Silicon Prairie News

Written by Lisa Martin of Shout!, an alternative weekly newspaper in Omaha, this article kicks off our content syndication partnership with the publication. As 10,000 copies hit 500 locations each Wednesday, look for the Silicon Prairie News page for a feature story and "Quick Scoop." This week, you'll find an interview with Tim Siedell, a.k.a. @badbanana on Twitter. The article below was published May 12, 2010, the week of Big Omaha.

Rachelle Hruska. Photos by Michael Scott Slosar.

Oh, she’s the one that got away.

Ebullient, warm, and clearly on top of her game, Rachelle Hruska is that girl – the Nebraska transplant to New York City, middle-America’s girl-next-door turned Manhattan media maven. The editor of New York social scene and nightlife website Guest of a Guest, Hruska is also moonlighting this week as emcee for Big Omaha, “one of those conferences that’s kinda dear to me since it’s my hometown.”

“To be honest, I don’t do a lot of speaking engagements at conferences, just because it’s hard to travel when you’re an entrepreneur creating a business,” said Hruska. “But this is one that I was super excited about being a part of. I get to kill two birds with one stone – see a lot of my friends and family, but, also, [talk about] this new, cool social media scene in the Midwest [which] is really awesome.”

Born in Omaha, raised in Lincoln, Hruska took off for Europe after graduating from Creighton. Post-backpacking, she headed restlessly to New York City. “I knew I had to go to New York. I had no plan, I had no job. My family was like, you’re crazy…I was planning on just moving [there] for six months to, you know, discover myself, but I fell in love with New York.”

She worked in finance for several years while dabbling in social media projects on the side with business partner Cameron Winklevoss. “I had this innate entrepreneurial spirit and I think he does, too,” said Hruska, “so we were always just thinking of companies we wanted to do.” 

They soon created Guest of a Guest, an online media site that covers the social and cultural lives of young New Yorkers. It has become so successful that they’ve opened satellite offices in the Hamptons, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. “If you’d told me it would be a business, I would have laughed in your face – [but] at the same time, I put a lot of work into it,” said Hruska. “You put a lot of effort and work into something, you’re going to reap some rewards.”

But with success and growth, of course, come obstacles, particularly for media companies and the press. “I’m at a stage where we don’t really know exactly what business model we should be doing. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” said Hruska. “The state of the internet and the media – any media company, whether it’s myself or the New York Times or Cosmo magazine – the [future] of all of our companies is in limbo because of the advent of the internet, and advertising companies not catching up, and the internet being such a wealth of information. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen.”

It’s exactly those challenges that give this entrepreneur the experience to bring back to an event like Big Omaha. “I don’t think Guest of a Guest could have started anywhere else but New York, because I wouldn’t have had the characters to write about,” said Hruska. “I think I’m crazy for wanting to live here because it’s so intense, and it’s so much energy all the time, but I also think I would go crazy if I wasn’t here. It’s a dichotomy of love-hate.”

And just as Omaha can learn from the experiences of New Yorkers, the coast can benefit from a little Heartland, too. Hruska credits her upbringing for the skills that help her survive New York’s hectic pace. “I think that one of the greatest things about what I learned in living away from both coasts – because now I’ve spent significant time in Los Angeles and New York – what’s really special about the Midwest is that it’s almost like a protective barrier to superficiality. There’s a reason Warren Buffett stays in [Nebraska] – he didn’t want to be persuaded by other people,” Hruska laughed.

“Having that different perspective which so few people have, really, it’s good – it makes me second-guess people. It makes me also a little bit naïve, which, in some ways, is beneficial to me, because you never know what you’re going to learn from anyone. I think I’m pretty open to experiences. I think coming out of Nebraska made me very curious.”

Those qualities have brought Hruska to her current roles as editor, reporter, and new media guru. “This week alone, I went to the White House Correspondent Dinner and I came back and had to cover the Met Gala. It’s a crazy whirl- wind,” said Hruska. “I called my sister on the phone between flights, and she’s putting her two-year-old down to bed who’s learning how to potty-train, and I get to talk to a two-year-old about how he went and used the potty. It’s really a way to bring you back down to earth, and I think a lot of people lack that, in New York especially. It keeps you humble, it keeps you grounded and it allows you to accomplish more.”

Nebraska is a stabilizing influence for Hruska, a “place where I can come back and just breathe … It’s really a wholesome feeling.” Excited for her Big Apple and Big O worlds to collide – and for a taste of Runza – Hruska is looking forward to hosting the Big Omaha events this weekend.

“We really need people from all over using [new media], not just in Silicon Valley and New York … It’s really cool to get [the Midwest] involved and have them interact with these plat- forms,” said Hruska. “There are so many cool and interesting things happening in Omaha.”