a rap or hip hop fan these days, but back in Grade 6, 7 and 8 (or thereabouts) Run DMC was it. I still think it’s a great album.

Now that I’ve suitably embarrassed myself I think I’ll leave it at that. This has been a very fun meme but everything has to disappear into the sunset eventually.

I do appreciate Robyn and Shawn thinking about me and tagging me…

Filed Under: Humor, Online Community

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Ben Yoskovitz

Founding Partner at Highline Beta, a hybrid venture studio and VC firm that works with large, ambitious companies to identify new areas of opportunity through internal and external innovation.

Previously I was VP Product at VarageSale and GoInstant (acq. $CRM), and Founding Partner at Year One Labs.

Angel investments include: Breather, Spoiler Alert, SendWithUs and others.

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