James Andrews is the founder of Authenticated Ventures, a venture advisory designed to build better companies, launch new ideas, and illuminate influential people through experiences, content, and investment advisory. At the center is The Authenticated, a 300+ membership community made up of influential creative entrepreneurs, brand builders, investors, and innovators in culture. The Authenticated has a city tour, mobile/web platform and creates content and community opportunities. Post-COVID, The Authenticated has created weekly “virtual Jeffersonian dinners” and produces monthly salons and summits in live stream on a number of topics and themes.
Andrews previously founded Social People, a strategic digital agency that was acquired in 2013. Social People worked with clients Nike, Beats By Dre, The Grammy Awards, CNN, Equinox, and Lexus on global social media initiatives. In 2009 Andrews created #BeatCancer, an online movement to raise awareness for Cancer research. Launched over a dinner idea #BeatCancer garnered the 1st ever Guinness World Record for social media mentions and raised $70,000 in 24hrs via Twitter.
Before launching Social People, Andrews was VP, Ketchum PR, and built their global social media practice area for clients Monster.com, FedEx, GeekSquad, Nokia, and Wendy’s. In 1999, Andrews built and sold email newsletter SoulPurpose.com to Urban Box Office, a digital entertainment company. At the center of the NYC dot-com boom the company went on to raise $40m and hire 320 employees in 15 months. Soul Purpose and Andrews were both featured in the Wall Street Journal. Andrews’s formative years were spent as a senior marketing executive at Columbia Records in the mid 90’s, helping develop artists like Nas, The Fugees, Destiny’s Child, and Lauryn Hill become household names.
James Andrews has been a keynote speaker globally in Dubai, Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi, Sao Paulo, and Norway and was named to the Ebony Power100 list. James Andrews attended UCLA, grew up in Palo Alto, CA, and is on the board at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, the largest charter school network in Los Angeles, Muse School in Malibu, CA, and Uncharted Play, a NYC renewable energy company based in Harlem and involved in a number of early-stage smart city developments in Africa.
