Collected Advice from
This Week in Startups


This Week in Startups

Draft 1

Episodes 1 - 70 compiled by my fall 2010 Technology Entrepreneurship students. Some entries are better than others. (Not everybody earned an A.)

Thanks to Jarad Binder, VJ Errico, Jeff Gregory, Daniel Jagoda, David King, Paul Martino, Leo Mordasini, Andrew Natale, Geno Romanelli, Mark Schwenke, Keith Sturzenbecker, Andrew "Waffle" Welfel, Greg Whipple, and Alex Whitman.

  • Episode 1
    • Issue: Starting your own business is a battle!
      Advice: 1) Take chances before you have responsibilities.
      2) Real entrepreneurship takes risk and debt. Put 100% into what you are working on.
      3) Perfection is the enemy of progress. (Example: Microsoft put out a few verisions of Word which were not perfect while Apple tried to perfect their word processor. By the time Apple released their word processor, Microsoft was up to version 6 of Word and had made millions of dollars.
      4) Make decisions, be in control of your own destiny, don't let others make decisions for you.
      5) Try not to be a micro-manager, hire great people and trust them to do their job. Don't be pressured into hiring someone, find the right person. You can always find someone else to do a job, get bad people out quickly.
      6) Raising capital is tough. You must be persistent, getting money from a Venture Capitalist only has a 10% to 15% hit rate.
      7) Finally, build from your mistakes and innovate new ideas.
  • Episode 2
    • Issue: What are the must have social networking features should be in a social networking app at launch to keep people coming back to the application?
      Advice: Look at the resources and see what you need to get to the big vision. Take the large vision and make it on a smaller scale that is feasible. Target location or maybe even tighter, target a demographic.
    • Issue: At what stage in a project is it best to approach a venture capital firm and once you do what are they looking for from you?
      Advice: This depends on your track record. This means that you are in the bucket of people that have never successfully raised venture capital or had an exit. This means that you are at the bottom of their list. If you have something to show like performance then they will look at do you have domain expertise and what is the market like. You really need to show them something working. Or bring in someone who has had success with raising venture capital.
  • Episode 3
    • Jason Roberts (www.preezo.com): Google came out with a similar free product; we are running out of capital. what do I do?
      Jason Calacanis: Release early, release often. Learn from this lesson. Google drank your milkshake. What do they like about your product that they don’t like about Google docs? Jason Roberts: I don’t know
      Jason Calacanis: Learn from your audience. Open source it, give it to the community, keep 20% and move on.
      Jason Roberts: Risk involved if you think you will flip your company. What do you mean by releasing to open source?
      Jason Calacanis: Keep ownership of www.preezo.com and the hosted version. Tell customers you can only do this for $10-$100 a year, and see what happens. Allow anyone to download and use on their own servers via open source.
    Lockhart Steele
    Co-founder, CEO of Curbed.com a real estate blog
    Magazine business, big break working for gawker media, editorial director
    • 00:18 How can you tell if an employee can do the job they are interviewing for?
      The best way to see if someone can do the job is to actually have them do the job.
      If you want to see if somebody can actually dig a ditch, watch them dig a ditch.
    • 00:35 How does advertising work for curbed.com?
      Smaller developers only want to spend a small amount of money like $25 or $50 to promote listings. Didn’t want to compete with zillow, trulia, etc; decided to use large pictures, floorplans. Quicklistings, allow properties to show up as posts for $250. Lower prices work in their favor due to the real estate downturn.
    News with Andrew Warner
    • 00:44 Facebook bans breastfeeding photos but allow Nazis and holocaust deniers, how should a company handle controversial content?
      Jason Calacanis: This happens on every site; what is obscene? They should have put a disclaimer/warning on the breastfeeding pages. Hatespeech/Holocaust deniers are a different problem which should be in an un-moderated section.
      Lockhart Steele: Curbed.com also gets controversial stuff in comments; needs to be moderated.
    • 00:49 sixteen of the top tumblr blogs are pornographic. Is this intentional or is porn just an issue?
      Jason Calacanis: Of course it is intentional in order to grow the site, but it is also a freedom of speech issue. Either you eventually will decide the problems with porn outweigh the benefits, or you decide to try to hide the porn. Do you want to be in the censorship business or the platform business?
    • 00:51 sproutbox startup incubator; advises to go after revenue right away. Is this a new direction for startups to go instead of building the business first then profiting later?
