Anthony Scaramucci, the investor and former White House aide who’s selling his stake in SkyBridge Capital, took a step toward reinventing himself after his unceremonious exit from President Donald Trump’s administration.
His new venture, the Scaramucci Post, is a work-in-progress, he said Monday evening at New York’s Hunt & Fish Club, the restaurant where he launched the business with live videos posted to social-media platform Periscope earlier in the day.
“We’re just experimenting,” Scaramucci said in an interview at a reception in the club’s glitzy Blue Room, where guests sampled bite-size sliders, pigs-in-a-blanket and crispy Brussels sprouts. “Real entrepreneurs are capital artists. They never know what the canvas is going to look like.”
The event was more subdued than originally planned, he said, because of the Las Vegas mass shooting that claimed at least 59 lives. On Periscope throughout the day, Scaramucci wore an ice pack from a recent shoulder surgery and sipped an iced beverage as he spread the word on his startup. When the stock market opened, he was the only person on camera and the audience stood at about 270 viewers. By late afternoon, he was drawing more than 30,000.
The Post will focus on “decluttering the political rhetoric,” Scaramucci said online, describing the organization as threadbare and cost-conscious. He likened it to beginning SkyBridge more than a decade ago with two-to-three people at a table and no assets under management.
‘Successful Failure’
“Real entrepreneurship is a couple of people with an iPhone building something that people are going to stop at,” he said.
Scaramucci, 53, who was ousted as Trump’s communications director in late July after an expletive-laden interview with the New Yorker magazine, called his 10-day stint a “successful failure” that provided valuable lessons.
He said that when they speak, Trump asks him who his favorite president is. Scaramucci said he answers that it’s Trump, but went on to tell the web audience about the merits of George Washington as well.
His tenure as the impresario behind the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, held each year at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, was less rocky. That’s where Scaramucci tested the waters as a media figure, reviving the “Wall Street Week” television show and appearing on cable news networks such as CNBC.