For all the interviews Jay Stowe does as a tech recruiter in San Francisco, he'll always have one good icebreaker line: He owns the most famous hipster cat on Instagram.
As the head of talent at Luxe, an on-demand parking service, Stowe juggles life in the startup world with a second life surrounded by cats on Instagram.
Meet Hamilton, the hipster cat.
During the mustache hysteria over the past few years, Hamilton's fame soared, before Stowe did something drastic: He gave it all away to charity.
Meet the most famous hipster cat and his owner who has worked to give it all back to the shelter that gave him his best friend.
Stowe had cats growing up, but was looking to get one in his own life. At the shelter, there were only two male kittens. One was the super quintessential playful cuddly kitten and then there was Hamilton, who was curled up in the corner of his cage. Any time you went near him he would hiss at you, Stowe says. A volunteer at the Humane Society of Silicon Valley picked him up and put him in Stowe's hands and he immediately fell asleep. "I couldn't leave without him," Stowe says.
Hamilton, though, is a feral cat, meaning he was born and raised without contact from humans. When Stowe brought him home, he lived in the bathroom for the first month, never leaving his box. At 3 a.m. one night, Stowe heard him meowing loudly so he let him out — only to have Hamilton relocate to living in his closet.
It took another month until Hamilton started cuddling with Stowe. That's when he started taking photos and created an Instagram for his cat. "I think his first picture got 100 likes in 10 minutes. My friends knew he was taking off and I was like 'Oh, that's cool,'" Stowe says. "It didn't really dawn on me that he was going to become internet famous at the time. It was just a fun thing for me to post and see all the comments and see how much people were enjoying it."
At first, Stowe tried to emphasize the hipster mustache. Also a stand-up comedian, Stowe says the jokes came naturally. Hamilton, the cat personality, preferred vinyl and loved drinking PBR. After a bit, Stowe dropped the overt hipster references and focused more on cute pictures with a satirical, hipster voice. "I don't think people were tuning in for that, they were tuning in for him. So it became more of a tone that he had," Stowe says.
Stowe learned how to turn his cat's adorable play sessions into photo shoots. Stowe can rub on his chest fur and Hamilton will stick his arms out. Most photos are candid, but Stowe can stockpile a few months of photos in just a few minutes playing with him. "When he gets excited and wants to play, his pupils get really big. They're his Puss n Boots eyes," Stowe says. Those are the pictures that do the best, so I know exactly how to move my hand to make him get excited and want to attack it."
Soon, other people started noticing Hamilton and his mustache. Overnight, Hamilton blew up as a viral sensation with people calling him the new Grumpy Cat.
Stowe, who had been working as a tech recruiter for Hortonworks, took time to work on his stand-up comedy career and manage Hamilton. The time commitment sometimes took 30-40 hours a week if he was working on a big project or licensing deal, Stowe says. Hamilton, the Hipster Cat, had a web series, appeared in commercials, and had his own calendar line. Hamilton even has his own LinkedIn account for people to connect with him (he went to Purdue, get it?).
His crowning achievement was his own app, like any good cat owned by a tech worker. Stowe didn't code it himself, but worked with an outside company. With the app, you can take photos and add Hamilton or other hipster paraphernalia to it.
Saturday night!!! #happy #hipstercat #mustachecat
Despite his cat's famous status, Stowe knows that Hamilton is feral and gets uncomfortable around crowds. Like when he adopted him, Hamilton is most comfortable around Stowe. As a result, he doesn't take the cat on any visits or publicity meet-ups like the other famous cats of Instagram although the duo has Skyped into panels and even a cat's birthday party.
Hamilton's perfect mustache and famous cat status soon soon attracted more than half a million followers on Instagram. Once he hit 550,000, Stowe did something most instafamous cat owners don't do: he gave the account away.
Stowe had been using the account to occasionally do fundraisers and was getting request every week to post photos of cats in high-kill shelters. Since Hamilton had come from a rescue, Stowe thought he could do something with the cat's social media presence. "So for me once it got that big, it just seemed that that account could be put to really good use if it was given to a national association," Stowe says.
Last fall, Stowe held a contest for four charities to take over the account. After two weeks of voting, Adopt-a-Pet won the account and all of its followers. Hamilton did get a new Instagram account, and it has already amassed more than 325,000 followers in a year.
Stowe, though, has a new job as head of talent for Luxe, a parking valet startup in San Francisco. He and Hamilton moved into a new apartment and have been slower at posting to Instagram as a result. He's not worn out yet, even though it's been three years. At its peak, he was posting twice a day at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT. Now it's only every few days. "If you look at the way people comment on Instagram, they kind of think of him as their pet," Stowe says. "If I go a few days without posting, they'll say they miss him."
While his famous cat is a good icebreaker, Hamilton hasn't attracted any candidates to jobs for Luxe. Only a few people have recognized the cat, often for a famous Vine of Hamilton rejecting Stowe's kisses — something the internet took as a greater metaphor for guys getting rejected, much to Stowe's amusement.
Stowe has no plans to stop Hamilton's account, despite the busy startup schedule. For him, the best part has been making people happy with Hamilton's photos and being able to give back more than $250,000 to charities in return. "I think you see how much people enjoy it," he says. "I think as long as he's cool with it and as long as people are enjoying it, why not?"
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