      Jason Calacanis: It depends on where you are at as an entrepreneur and how your business is funded. If you have a lot of money you can take a chance on ideas. If you don’t have that much funding, companies tend to drop ideas that do not produce. The big brands go for scale, then for revenue.
    • 00:54 sirius xm loses subscribers, adding iphone app. Will that save them?
      Jason Calacanis: They are losing to Pandora. I would rather hear some music that I like followed by some music that they think I will like. Free wins again.
    • 00:56 google search monopoly. Do they have an unfair advantage?
      Jason Calacanis: If something is better, people will use it. I don’t think it is an unfair advantage, I think it is earned advantage. Apple should be looked at as a monopoly.
    • 01:04 twitter will crawl links for search. Are they a threat to google?
      Jason Calacanis: Sentiment in twitter but not real information. Social search is complementary but not a replacement. I think google will buy them out for $2billion.
    • 01:07 facebook developers may see $500million in revenue selling virtual goods. Is this a fad?
      Jason Calacanis: Not at all. Market is very large in Korea, China, Japan. It is hard for Americans to understand it.
    • 01:10 unemployment rate is 8.9%. How will this affect entrepreneurs?
      Jason Calacanis: more talent at lower price. Expectations are lower. More interested in learning, experience not max contracts. Great companies are built in a down market.
    • 01:20 venture capital is down. Can you push of revenue without venture capital investing?
      Jason Calacanis: We will lose bad companies. Great companies will make it. If you don’t bet heavy, you won’t win heavy.
  • Episode 4
    • Issue: In your experience what si the most effective method to drive traffic to a brand new site in business - organic, banner ads, paid search - what has the highest atoll? How do I get traffic to my website?
      Advice: 1) Direct Traffic 2) Referral Traffic 3) Search Traffic (paid or not) Best is to do all of these things. you need to do all and be an expert at each. Which works best depends on your business model. Use RPM method. If a product is worth a lot, then room to wiggle with traffic means (ie spend money on SEO). Buy traffic - AdSense - PayPerClick through Affiliates, landing pages, content orbiting traffic. Also check Sitepointforums.com
    • Issue: How much of revenue should you be stashing away and reinvesting into the business given how the economy is?
      Advice: Depends on cash flow and how dependent you are on your company (is it a hobby or day-to-day), and where you at in your career. Nice to have 6 months rainy day fund (or one year).
    • Issue: When did you start, and why?
      Advice: Started in beginning of 2005, and we were looking at the way traditional men's brands (Comedy Central, Spike, Maxim) and how they were building websites targeting young men. Saw real opportunity to provide better opportunity and a more traditionally male editorial voice. Found bigdashboys.com at end of '04 - said we love your site, speaks to us in the way Maxim should speak to us. Saw an opportunity to take a website and grow it, and eventually bought it from original owner.
    • Issue: Did you raise capital?
      Advice: Self funded at first, we were based on revenue as we put our own money into it, within first couple months we were pulling revenue of 25 - 30k/mo. and were able to cash flow it. When we couldn't cash flow it, we would keep putting in more money.
    • Issue: Did you need to start a new business, or could you have retired given your past companies?
      Advice: It was more about having fun. Theoretically we could all make more money, but that wasn't the point.
    • Issue: Do you get much higher CPM or is it based on traffic?
      Advice: On an advertising side, we're doing integrated solutions.
    • Issue: What is intergerated solutions?
      Advice: It means partnering more with your advertisers and working with them to see what their target is. We partner with them to provide the best advertisement for our users.They sample audience and ask what is the awareness of product beforehand.
    • Issue: On YouTube, if you are actually a premium content provider, you can look for copies for what's been stolen then claim them to your account?
      Advice: Yeah. The burden is on you - you can upload 1 click or 1 million clips. They will scan it against their database, and you can have them take it down, or take credit for the actual clip.
    • Issue: Can viable businesses be built around Twitter? What are your cautions?
      Advice: We are using it as a marketing vehicle primarily, and are not clear what the impact is but clear that there is an opportunity. For example when Ashton Kutcher retweets a video for us, its a big impact. Biggest retweet that brought in advertisement one was 40k people over a couple of days. If Ashton has 2 million followers and 40k clicked - that's 2% which is good.
    • Issue: When did you decide to partner with TiVo?
      Advice: If you're a TiVo subscriber and have an advanced box, you can subscribe to break and we syndicate the content. We like to try to partner with as many people who distribute content as we can because its not abundantly clear what the world looks like and who is going to dominate - everything is an experiment. TiVo is a great brand and many people are loyal to it - and it was interesting for us to experiment with programming.
