In 2008, New York native Ben Clymer was working in finance. When the financial crisis hit, he took a severance package and enrolled in Columbia Journalism School, where, in his spare time, he launched Hodinkee, a simple blog for wristwatch aficionados. The name Hodinkee, he would later reveal, was derived from the Czech word “hodinky,” meaning wristwatch.
Unlike most other industry sites at the time, Hodinkee was positioned not for the…