VV Show #49 - Rafat Ali of paidContent and contentNext

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Rafat Ali

Attention entrepreneurs dealing with the current economic downturn: This interview is for you. After working as a journalist for Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter, Rafat Ali ended up broke in a market with a dearth of employment opportunities. To try to find a new job, Rafat created paidContent.org as an "interactive resume." Luckily, no one hired him. From these humble beginnings, Rafat bootstrapped his blog holding company, ContentNext Media, for four years before taking a small investment from famed media investor Alan Patricof in June 2006. From its inception paidContent has doubled revenues each year and was recently acquired by UK-based Guardian Media Group for a rumored $30 million. Listen in as Rafat outlines the past, present, and future of online media, while sharing his war stories from another uncertain economic time.

1:35 Early career
3:25 Worked for Jason Calacanis
4:48 Working at Inside.com - "Timing was all wrong."
7:50 Learning on the job with paidContent, "I had no idea, zero idea."
8:45 Growing and getting the word out - "It really did spread by word of mouth. There was no other way."
9:20 Launch of mocoNews.net, a sister site covering the mobile space
9:45 June 4th, 2002: The exact genesis of paidContent
10:57 "People thought that you would have to pay to access websites because the online advertising market had crashed."
11:33 paidContent covers "all the ways in which content gets paid for."
11:45 paidContent becomes a full time gig
14:03 Heeding the advice of Seth Godin: "A downturn is the best time to start a company."
14:15 "I actually did e-mail [Seth Godin] a couple of years after that 'you were one of the catalysts that helped me decide'... and he never e-mailed me back. And I'm kind of still angry about that..."
15:05 Early days and a limited budget
15:30 "There were at least two times I remember when my bank [account] had zero balance."
17:23 Advice to entrepreneurs: Get your finances straight
18:53 The blogging lifestyle
19:04 "I had a phone and an internet connection. That's all you really needed in my business."
19:47 Early attention and awards
21:11 Was it fun?
22:04 From a blog to a business
25:10 Early revenues: "high five figures" after 2.5 years
28:20 4 years of bootstrapping: First investment came in June 2006
28:58 On receiving "a few hundred thousand" in financing from media investor Alan Patricof: "his validation was huge for us." They never raised any more money.
30:15 The financing process
32:18 On Alan Patricof: "Immediately I felt like he got (our business)."
33:11 Giving structure to the business
35:32 Post-funding growth: new sites (contentSutra, "covering India's digital content market"), conferences, seminars, research reports, and jobs sections
42:41 Main revenue streams: conferences, advertising, and sponsorships
43:40 Biting the hand that feeds you, i.e. reporting on your own advertisers
46:43 Competition: "It's not a cliche... having competitors in the market helps you define yourself." Note: One of the competitors was co-founded by Kevin Ryan
48:48 On dealing with the rumor mill: "We don't publish rumors."
50:45 "A gossip rag is tough to monetize."
51:23 "You can't define blogging as one industry."
53:22 "We will probably see some more consolidation in the [online media] industry [in the next six to nine months.]"
54:40 Current state of ContentNext: 25-27 people, will add more but being careful, given the current economy
55:40 A "few million" in revenue
55:52 "We've doubled our revenue every year... and are on track to do it this year."
56:17 On the economic slump: "Because we have multiple revenue streams in multiple countries, we will be able to weather [the downturn] a lot better."
57:03 The exit: ContentNext is acquired by Guardian Media Group
60:00 On exit multiples: "Typically some of the big traditional media companies -- and we are not big and we are not traditional -- get anywhere from 3-5x forward looking revenues."
60:51 Keeping the deal quiet: "Tried to keep it quiet... but somebody beat us to it."
64:38 Rafat's advice for media entrepreneurs in the current market
67:10 What's next for paidContent?

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VV Show #48 - Frank Addante of The Rubicon Project

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Frank Addante

Whether working with market trends or against them, Frank Addante has found entrepreneurial success. Before he was 29 years old, one of Frank's companies went public and two were acquired. At his worse, he returned capital to investors. Suffering from serial entrepreneurship, Frank left the Illinois Institute of Technology just four classes shy of his degree. His companies range from an early search engine to a Sequoia Capital-backed enterprise email solution. Now Frank aspires to be a web publisher’s best friend with his new ad network optimization service that he says is boosting their clients' revenues by 30-300%. Listen in as Frank details his ongoing entrepreneurial journey.