    • Issue: Why the name break?
      Advice: First named big-boys, tried getting domain without dash but lost in domain court (person was sitting on the domain). Tried to find names that we thought connoted what we were about out - help guys take a break. We sought names of that kilt, and were happy to find it. Now is best time to buy domain names. Names that were getting turned down before, are getting people back with lesser amount of offers.
    • Issue: Is Break.com's ultimate goal to become the next playboy.com without nudity?
      Advice: It's to be the ultimate men's entertainment brand - if you think that's what it is, then yes. When you think about men's time and brand, we want you to think break.com or our other providers.
    • Issue: Did you guys financially raised venture capital?
      Advice: No. we took on Lion's gate as a partner in 2007 and bought a part of the company (40%) but we put money back into the company. Never did venture route. We wanted a studio relationship to understand the business, and they wanted was, they had a lot of content, targeting guys in particular they have been run very lean and tight, didn't have a digital group, thought it would be a great way to explore distribution of content, explore ways to create content for the web, we thought it would be great to understand how a media business operates and the economics of that. Reality is we're not entertainment people - we're technology people.
    • Issue: Whats been your biggest mistake / mis-step? At Break? and Life?
      Advice: Biggest mistake for Break - we were, early on, had a great nucleus of a business, we could have probably more aggressively invested but we didn't know what the world was going to look like - we were trying to bootstrap, maybe taking money would have been a better idea - we were making investment decisions based off of 'do we want to invest 100k or do something else with it' I think our biggest mistake was that we didn't over-invest and today I think we over-invest because we are confident in our ability to execute, we think we have great people in place, and if were wrong we can quantify our mistakes.
  • Episode 5
    • Issue: How do you market a website; on a corporate blog, twitter site, on #twist??
      Advice: Don’t write about yourself, talk about other companies doing interesting things, like craigslist and other interesting features about not just self, but others as well. Also, insert self-ideas into conversations about resumes on the blogs. Another way is at conferences. Also, do a survey to hiring managers; stats and surveys give journalists a starting point to write about. Lastly, be places, conferences and events, be unique, etc.
    • Issue: What happened to Paypal fraud period?
      Advice: Russian and Nigeria mafia hackers had cd’s of stolen credit cards and would sell them. Paypal was liable. Created a system called Macks that would scan fraudulent transactions. Lost millions in fraudulent transactions.
    • Issue: What is Yammer?
      Advice: At Geni, the original company, they created communication tools called Yammer that utilize twitter. Yammer.com allows companies to communicate
    • Issue: Does it have a sales force?
      Advice: Yes, small amount of contacting other companies to join.
    • Issue: What is the business model?
      Advice: “Claimium” in a way, create a page for a company and have them claim it. Works well because any employees in the company can create the network without help of IT.
    • Issue: Recommend marketing product prior to launch?
      Advice: No, Dave feels you should wait for the big splash, all at once.
    • Issue: Worried twitter will make an enterprise system to compete with Yammer?
      Advice: No, doesn’t feel its prority and its different than the typical twitter ways. Yammer has strayed from simply being like twitter, they are like their own enterprise. They help expose intelligence within different companies.
    • Issue: Who’s the best entrepeneur?
      Advice: Steve Jobs
    • Issue: Does he view companies like SocialText and PbWiki as competetors?
      Advice: Yes, competing with them, moreso SocialText. In order to gain edge in competition, will need to implement more.
  • Episode 6
    • Issue:
      Finding and bringing in a co-founder for a startup. Technical co-founder source to go form and salary.
      Advice:
      Depends on the person, work with them for a couple of months and then decide how to structure the deal.
    • Issue:
      How do you find investors?
      Advice:
      Put up your own money first (if you can), build good connections ahead of time and when the time comes ask them to be an investor. Lastly you should try to use VCs or Angels.
    • Issue:
      How do you build a strong network and connections?
      Advice:
      Just ask and people will respond. Most people are afraid to do this. In business if someone does not get back to you keep going and asking them.
    • Issue:
      Asking investors for more money.
      Advice:
      You should always try to make money before you go and ask for more capitial. Only time you should really ask is if you are planning on developing something else for the company.
    • Issue:
      How do you get intial user traction i.e. through link building, social media marketing, AdWorks...?
