Deron Triff
- Producer
- Executive
I am the Co-founder and former Chief Business Officer of WaitWhat, a venture-backed media company that has developed one of the most valuable independent portfolios of premium content designed to elevate human potential. WaitWhat's podcasts - Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman, Meditative Story (created in partnership with Arianna Huffington) and Spark & Fire - have been downloaded more than 150 million times and recognized 70+ times by the Webby Awards, more than any other media company in the United States. The company's success is rooted in its ability to scale each property into multi-format learning products, live events, publishing, and technology extensions. The first Masters of Scale Summit, in 2022, earned international press coverage and put the company on the global map.
I (alongside my co-founder and wife, June Cohen) led the company through 3 gender-balanced capital raises with world class investors including Laurene Powell Jobs, Reid Hoffman and James Murdoch, among others; doubled revenue and met annual budgets every year since the founding of the company in 2017; and developed an ecosystem of contributors that includes hundreds of iconic leaders in business, entertainment and other fields including Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Barack Obama, Tory Burch, Sir Richard Branson, Tyra Banks, Will.i.am and more.
At Masters of Scale Summit, in 2022, I delivered a keynote talk on the intersection of trauma and entrepreneurship, and the promise of psychedelic medicine. It earned a standing ovation and the highest rating of any talk in the star-filled line-up. I share this not with hubris, but rather to convey how important this work is to me.
Prior to co-founding WaitWhat, I served on the executive team at TED, reporting to Chris Anderson, where I led the team that built nearly 100 partnerships worldwide, growing TED's audience to over 1 billion per year and adding tens of millions of dollars in new, diverse revenue to support the organization's mission. My love and unique skill set for creating successful partnerships resulted in path-breaking initiatives like the TED Radio Hour on NPR, TED Books with Simon & Schuster, TED Weekends on The Huffington Post, TED-Ed backed by Google, TED in Cinemas with Fandango, TED Shows on Netflix, TED English with National Geographic Learning, TED Courses on Cornerstone, and dozens of international collaborations throughout Asia, Latin America, The Middle East and Europe.
Prior to TED, I served as Vice President of Digital Ventures for PBS, where I launched the kids cable network PBS KIDS Sprout - a public/private collaboration between Comcast, Sesame Workshop. HIT Entertainment and PBS. This pre-school network, now called Universal Kids, is in more than 100M cable homes. I'm fluent in Spanish, and have spent several years living in Spain, and traveling frequently for work through Central America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. I hold a MBA degree from McGill University in Montreal, live between New York and California, and have raised to incredible children with June.
I (alongside my co-founder and wife, June Cohen) led the company through 3 gender-balanced capital raises with world class investors including Laurene Powell Jobs, Reid Hoffman and James Murdoch, among others; doubled revenue and met annual budgets every year since the founding of the company in 2017; and developed an ecosystem of contributors that includes hundreds of iconic leaders in business, entertainment and other fields including Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Barack Obama, Tory Burch, Sir Richard Branson, Tyra Banks, Will.i.am and more.
At Masters of Scale Summit, in 2022, I delivered a keynote talk on the intersection of trauma and entrepreneurship, and the promise of psychedelic medicine. It earned a standing ovation and the highest rating of any talk in the star-filled line-up. I share this not with hubris, but rather to convey how important this work is to me.
Prior to co-founding WaitWhat, I served on the executive team at TED, reporting to Chris Anderson, where I led the team that built nearly 100 partnerships worldwide, growing TED's audience to over 1 billion per year and adding tens of millions of dollars in new, diverse revenue to support the organization's mission. My love and unique skill set for creating successful partnerships resulted in path-breaking initiatives like the TED Radio Hour on NPR, TED Books with Simon & Schuster, TED Weekends on The Huffington Post, TED-Ed backed by Google, TED in Cinemas with Fandango, TED Shows on Netflix, TED English with National Geographic Learning, TED Courses on Cornerstone, and dozens of international collaborations throughout Asia, Latin America, The Middle East and Europe.
Prior to TED, I served as Vice President of Digital Ventures for PBS, where I launched the kids cable network PBS KIDS Sprout - a public/private collaboration between Comcast, Sesame Workshop. HIT Entertainment and PBS. This pre-school network, now called Universal Kids, is in more than 100M cable homes. I'm fluent in Spanish, and have spent several years living in Spain, and traveling frequently for work through Central America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. I hold a MBA degree from McGill University in Montreal, live between New York and California, and have raised to incredible children with June.