1:05 Company #1: Start off with Starting Point – a “card catalog for the internet”
2:20 Decision to leave college and the early days at Starting Point
3:30 Early days of online advertising.
5:11 Life after Starting Point
5:50 Entrepreneurship in Chicago
7:20 Company #2: L90 and Ad Monitor, a focus on advertising technology
8:30 “CEO without the title”
9:15 Comparisons to DoubleClick (Listen to DoubleClick's former CEO on Venture Voice)
10:30 The myth of competing cultures in early advertising
13:25 Surviving a bursting bubble through acquisition
14:34 Thoughts on net-worth volatility
16:03 Leaving L90


19:25 Company #3: Zondigo

23:45 Company #4: Addante & Associates, an incubator, turns into StrongMail Systems
27:00 Moving StrongMail to the Valley and “the Sequoia connection”
32:05 On taking advice and the “not right now” list
34:38 Company #5: The Rubicon Project

38:01 The Rubicon Project in a nutshell

40:20 The importance of “the team”
41:38 On moving quickly: “Go fast but don’t hurry.”
42:25 Smooth sailing, so far.

44:00 On concern from ad networks: “Change will be beneficial for everyone.”

47:00 Stats: 60 top ad network, over 4,000 publishers, 40 employees, $21 million raised
47:20 Thoughts on the future of The Rubicon Project
48:35 Advice for entrepreneurs

Frank's Blog: FounderBlog

Frank's pitch for LA:

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VV Show #47 - Tom Perkins of Kleiner Perkins

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Tom Perkins

The name Tom Perkins is now almost synonymous with venture capital, but it's clear that he cut his teeth as an entrepreneur. Educated at MIT and Harvard, Perkins first made his mark by managing the initial growth of Hewlett-Packard’s computer business while simultaneously inventing the first cheap and reliable laser. The company he built around the laser, University Laboratories, made him independently wealthy and allowed for the creation of Kleiner Perkins, one of the most successful venture capital firms in existence. Kleiner Perkins (now Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) has funded a wide range of well known and wildly successful companies including Google, AOL, Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and Tandem Computers. Though Tom's wowed the business press for much of his career, later in life he's gained national attention for having a key role in 2006 Hewlett-Packard board controversy, briefly marrying Danielle Steel, and building the world's largest privately owned sailing yacht. Tom has recently stepped back into the media spotlight by publishing a memoir called Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins. Listen in as he discusses his journey from New York to Boston to Silicon Valley, the creation of Kleiner Perkins, and his advice for the entrepreneurs of the future.

3:00 Early ambitions: the road to MIT.
4:40 From Theoretical Physics to the Harvard Business School.
6:15 Introduced to the Hewlett- Packard company: “a great stroke of luck.”
6:52 “Dave Packard taught me everything I ever learned about entrepreneurship.”
8:42 Simultaneously running HP’s computer business and University Laboratories.
11:15 Thoughts on moonlighting and Google’s 20% time.
12:23 Why not jump ship with University Laboratories? “It was a very tough decision [but] I was so fascinated by the computer business, which was growing explosively.”
13:40 Dave Packard: the first modern VC.
14:30 The Kleiner Perkins model: A “hands on” approach to VC.
15:00 First KP fund: $8 million, largest ever at the time.
15:25 The admirable ethics of venture capital.
19:00 Early KP hits: Tandem Computers & Genentech.
20:15 “Our philosophy was that you find the idea and not the individual.”
22:39 “We’ve never financed anything that’s come to us through the mail or over the Internet.”
23:40 The “Intensive Care Unit” at KP.
26:30 Biggest mistake: “Not funding Apple Computer."
29:02 Thoughts on the modern day venture capital industry: “There’s always been too much money in venture capital.”
31:15 Thoughts on entrepreneurship and venture capital outside of Silicon Valley: “It’s a difference of psychology.”
34:40 Valley Boy, the Tom Perkins memoir.
36:40 Working on the News Corp. board.
41:30 On his own depiction in the media: “A venture capitalist should be behind the scenes… I yield the arena of self-promotion to no one, although Paris Hilton is gaining ground there.”
43:00 Current activities: sailing and submarining.
44:30 Recent comments on the science of global warming.
44:54 Biotechnology: “I still think we’re on the ground floor.”
46:00 Advice for new entrepreneurs.