      Advice:
      You got to hustle for every user. First start out with SEO and then spread to social media marketing and Email marketing if you are able to do so.
  • Episode 7
    • Issue: As a startup with advertisers, overtime how do I change the price of my subscriptions to make sure I'm not going too high or too low?
      Advice: You have to gain sponsorship early on in the stages of your startup and keep them interested. Jason calls it "transference of enthusiasm." If you show interest in your idea and startup, your enthusiasm will transfer to the other party, so doing this early on is key. Key is to keep them interested. When you feel like there needs to be a change in pricing, meet them adviser (preferably meet in person over coffee, at their convenience), sell them on your vision, get their feedback and try to solve their problems. If it doesn't seem to work out with them for whatever reason, move on. Quote from Jason, "They say 'It's not personal, its business.' But all business is personal."
    • Issue: My co-founder is losing interest in our startup, and we have decided on 50/50 share of the company. Recently, I have been doing more and more work, and he has been doing less over time. The startup idea was mostly his, so how do I resolve this issue?
      Advice: Talk to your co-founder, and offer a price (aka 20% from the original 50% of the company) for him to let you be in charge. Another way you can "buy him out" is by pretending you want out of the company and you're going to sell your piece to him and ask him how much he'd pay. Offer to buy his share at 50% more of the amount he proposes. Jason mentions that at the beginning its a good idea to plan vesting your stock over time, that way after some time, if changes occur, you're not stuck in a position similar to this scenario. Jason also mentions to make sure you always keep your cool throughout the process of negotiating a solution to the problem.
    • Issue: I am an employee that works for a startup and recently I have disagreed with a decision the CEO has made. How do I deal with this?
      Advice: It depends on the type of decision and the environment of the workplace. Some companies have a very "open-floor" where higher management will listen to what the employees say, and others who don't want to hear it. If the decision being made is a life/death situation for the company, then you need to have that conversation with the CEO and state your concern. If its a stategy or product direction type decision, then don't mind letting the original decision stand. Then if later on you see that it's not working out, have the conversation with the CEO and explain that you had a different perspective on the decision. You also need to make sure you're in the right mindset. Are you sure that the decision you feel strongly about is for the better of the company, or will it just benefit you.
    • Issue: What role does a lawyer have in a startup and what kind of lawyer should you look for?
      Advice: Usually, when doing a startup, you can find specialized lawyers that focus mainly on startups, or who also specialize in the industry your startup is involved in. As far as paying for lawyers, many startup lawyers will either flatrate you, work out a deal for a lower cost, or put the risk on themselves (where the success of the company will determine whether the lawyer will charge anything).
    • Issue: I have invested my own money into my startup, and we don't necessarily need money, but I've been thinking about working with an angel investor who would play a role of an advisee. How would you go about doing this?
      Advice: Don't worry about the investments/money at first, as Jason says, "slow your role" and ask for their advice. Read about the investor, that way you show interest in what they do, and usually that will follow into them at least hearing you out. Send them an email asking if they can pick your brain about your ideas (and make sure you are precise in your email as to what you are looking for). Then if the project is good, then the investments will follow through because they would have already given you advice and invested "some" time into you.
  • Episode 8
    • Issue: Q at 7:30 - Life style business. Is there a creative investment type by revenue share and how do you find those types of investors?
      Advice: A - #1 investor would be the Customer. Ask for them to pay for the service in advance. Ask current company, they may want to be investors. Also ask someone who knows a lot about the actual area of business.
    • Issue: Q at 15:20 - Sparetime, project. Big competetor (EVite) with similar products and big Mindshare. How do you evaluate idea developing and see if it can overcome competetors.
      Advice: A - Any good idea has a competition. Most spaces have 2 or three winners (Coke and Pepsi). Do you have the passion for the product to fight it for 5 years. Do you have the better product? Do you have a better angle then competetors?
    • Issue: Q at 25:20 - How do you get involved in events/conferences?
      Advice: A - There are local events/interest events for cheaper. Lobby crash (go to a major event and hangout in the lobby). Try to volunteer for the event.
    • Issue: Q at 53:07 - How might twitter play into local search?
      Advice: A - The new frontier is new info, unlike search engines that search on old content. Can be used to enhansed reviews or give sentiment/new data, such as whats good on the menu.
    • Issue: Q at 59:00 - Tips at targeting local searches while positioning business as local wide.
      Advice: A - Have virtual/local businesses. Not in the location but can sell to that location, needs call routing for local phone number.
