El Toro Podcast S1 E13: Halloween Hustle, Bourbon, and Haunted Houses

Back in November 2018 I sat down with the hosts of the El Toro Podcast for an hour-plus conversation about the two worlds I've lived in: the haunted-house business and advertising technology. The episode title says it all — "Halloween Hustle Bucks, Chicken-sized Camels, and Thee Worst Bourbon We've Ever Tasted."

The Haunted-House Side

Halloween is a massive industry — a multi-billion dollar market in the US alone — and I've spent years building in it. The conversation covered the business behind the Asylum Haunted Scream Park: what it takes to build a haunt, how the economics work, and why escape rooms were the natural next frontier for the same kind of experience design. There's a lot of overlap between building an attraction people line up for and building a product people actually use — both are about understanding what makes people tick.

The Adtech Side

The other half of the conversation was El Toro — the cookie-free IP targeting company I was CTO of at the time. We talked about how the technology works, why the industry was moving away from cookies, and where the company was headed with big data and machine learning. It was a fun, loose conversation — the show's format was part business, part bourbon, part whatever came up. That's why I like it.

Listen

The full episode is up on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can grab the raw audio directly from the feed. If you've ever wondered what a CTO does with his October — or his bourbon — it's worth a listen.

Think this argument fits your event? Tell me about the room — the calendar is selective.