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VV Show #46 - Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp

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Jeremy Stoppelman

Jeremy Stoppelman is the co-founder and CEO of Yelp, a site where users can write and share reviews of local businesses. Everyone's now a restaurant critic. However, local reviews were not the original focus, but just one of several features in the earlier versions of the site. Noticing the growth of this buried feature, Yelp re-tooled the site around reviews and hasn't looked back since. Does this story sound familiar? Jeremy's the former VP of Engineering at PayPal, which also had to drastically alter its business early in its life. Listen in to hear Jeremy's thoughts on growing a local enterprise, giving users and identity, and how to recognize and act upon the need for change.

1:45 Early Internet experience


3:10 Uniqueness of Paypal

6:00 Switch to business school, but why?

7:05 What was the value of B-school?

9:30 Yelp is born

11:06 Yelp, an evolution not a revolution

13:25 Earlier on, what did the company look like?

15:25 How did you know when it was right to change the strategy?

18:50 Please yourself

19:30 Catering to a female audience

22:15 Strategy discussions

25:12 Citysearch differentiators?

26:40 How do you make it popular?

30:10 Yelp gets Googled

32:50 Expansion beyond the Bay

36:30 Competition?

37:18 Revenue model

38:42 Is Yelp a tough sell?

40:07 How do you scale a local business?

41:01 Current state of Yelp

43:20 Biggest challenges?

45:45 Any desire to grow faster to secure a large buyout?

47:10 Words of wisdom

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VV Show #45 - Kevin Ryan of Panther Express, ShopWiki and Music Nation

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kevin_ryan.jpg

Not many entrepreneurs have a motor like Kevin Ryan's. Kevin is best known for his work as CEO at the on-line advertising firm DoubleClick, which he grew from a 20 person start-up to the largest Internet company in New York at the height of the dot-com boom. After escaping the ensuing bust in an arguably improved strategic position, the company has since changed hands twice. In June 2005, the company was sold to the private equity firm of Hellman and Friedman for $1.1 billion and has made headlines yet again with its recent acquisition by Google for an astonishing $3.1 billion. Yet, this success has not slowed Kevin one bit. Since departing DoubleClick, he has already launched three start-ups, with plans for a fourth this summer. Listen in, as Kevin describes his DoubleClick experiences in both boom and bust, outlines his new start-ups, and explains why now is as good a time as ever to start a company, especially in the Big Apple.

2:00 Early career


3:55 The Internet according to Dilbert

4:43 Focus on advertising

6:10 What differentiated DoubleClick?

8:10 The DoubleClick alumni club

8:42 Lessons learned as CEO

10:42 Dealing with mistakes

12:38 Money management

13:09 The IPO

14:03 The boom goes bust

15:30 Lay-offs began and continued

17:57 A changing business model

19:10 Exit strategies

20:00 New ventures

25:05 Start-up #1: Panther Express

28:48 Keeping it lean: the benefits of a small office

32:30 Start-up #2: ShopWiki


35:15 Time: the most limited resource

36:40 Start-up #3: Music Nation

39:55 Best entrepreneurial locations

42:17 Current health of the start-up market

46:04 Start-up #4!

46:35 Advice to entrepreneurs

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VV Show #44 - Venture Voice Startup Workshop Coverage (part 2)

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Venture Voice Startup Workshop Coverage

Marketing a startup is tricky business. Every entrepreneur faces the dilemma between allocating time to improving the product and marketing the product. If the two can be mixed just right, then perhaps sterile marketing can go viral. We tackle that issue in part 2 of 3 of our very own Venture Voice Startup Workshop coverage in New York City. David Hornik of August Capital leads the session, but he doesn’t finish uninterrupted as the entrepreneurs on the panel jump in.