    • Issue: Q at 1:41:00 - What can you learn of King of Kong?
      Advice: A - There are two different avenues you can go down. The nice guy that can finish first might take a long time to get there. Or you can be agressive and not liked, but you may be more successful.
  • Episode 9
    • Issue: My site is currently in the beta phase, how can I raise funding to move my site to the next phase?
      Advice: Network at events to meet venture capitalist. Start doing this by having a blog or social media presence. Have to have something worth investing in. Add something in your site now to make some money to generate revenue per visit so investors have small sample or model to go from. Have a “story” compelling, aim to reach Angel investors.
    • Issue: How can I protect my idea, should I consult with lawyers or should I find investors and other parts of the business?
      Advice: Protecting the idea or intellectual property is hard to get actual backing for. Everyone copies ideas on the web and changes the idea to make it better. Better to focus on the product and listen to the customers to make it grow from 1,000 users – 10,000 users. Get more users and try and get a strategy for what the business will look like and what is the end goal of the business. 5 year cycle in software to get a patent put through, won't get much protection. Be open about the idea to investors, if you aren't you can loose their interest by being to tight lipped. Ideas are overrated, execution means everything.
    • Issue: Writing a business plan and writing out salaries, what would a VC or angel investor accept as the salary for CEO of a company?
      Advice: Range 100-350 salary for a CEO for venture capitalist. Angel may expect you to take a stipend at the end of the first year. Range depends all on the financial strength of the company. Most VC's will not want the CEO at a startup to worry about their bills and not be able to focus on the startup. They look at your previous salaries and see if it's a big step up for you.
    • Issue: When you do submit a plan to a VC or angel what's the turnaround for the money to be placed in your bank account?
      Advice: It varies tremendously. It can take 3 or 4 meets or several months. Sometimes the offer will dissolve and then come back around. It will take longer than you think and the economy right now will prolong that time even longer.
  • Episode 10
    • Issue: How far into the future should a entrepreneur try to predict trends?
      Advice: Find a space where people are trying it out but no one has commercialised it yet.
    • Issue: On the internet is it inevitable that a company will go stale?
      Advice: You need to turn the buzz from the start of the company into revenue fast to stay around.
    • Issue: Should you find out how to make money off the product first or lunch the product then find out how to make money?
      Advice: Depends on how many resources you have. If have the money foces on the product and now how to make money.
  • Episode 11
    • ISSUE: How to get company promoted?
      ADVICE: Do not pay for promotion. Find companies that are brand aligned that can promote for you.
    • ISSUE: Best advice for a starting entrepreneur?
      ADVICE: Be in the right place at the right time. Understand important aspects of a company. Prior success does not ensure future success.
  • Episode 12
    • Issue: Is it better to invest in a open platform or one that is not open?
      Advice: It really all depends, but on average it is more beneficial to invest in open platforms because they usually grow larger than closed platforms and have much a stronger community presence.
    • Issue: What is the benefit of allowing people to go open source? (In regards to the Apple iPhone)
      Advice: Allowing a system to go open source will make it so that if they like your hardware and not your software you can still make a profit. It gives the customer more options from the purchase. The risk to the company can be low as well as long as they just say changing the software voids the warranty.
    • Issue: How important is the scope of the project in making decisions?
      Advice: Scope of the project is extremely important in deciding what to do and in what sort of time frame it needs to be done in. It is also important in determining how much effort will be needed to accomplish the project.
    • Issue: Which is more important: education or experience?
      Advice: Experience is far more important than education because it shows that you are already capable of certain things and it shows character traits, your relative fit in an organization, and sometimes your motivation.
    • Issue: Almost every company has some sort of social integration these days. Is it necessary to have a presence in social networks?
      Advice: No and it is not necessary for everything. You need to weigh the options wisely and utilize only what will benefit you in the end. Some social network situations may actually end up doing more harm than good.
  • Episode 13
    • Issue: How likely to entrepreneur a consumer computer hardware company?
      Advice: Very expensive. Going up against major companies: Sony, Nokia, Apple. However, some hardware companies have made it. Prototyping is much easier today. Takes a lot of cash but less than it use to. Need an idea that is different than typical ideas. Do a thousand unit run and report the response. If it does well, start selling. Use ChallengePost to post your idea and have someone build the electronic aspect from your specifications. Collaboration sites are used to meet others who may be interested in your idea such as ChallengePost.
    • Issue: How do we (Small App Developers) talk to the bigger companies for distribution?
