June 29, 2005
VV Show #4 - Joe Kraus of JotSpot (part 1 of 2)
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Conventional wisdom tells us to go get a job out of college to learn the ropes, not to take on friends as business partners, and to accept defeat gracefully. Joe Kraus's business war stories are anything but conventional. Before graduating college, he convinced five of his friends to pass on blue chip job offers to start a business of their own. What would that business be? They didn't know yet, but met at a burrito shop to come up with something. The rest is Internet history.
Joe was the founding president of Excite, one of the first well-known Internet search and content sites. After a merger, Joe left Excite@Home in 2000 and tried his hand at world travel, angel investing and politics. Unable to break the entrepreneurship addiction, Joe is now starting JotSpot, the first application-wiki company. More on his newest venture in the next show.
Show notes:
1:05 Starting a business out of college
- Graduated Stanford with a Political Science degree in 1993.
- Smartest person Joe knew: Graham Spencer.
- 'We borrowed $15,000 from our parents on a total flyer of an idea''
2:00 Catching the entrepreneurship bug
- First job: duplicating microfiche.
4:45 Working with friends
- 'I actually think that Excite wouldn't have survived had we not been friends.'
'We had this slogan that we were unencumbered by reality.'
- Joe convincing Graham to turn down job offers to start a business: 'You're smart enough to get a job at the top companies at any time, but rarely are you going to have the opportunity to start something on your own at a time in your life when you have so few commitments' it sounds funny to be making those statements when you're 21 years old.'
9:20 Developing business ideas
- 'We'd all brought ideas to the table of what we wanted to do, and they all stank.'
12:10 Raising capital
- Funded by Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins.
- 'I couldn't have ever done it without them.'
12:45 Power of persistence
- 'We acted as though we hadn't lost the deal.'
- 'The real negotiation begins at no.'
15:15 Excite's merger
19:20 Decompressing, angel investing and entrepreneurial addiction
Joe Kraus official bio:
Joe Kraus is co-founder and CEO of JotSpot, the first application-wiki company. A long time entrepreneur, Joe has been involved with early-stage technology development and starting companies for more than twelve years. Upon graduation from Stanford University in 1993, he joined with five engineering friends to found the highly successful Internet company, Excite, Inc. The original president of Excite, Joe was deeply involved in product strategy, direction and vision as the company grew. He also held senior operational roles in business development, international development and content.
After leaving Excite@Home in 2000, Joe was a co-founder of Digitalconsumer.org, a non-profit grassroots consumer organization with more than 50,000 members dedicated to protecting consumers fair-use rights to digital media. Joe, along with other co-founder Graham Spencer, continues to work on these important issues. In addition to his non-profit focus, he has also spent many years as an angel investor, working with numerous early-stage technology companies.
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June 23, 2005
VV Show #3 - Philip Kaplan of AdBrite
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This Internet bad boy doesn't think he's so bad, and one of the top venture capital firms agrees to the tune of $4 million. Don't know who Philip Kaplan of AdBrite is? Well if you were doing anything remotely dot com related in the late 90's you probably know who Philip Kaplan of F___edCompany.com (FC for short) is. His site grew famous, if not infamous, for posting the latest additions to the 'dot com dead pool.' Now with his current prize business, AdBrite, he intends never to join the businesses that FC featured.
Philip was not nearly covered as much for AdBrite as he was for FC, so we decided to catch up with him on the phone. He didn't sound as eccentric you might expect of someone with his resume, but he still has the attitude and smarts needed to be a dot com muckraker.
Watch that language: We try to keep our podcast pretty clean, but there's no getting around the F-word when talking about Philip's past (and Philip doesn't say 'the F-word'), so don't blast this podcast in your office if it's bring your child to work day.
Show notes:
2:35 The LA Times dubbed Philip Kaplan 'Internet Bad Boy'
- 'I'm probably not as bad as [spammers and hackers] but I'm flattered nonetheless to be in their company.'
3:10 Origin of FC
- 'We were happy to build sites for people but a lot of their ideas were quite ridiculous, and we would tell them 'I don't think this is a business, but I'll build it for you if you pay me in advance.''
- 'The whole dot com thing was ready for a major change and I figured there should be a Web site that chronicled it.'
- 'Did I write about my clients on FC? That probably would have been a good way to lose clients.'
5:30 Birth of AdBrite
7:30 Funding from Sequoia Capital
- 'Relatively few of the investments [Sequoia] they made, in comparison to the other the venture capitalists, made it onto FC.'
- 'Sequoia is well known for acting fast, they don't dilly dally.'
10:00 FC today
11:15 New York to San Francisco
- 'In New York you could go months without meeting another person in the Internet business, and you often do ' or years.'
13:15 AdBrite growth
- 'Part of the goal with hiring is to make sure that you hire people who you actually like.'
- 'People always want to partner with their friends, or they have this kooky idea that they're going to work on and they're like 'Oh, Bob and I are going to partner on this.' 99% of the time it's a mistake. The only time it's not a mistake is when that partner can absolutely, positively do something you cannot do yourself.'
- 'That said, I have two partners now.'
18:35 Profanity in Web sites
19:10 AdBrite blog
- 'The whole blog is an advertisement for AdBrite.'
19:30 Blog industry
19:55 Media matters
- 'The media never really knows what's going on with anything.'
21:40 Reading and watching habits
- 'I read surprisingly little.'
- 'I like it a lot either when they do [Biography shows] on serial killers or entrepreneurs.'
24:05 Philip's book, F'd Companies
24:30 New opportunities on the Web
- 'There's a ton of opportunity in search.'
- 'Nothing's happened yet on the Internet.'