In this episode:
David Hornik of August Capital
Tom Szaky of TerraCycle
Dick Costolo of FeedBurner

4:30 Marketing, sales and PR


12:30 Viral marketing

25:15 Best practice

25:30 Q&A

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VV Show #43 - Fred Seibert of Frederator Studios and Next New Networks

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Before the rise of the Internet, cable TV was the new form of distribution remaking the entertainment business. Life-long entrepreneur and former jazz producer Fred Seibert pioneered that field, and is known in the industry for branding MTV (remember their ever-changing animated logo) and Nickelodeon (remember Nick-at-Nite). While he was figuring out what to do next, Ted Turner hired him to be president of the then-struggling Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio. Fred turned the famous studio around and kept his hand in the cable business until some friends dragged him into the Internet business. He now runs Frederator Studios which produces several cable and Internet TV shows. He also just launched a new well-funded startup called Next New Networks to create Internet TV networks.

1:30 Getting started as an entrepreneur


5:10 Criteria for selecting a business idea

6:30 Getting into the cartoon business

12:45 Creative types verses suits

17:15 Fixing Hanna-Barbera

34:00 The Internet

55:45 Starting Frederator

59:00 Content

61:00 The value of Next New Networks

67:00 Bad blog reception

73:30 Starting a company

Fred’s book: Original Cartoons: The Frederator Studio Postcards

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VV Show #42 - Simon Daniel of USBcell

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Simon Daniel

The battery is an afterthought for most inventors. All the fun seems to be in developing a device, not in powering it. But when was the last time you cursed your phone, camera or podcast player because it ran out of batteries? Simon Daniel got fed up with his batteries, and decided to do something about it. He invented the USBcell, a standard sized battery (yes, it comes in AA) that can recharge using any USB port. This isn’t his first invention. Previously, he invented the folding keyboard and licensed the technology. This time he’s bringing the USBcell to market himself through the company he founded called Moixa (axiom spelled backwards). Though this might force you to think differently, don’t worry, we won’t play the podcast backwards.

1:00 Working at IBM’s scientific center at Winchester between before college

3:15 Went to Christ College at Cambridge University


5:15 Worked at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture)

10:00 Jumping ship to start a new venture and modern art


13:45 Taking action on an invention

18:00 Being too early to market

21:00 The company

24:00 Financing strategies

26:00 USBcell

36:15 Marketing

46:30 Entrepreneurship in the UK

49:15 Goals for 2007

51:15 Capitalizing on invention

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VV Show #41 - Premal Shah of Kiva

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Premal Shah

Premal Shah believes your last name doesn't need to be Gates or Rockefeller in order to make a real dent in global poverty. After leaving his job as a Principal Product Manager at PayPal, it has taken Premal less then a year to make good on Kiva's pledge that all it takes to become a micro lender is a credit card and access to a computer. Raising money "Howard Dean Style" from over 13,000 online lenders, Kiva has provided more than a million dollars in low-cost working capital to small-scale entrepreneurs in less developed countries from Bulgaria to Uganda. The site boasts high repayments rates and soon hopes to offer lenders interest. We talk to Premal about how working in Silicon Valley has shaped his approach to combating poverty, how he believes the market "bakes in psychic and emotional returns," and how the power of online communities can strengthen the world of micro credit.

Episode producer: Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell

1:35 The pitch: why micro-lend?


3:15 When PayPal was no big deal

4:10 When "the ship" gets too big, just get back to entrepreneurship.

8:44 Entrepreneur lesson

10:00 Repayment: No Problem

10:55 "Howard Dean Style"

12:40 A Favorite Loan

15:30 Zero percent Interest Rate: that does not sound like a good business to be in?

18:40 User-Generated Metrics

19:35 Transparency is Key

20:20 Can a picture tell a thousand lies?

30:10 Corruption

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VV Show #40 - Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn

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Reid Hoffman

Real business networking takes place in the country club, at the chamber of commerce and on the golf course. After all, the Internet is just for friending strangers on MySpace and poking friends on Facebook. If you said all that to Reid Hoffman, he might think twice about adding you as a contact in LinkedIn, the business networking site he started that connects over seven million professionals. Although his Palo Alto-based company is now profitable and growing rapidly, Reid still thinks he has yet to hit the tipping point. Reid’s goal wasn’t always to be an entrepreneur: He just wanted to change the world. His original career choice was “public intellectual”. Hear if his career switch is paying off.