      Advice: Be patient. They only make about 4 deals a year - one per quarter. They meet with hundreds a week just for those 4 slots. Protect yourself, assume it is not going to happen. Run your business like it is not going to happen. Ask them what they want, timeframe wise, whether it is less or more than a given amount of days. If they accept, wait for the app to sell and wait for the company's response. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, spread to multiple businesses. Companies will waste your time. Freemium road may suit small app developers better. Offer a free version and if it is well received offer a cleaner version. Ask a designer to mockup a design that can be shown if a prototype is too time consuming.
  • Episode 14
    • Issue What is the origin of Posterous?
      Advice He decided that Email was the way of the future. He was tired of web 2.0, logins, configuring files, etc. He wanted something simple where he could just email his message and it would be posted all over the internet.
    • Issue What makes Posterous different?
      Advice You don’t need to create an account to join, just an email address. Also it’s bringing many new people into the realm of blogging. People no longer need to learn how to setup webservers anymore or know how to write in HTML, all they have to do is send an email.
    • Issue Who was your first investor and why?
      Advice An Angel Investor by the name of ‘Y Combinator’. They take about 6% of the company and give you $15,000 dollars. They specialize in picking up many small companies and helping them get on their feet. They host weekly dinners where they bring in guest speakers from other successful startups to talk about how they got to where they are
    • Issue What is one of your biggest accomplishments?
      Advice Getting out service shipped and packaged with a windows vista release, it was a large amount of publicity for us.
    • Issue What was your Hardest Challenge?
      Advice We wanted to do something different from every other web 2.0 company. We want to use as little resources as possible while making our product the easiest and simplest for the users. Clouds are making it easier for smaller companies to grow.
    • Issue What do other companies think of you, such as flicker and YouTube?
      Advice As of now, they don’t seem to mind. We are making it easier for people to put content on their systems.
    • Issue Whats next for you?
      Advice Just keep growing for now. We are looking at changing the way blogging is done. We are in the process of adding themes and templates so individuals can customize and design their own blog sites easily. We are also trying to get to the next level of web 2.0 and become the future of PHP.
  • Episode 15
    • Issue: Starting your own business takes time and money!
      Advice: 1) How many months of cash should a start up have?
      18 to 24 months of runway would allow key marks to get done and get more investors on board.
      2) If founders can have a large percentage of a company at launch it is more of a success story.
      3) I could tell my employees not to go on facebook or twitter, but I actually beg my employees to go tweet about the company, its good exposure.
      4) What's you opinion about basing your company around closed platforms and what are strategies to reduce this risk?
      a) An intelligent person would build a brand that will transcend the platform.
      b) Become good friends with higher ups in the platform (ex. Mark Zuckerberg if you have a facebook app)
      c) Have a portfolio of applications and seek multiple distribution channels.
      5) On a pitch, you may know a lot about a topic but don't give so many statistics on a first pitch you will bore and glaze over the audience. Give an elevator pitch in plain english. Say in one or two sentences what your product does.
      6) Give one declarative sentence, tell me who your customer is and give me the problem you are solving. Solution: I am going to help the customer by...
      7) Never jump in front of the Google or Microsoft train.
      8) Put as much work as you can behind your main idea and do what you do well.
  • Episode 16
    • Issue: Advice
      Advice: Tip Don’t ask for permission at first
    • Issue: Advice
      Advice: Give a good amount of valuation to the investors
  • Episode 17
    • 00:15 Even if it (engadget) did not work out, what's the risk? Losing a $1200 a month job?
      Peter Rojas: The fear was losing my relevancy. I was a part of the conversation at gizmodo, and I didn't want to risk losing that.
    • 00:16 At that moment you weren't an entrepreneur. I believe you turned into an entrepreneur when you made that decision.
      Peter Rojas: I had to raise my tolerance for risk. I saw people working for free, taking giant risks.
    • 00:23 I remember having conversations with you about where we could go with blogging. I would ask you “If you had $500 more a month what would you do? $1000?
      Peter Rojas: We started to figure out the possibilities of the format. We weren't trying to be a magazine.
    • 00:33 You did gizmodo, you did engadget; what is different with gdgt?
      Peter Rojas: It's not a blog. We wanted to make a site where people can show off their gadgets in a social space. Ryan suggested we make a giant crowd sourced gadget database.
      Ryan Block: The relationship is not user to user, our site makes relationships between users and products.