25:25 FastCompany
- 'Somebody actually approached me, asking if I wanted to buy them or be involved in it. And I said no.'
25:50 AdBrite in three years
Philip Kaplan official bio:
Philip J. Kaplan is a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in New York City and San Francisco, USA. He has founded and manages a number of web-based properties. Philip is also the bestselling author of F'd Companies, and founded PK Interactive, an Internet consultancy that was sold in 2001. Philip's sites have been named "Site of the Year" by Yahoo!, Rolling Stone, and TIME Magazine.
Posted by greg at 8:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
VV Show #2 - Dick Costolo of FeedBurner (part 2 of 2)
Sick of potential investors not taking your phone calls? Pitch a venture capitalist on his iPod. Dick Costolo of FeedBurner tells us how his CTO did just that in the second and final part of our conversation. (Be sure to check out the first half too if you haven't already).
Show notes:
0:35 Team building
- Costoto: We don't hire people who say, 'Hey look, I was senior VP of biz dev over at XYZ Corp, I don't make coffee.'
1:25 How FeedBurner communicates internally
2:40 Communicating with investors
- 'You can't over-communicate.'
3:15 Customer support
- 'When people come in and interview for a VP job, we say everybody here does customer support.'
- Employees doing customer support must check Technorati to see what's being said about FeedBurner.
- 'When you're working 80, 90 hours a week, it's very hard to go read somebody's post who says Dick Costolo's a jerk and FeedBurner stinks and these guys are idiots.'
- Mentions Technorati CEO David Sifry's responsiveness to what bloggers say about his service.
9:35 No blog policy (or vacation policy) for employees
11:25 Making money by blogging and podcasting
- 'I think that blogs will provide a number of ways for people to make money.'
- Jason Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. has a business that makes money by blogging.
- 'I went to a conference a couple weeks ago and someone said, 'How are we going to make money from podcasting?' I started laughing and said, 'Man, people have only been doing this since October.''
13:20 Reading and listening habits
- Subscribes to 60 or 70 blogs.
- Listens to podcasts when encouraged to on ad hoc basis.
14:30 iPod pitches to venture capitalists
- FeedBurner CTO Eric Lunt sent a pitch to Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.
- Groupcasts are made by tagging MP3s in del.icio.us and then processing them with FeedBurner's SmartCast feature.
- David Hornik of August Capital has done the same thing.
17:15 Business plan vs. elevator pitch podcast
- Elevator pitch podcasts (an audio pitch for a business idea that is delivered directly onto an iPod) offer 'quick attention, you're gonna get to these guys [venture capitalists] when you've got their undivided attention.'
17:50 FeedBurner's growth opportunities
- 'The biggest threat to our company right now is us screwing it up.'
20:30 Web 2.0 or bubble 2.0
- 'I don't think it's getting to be bubbly already.'
22:00 Process for picking new business ideas
27:20 Costolo's elevator pitch for using FeedBurner
Posted by greg at 12:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
VV Show #1 - Dick Costolo of FeedBurner (part 1 of 2)
Dick Costolo of FeedBurner joins us for our first show. FeedBurner provides services for publishers of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is an interface that allows users to access data from blogs, traditional media, podcasts and other sources in the way they want to view it. Dick's service is widely used and well funded.
Show notes:
1:25 FeedBurner is company number four for Dick
- Met his co-founders at Andersen Consulting.
- Sold last company, Spyonit.com.
2:45 Got interested in RSS
- 'Despite the fact that a lot of people still don't know what the heck it [RSS] is, subscriber growth for the early adopters is really going crazy.'
7:30 Exciting new areas in RSS technology
- 'You're going to see a lot more specialized RSS clients.'
9:00 Bloggers as investors
- Brad Feld of Mobius Venture Capital is an investor.
- 'It was very helpful to read Brad's blog.'
9:55 Blog vs. business plan
- 'I would absolutely say that a blog is better than a business plan.'
11:15 Raising the first round of capital
- 'A lot of people that we were talking to, at least, didn't know how to spell RSS.'
12:45 The FeedBurner Founding Fathers
- "This is the first startup I haven't programmed in, much to the delight of the rest of the founders."
14:00 Life at the executive
- 'You're never more productive then when you're in that first, small, let's get stuff done and get stuff out, office.'
16:35 Phone answering and delegation
- "The hardest thing for me to delegate, as we grow, is the process of delegating."
19:05 Entrepreneurs as CEOs
21:25 Focus for serial entrepreneurs
- "I don't think I've ever been more obsessive or focused on the thing I was doing at the time then right now."
24:10 Chicago blues
- 'We talked to several VCs when we were doing our A round that said 'Really like the idea'hate that you're in Chicago.''
The next show (part 2 of this interview) will discuss team building, how to pitch a venture capitalist through his iPod and the biggest threat to FeedBurner. To be notified of our next show, add us to your RSS or podcast client, or enter your e-mail address in the box at the top right hand side.
Please send in your critiques, complements and suggestions.
Posted by greg at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
Welcome to the Podcast
What does it take to start a successful business? We're working the phone to find the answers by calling entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and their friends and foes. This podcast (or, for the uninitiated, Internet radio show on demand) features our conversations. Listen to the voices of those living the entrepreneurial life. The excitement, trepidation and ambition heard in their tones gives us a feel for what they're going through.
We're interested in people in all types of industries -- those who've already made it big and those who will soon. We want to hear about failures as well as successes. Start-ups have effects on personal lives in addition to professional lives; we explore both. If you would like to suggest someone to be interviewed, or have feedback for the show, please contact us.
Gregory Galant produces Venture Voice and conducts the interviews. Aaron Quint does the creative work for the Web site and helps with sound engineering.
Posted by greg at 1:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