1:00 Surprising beginnings


2:00 Advancing career

6:00 On financing a start-up

8:00 Paypal, lessons learned

14:00 On LinkedIn

18:00 Business model advice

20:00 Target market

27:00 Delivering value

36:00 How LinkedIn works

41:00 Web 2.0

43:00 Advice to entrepreneurs

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VV Show #38 - Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., Netscape and AOL

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Jason Calacanis

There are not many entrepreneurs who have spent their entire 10-year careers starting new ventures in online media, but Jason Calacanis just can’t help himself. Jason rode the dot com wave in New York by starting Silicon Alley Reporter. His publishing company Rising Tide Media grew to $12 million in sales. Unfortunately Jason also rode that wave down after the bubble burst. He ended up selling his first business to Dow Jones for a lot less money than he could have gotten before the crash. Undeterred, Jason started Weblogs, Inc. to make money by selling ads in blogs they pay people to write. In only 18 months he grew the business to a point at which AOL (TWX) bought it for a reported $25 million. Now he’s re-launched Netscape as a news website where users vote for what’s important. Jason’s caused a lot of controversy by paying top users of competitive sites such as Digg (whose CEO Jay Adelson was on our last show) to switch to use his service. Hear what’s been driving Jason’s entrepreneurial career.

2:00 First company: Rising Tide Media


7:00 Personal style

16:00 Starting Weblogs Inc.

20:30 East Coast vs. West Coast entrepreneurship


28:30 Building an ad sales force

34:00 Re-launching Netscape

43:15 Doing business in social media

45:00 Should users get paid?

50:45 Dialog with Digg

52:00 Social news industry

55:15 Working for AOL

Photo credit: JD Lasica

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VV Show #37 - Jay Adelson of Digg

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Venture Voice Startup Workshop Coverage

Digg, the news website that uses its own readers rather than editors to decide what stories are most important, has been growing with a fury. While founder Kevin Rose has gotten a lot of attention including a recent cover of BusinessWeek, CEO Jay Adelson has been guiding Digg toward business success. This isn’t Jay’s first time though the throes of entrepreneurship. He started Equinix, a company that now has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. Despite its success, Jay didn’t make much money because he held his shares until after the dot com bust. In fact, he had just enough money to put his kids through college and live a more modest lifestyle himself. He was ready to go off and work at a coffee shop or become a teacher until Digg came along. Now he’s back in the game.

2:00 Early career


5:00 Entrance into entrepreneurship

7:15 Co-founding Equinix


19:00 Between ventures

24:00 Quitting entrepreneurship

28:00 Starting Digg

41:30 Virtual business

43:30 Worst business decision at Digg
45:30 Business model
47:00 Biggest competitor

60:00 BusinessWeek cover

62:00 Business capitalization

68:30 The future of Digg

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VV Show #36 - Venture Voice Startup Workshop Coverage (part 1)

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Venture Voice Startup Workshop Coverage

If there are best practices in entrepreneurship, you’ll hear the secrets to them in this coverage of the first half of the recent Venture Voice Startup Workshop in New York City. If there are in fact no best practices for entrepreneurs, then you’ll at least enjoy the heated discussion about how entrepreneurs should navigate the startup seas. These passionate speakers fielded a day’s worth of questions and opinions from Venture Voice, each other and the spirited audience. The results are distilled ideas about what it takes to win in business, great war stories and even a few laughs.

3:00 Topic: Partnerships


20:20 Topic: Getting and keeping customers and users

29:45 Topic: Building a team

Hear from the rest of the speakers in part 2 of this series, coming soon.

View photos from the event.

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VV Show #35 - Sharelle Klaus of Dry Soda

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Sharelle Klaus

While many restaurants offer dozens of wines, beers and mixed drinks, there are few non-alcoholic options on the menu. Former dot-com entrepreneur and self-described foodie Sharelle Klaus was fed up with her lack of beverage options during the time she was pregnant with her four children. She decided to create the first line of “culinary sodas,” which are less sweet and more sophisticated than sodas like Coke or Pepsi. Based in Seattle, Sharelle’s now peddling her soda all across the country and already has traction in several markets.