    • 00:39 How many gadgets does the average person own in the system so far?
      Peter Rojas: I think the average is 8 or 9 gadgets.
    • 00:55 How did you deal with the pace of blog posting?
      Peter Rojas: I was doing about 25 posts a day. You definitely make mistakes, but the user comments help you editorially.
    • 00:56 Will gdgt offer a way to remove ads? Like a paid member service?
      Ryan Block: For the record, I wish we didn't have to have ads, but right now it is not really possible.
      Peter Rojas: Ads are not really that annoying, unless they are pop ups.
    • 00:59 When you look back on your experience, what do you know now that you didn't then? What's the big lesson?
      Ryan Block: How weblogs inc takes care of their writers, we do the same thing with our users. Without users, we wouldn't exist.
      Peter Rojas: Find people that are smart, who you trust and don't micromanage them. Let them do their work. Also team building and having fun is very important. Make everyone feel like they are in the trenches together.
  • Episode 18
    • Issue: Why would you take on the challenge of going to MySpace?
      Advice: Too interesting of an opportunity. Hundreds of billions of users, massive staff, new management, felt like a really interesting challenge to take on.
    • Issue: What in your estimation has changed in 24-36 months (short time) from being unstoppable to dying?
      Advice: No one service has a claim on people forever. More interesting, of all the social stuff we talk about is maybe 5-6 y/o, all got built in last tech crash. stuff incredibly new. Easy for company (and startup) to get caught up in it all. MySpace started well, and how to gain an audience. Then Facebook came in and took over some of the audience, starting with colleges and so forth. It is how media evolves and how to use it. The best part of social networking is that there is a vicious cycle of growth, and vicious cycle of turnover. Do people jump from network to network? MySpace went through it, Facebook and Twitter will go through it - shows the big companies can be brought down.
    • Issue: Was it that feature sets stopped evolving rapidly that caused the downturn? Facebook came around and innovated, had more developers - did Facebook out develop MySpace?
      Advice: As any co develops to a certain size, as well as the pressure of having a public company (lawsuits, building products), you see a slowdown in product innovation, as you have pressure of scaling which prohibits growth. at a certain point, innovation became harder and harder to do. fb will soon. how do you re-innovate and/or recreate the company to grow? what MySpace is dealing with at the present moment. How much of that is mgmt sense of people get used to systems and they cant see innovations - have to change culture and how much was it that the stuff building on was really difficult? It's always difficult to build around a complex platform, hard to build on a platform that scales. Also such companies are always going through platform innovation, you have to pay off technical debt. One of the interesting things all of this has done is increase the pace of innovation for people to keep up with. For example Best Buy has been smart about social things they do - one year ago it occurred to them that they could take a lot of internal services, turn into API for external services. before rest of world started building apps - IT realized we could experiment with services and have weight lifted off their shoulders. Open API is incredible innovation, look at Twitter.
    • Issue: Why has Twitter taken off in a huge way (on your estimation) e.g celebrities - why is it so pervasive?
      Advice: The last time we saw this - AOL. looking at Twitter vs Blogsphere --> Twitter came out with a service that nothing is competing with it - outside of the ecosystem. One of the world’s best distribution systems (better than RSS), great way of getting stuff out, so media companies use it. Celebrities use it to get their names out as well. the fact that you're able to tune into something real time is great, and the minimalism of it is great as well. It takes very little time, acceptable to use broken English, forces you to concise your thoughts, have no planning, ease of broadcasting.
    • Issue: What do you think will be the big win for MySpace - games? What is the future of MySpace - roots in Music or games or publishing?
      Advice: What I can say is, games are interesting to us, music is always interesting to us, I think content becomes interesting - Im not interested in becoming internal publishers of content, but instead being aggregates of content. My goal isn't to have people use MySpace as a closed network tool, but instead a public facing communication tool - it has a younger demographic than Facebook but it is growing strongly. Will have an entertainment focus instead of a pure communication focus.
    • Issue: How do you get from 10 friends to 10k? How does that make its first jump? How do you consult for startups to get from just friends to out there?
      Advice: A lot is mentally - we are coming from 'site as destination' to 'site as hub for syndication'. Question i ask is how can you serve audience and give people things they want to use to keep replicating and keep sharing. What can you give your audience that would be something seen as irresistible? I learn the most when I talked to users and ask them these questions, which makes products become more viral.
    • Issue: Do you conduct open listening labs or focus groups?