Show notes:

1:45 Entrepreneurial streak as a child


3:45 Consulted on privatizing airports

5:15 Had two children

5:30 Getting into the internet business


8:30 After the bubble

11:15 Going into the beverage industry

13:30 Coming up with the idea for Dry Soda

15:30 Executing on the idea and starting Dry Soda

25:30 Launching the company

29:00 Current state of Dry Soda

38:30 The market

39:30 Funding

44:00 Team

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VV Show #34 - David O. Sacks, Co-Founder of PayPal and Producer of Thank You For Smoking

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Dave Sifry

What do you do after building and selling a business for $1.5 billion in the course of only a few years? That’s the question David O. Sacks, one of the co-founders of PayPal, faced after eBay bought his company. It didn’t take him long to find the answer: Go to Hollywood and make movies. David didn’t waste much time. He recently produced Thank You For Smoking which won critical and audience acclaim. Now you can hear about his journey and get his unique perspective on the convergence of media and technology.

1:30 Clip from Thank You For Smoking

2:45 Interests at Stanford


4:10 Coming back to Palo Alto in 1999

6:30 Getting involved with PayPal

8:00 Winning with PayPal

11:00 Relationship with eBay

15:30 Surviving

18:00 Exit

25:00 Moving from Silicon Valley to Hollywood

29:30 Producing Thank You For Smoking

Clip from Thank You For Smoking:

33:00 The message of the movie


35:30 Ambition

39:30 Cities of disruption

41:40 David’s movie and angel career

See you at the Venture Voice Startup Workshop.

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VV Show #33 – Announcing the Venture Voice Startup Workshop

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Venture Voice has been illuminating entrepreneurship through the podcast for just short of a year. Now, at the Venture Voice Startup Workshop on June 26 in New York, you can interact with top entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to find out how to start and grow innovative businesses. Venture Voice, a podcast known for asking the hard questions about entrepreneurship, brings together highly successful speakers who’ve gotten their hands dirty growing businesses. This full-day event will be intense. Participants will leave with tactical knowledge about growing a business and with the inspiration to do so.

Tune in to this podcast to hear audio clips from some of the people who will be speaking at the workshop.

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VV Show #32 - David Sifry of Technorati

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Dave Sifry

Starting a service aimed at the blogging community is like jumping into a pressure cooker – all of the users are critics and have bullhorns. Good thing David Sifry, the founder of Technorati, has a thick skin he’s built after founding four businesses. He’s not one to go on the defensive. Dave, a first time CEO after serving as CTO at his prior ventures, simply wants to “be of service.” Technorati is now of service to many people. It tracks 2.3 billion links and is, in its own words, “the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs.”

Show notes:

1:35 Starting career as engineer


5:45 Learning not to engineer

12:30 Authority and responsibility

16:45 Past ventures

20:15 Motives for starting Technorati

26:30 Purpose and profit

29:45 Dealing with competitors

30:15 Scrutiny of bloggers


37:00 Getting the word out

41:15 From CTO to CEO


43:00 Sticking with Technorati

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VV Show #31 - Steve Hindy of The Brooklyn Brewery

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Steve Hindy

Being robbed at gun point and being threatened by the mob are not problems the average entrepreneur encounters. Steve Hindy faced these problems and more, but what concerned him most was the fate of his brewery. Steve started the Brooklyn Brewery with Tom Potter. Steve was a journalist and foreign correspondent. Tom was a banker. Neither knew a thing about starting, much less running, a brewery. With grit and determination, they stared down bankruptcy and made it work. In 2003, they sold their beer distributorship for about $10 million. Now Steve’s focused on the brewery (which is doing about $12 million in revenue and has become a global brand) and on the community.

Show notes:

2:45 Starting career as a journalist and AP foreign correspondent


7:30 Getting the idea for the Brooklyn Brewery

17:30 Being in Brooklyn

20:00 Dealing with investors

23:30 Building the team

28:00 Selling the distributorship

29:00 Entrepreneurial terror


35:45 Turning point

39:45 Brooklyn Brewery today

42:30 In the community

Steve and Tom wrote a book about their experence called Beer School.

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VV Show #30 - Scott Johnson of Ookles

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Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson is a long-time entrepreneur on the bleeding edge of technology. He started his first business in 1987 and successfully sold it. Then he rode the dot com wave up and down with Mascot Network, a company that was trying to do what Facebook does now by providing online communities for college students. Most recently, he started Feedster, which after a lot of early traction ousted Scott Johnson and the CEO he recruited. Now he gives us the exclusive on the mission of Ookles, his new company.

Show notes:

1:30 Early career


5:15 Worked for Mascot Network in 2000, a company that was similar to what Facebook now is

11:00 Time in transition and entrepreneurial ideas

15:00 Starting Feedster

31:00 What happened at Feedster?

34:00 New venture: Ookles

44:00 Burn rate and market analysis

53:30 Making money

55:00 Geography

58:00 Outro

Photo credit: Scott Beale

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VV Show #29 - Shoba Purushothaman of The NewsMarket

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Shoba Purushothaman of The NewsMarket

Shoba Purushothaman’s career has shifted dramatically since she started her first job as a business journalist in Malaysia. After spending several years working for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, she grew restless just covering how the world was changing. She wanted to influence it. Shoba co-founded a public relations consultancy that helped corporations ride the wave of change brought on by the rapid expansion of television news. She saw first hand how inefficient video distribution was, so in 2000 she sold her first business and started The NewsMarket to make video distribution simpler. Though she weathered some tough times in 2001, she’s managed to build the company to millions in revenue and recently closed on a $12 million venture round.

Show notes:

1:40 Starting career as a journalist


8:10 Getting out of journalism and into business

12:00 Taking advantage of the television news revolution

16:15 Selling to Fortune 500s

21:00 Starting The NewsMarket

29:00 Current state of The NewsMarket

30:40 The explosion of video on the web

33:20 Deal with Google

37:00 Rise of user-generated content

39:00 Entrepreneurial opportunities in video

41:50 Outlook for the future


46:00 Advice for entrepreneurs

Venture Voice updates:

48:15 Feedback from last show with John Bogle

49:15 Past guest Scott Heiferman’s Meetup.com announced that it received an investment from eBay

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VV Show #28 - John Bogle of The Vanguard Group

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John Bogle of The Vanguard Group

If you’re making lots of money in a fat industry for doing relatively little, then the last thing you want is a competitor like John C. Bogle. He founded The Vanguard Group in 1975 and revolutionized the mutual fund industry by slashing management fees. By creating the world’s first index fund, John showed investors they could invest in the market without giving a large portion of their earnings to fund managers. While it sounds easy in hindsight, it was a difficult path. John was fired along the way and made many enemies in the industry. But John, like any good entrepreneur, is a fighter. And at age 75, he’s still ready for a challenge.

Show notes:

3:30 College years at Princeton


13:15 Executing on a senior thesis by starting a career in mutual funds

18:00 Started the world’s first index fund

23:40 Idealism and execution

28:00 Keeping costs low

32:15 Values in a company

38:45 Managers have usurped power from owners

49:15 Fighting corruption through the market

55:20 Going against the grain

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VV Show #27 - Following Entrepreneurs at DEMO 2006

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Demo 2006

When a startup launches its first product, should it expect a lot of fanfare? It should if it launches at DEMO before an audience of hundreds that includes some of the nation’s top journalists and venture capitalists (not to mention Venture Voice). DEMO is a two-day conference, held in Phoenix this time around, that features about 70 never-before-seen technology products. Most of the products come from scrappy startups. We follow two of those startups through the process, Sproutit and Sharpcast. Along the way we’ll talk to countless other entrepreneurs on the floor and some people who came to pick companies to cover or invest in. We covered this event last year (part 1, part 2) and followed VideoEgg, which was recently funded by the venture capitalist we introduced them to on that show. Let’s see what happens to Sproutit and Sharpcast.

Show notes:

:30 Covered VideoEgg last year; it got funded by David Hornik of August Capital

1:35 DEMO took place in Phoenix, Arizona

1:50 Introduction to Charles Jolley about of Sproutit