      Advice: We do use these technologies, and clip tail which helps to see users session trending. Hardest part about communities is that there are so many different behaviors within, we can break them down, but we cannot say that we have a solution for an exact audience bc as you look at the makeup, you will see that they have different needs. I think with the ease you can look at a community is great today, especially with the ability to prototype for specific communities.
    • Issue: When does social media hit the 'too big to succeed' point where it's too crowded. Whats the breaking point?
      Advice: One interesting thing is how quickly we've moved from social media begin new to impacting most parts of society and established. Management is being challenged by the fact that people in a bottom's up way go around a hierarchy and take out middle management. As large a company as CIA - 9/11 happened because of the lack of Facebook. Part of it is that there are so many options that you end up with so many people looking and staying Facebook is too mainstream. other issue is abuse/gaming of system - email comes in, spam follows. This year, we're just beginning to see what Twitter spam is. IE, the Hash tag for twist. Huge amount of innovation that has to be about bringing back community because there are tons of exploits out there that can turn people away from the original technology.
    • Issue: How do you combat the spam problem?
      Advice: You never want people to feel apart from the experience - if you get overexposed and someone feels like one of a mass with a ton of spam flowing - MySpace had this problem. We worked with federal authorities and others to combat to get the crap out of the system to make it more community friendly, and MySpace has done a great job doing so.
    • Issue: What are key action steps to make your startup go viral? Can you actually figure out a viral technique?
      Advice: There is definitely tactics to driving traffic and growing audiences in marketing, I think viral is a portion of marketing. There are general rules that you can follow, but talking about getting the general mass to follow, that's a different question. Probably not one to answer in public on a show. There are local influences and ways to make impacts in small areas before being know. Bowling pin strategy - you need to knock done one then knock down the others. Focus on one before knocking others out. MySpace originally focused on music, Twitter is amazingly successful for celebrity use case / conference use case / campaigning use case. You can't lose sight of the fact that when you start something you must deeply know that community.
    • Issue: Virtual currency - something that a lot of Americans do not appreciate - but it's a multi-billion dollar currency. It seems to be an entirely new revenue stream. Is this going to work in the states - will we see MySpace coin?
      Advice: I think virtual currency is interesting - especially online poker communities. On a bigger picture, there is content in the world that is not free, we're getting to a point where content costs cannot be supported by a pure online advertising model - so do you go to subscription or something else? And that's what virtual currency will be the next big thing. I think it's a world going towards virtual currency, but I think it's a new thing and I'm curious to see how the infrastructure will be.
    • Issue: As you look at other cultures, where do you see the real adoption of virtual currency?
      Advice: If you look at SciWorld in Korea --> make 60mil off of people buying mp3s to put on social pages.
  • Episode 19
    • Issue: Why have a toolbar?
      Advice: Top functionality on browser to stay in touch via myspace or facebook through browser and also share their activity with OneRiot.
    • Issue: How did it start?
      Advice: At first, there was a community of people connected that you can view on the side of your browser, showing where they are online at the moment and what sites they were viewing, etc. It wasn’t a big hit.
    • Issue: How long before you realized it wasn’t working and need to make a change?
      Advice: As an entrepreneur, he expects results quickly, and realized results weren’t coming good. Spent a good 6 months solving technical problems and challenges people were having, and 3 months after seeing a lack of usage since launch, they decided to make changes.
    • Issue: How do you deal with spam?
      Advice: They have multiple layers, crawl pages, and determine spam. Spoof spam really messes up search traffic and is like fake humorous links that say one thing, but then show a funny picture or something. Spam rings is another, where there is a group of 50-100 accounts that will have a conversation about a link and try to elevate content, but it’s just bs. They try to find high shares and if they are really high, they check them to make sure they are real because many times it’s a spam ring.
    • Issue: How do you keep people focused on building and on their jobs, not panicking about losing job?
      Advice: Keep company lean as possible. Made change in employment count before economy collapsed.
    • Issue: How did he raise money in this economy?
      Advice: Reached out to folks he knew in the business. Since he realized the people he was meeting with all had time on their hands because they were all available to meet, he realized they aren’t busy investing then. Therefore, they would probably be able to invest.
    • Issue: How do you know when people are interested in investing?
      Advice: Those who are interested, are truly engaged and enthusiastic. Also, they will be asking questions and paying attention. About 8 had said maybe, and that’s the worst thing to hear beyond no because it shows indecision and hesitation. You cant rely on them investing and then have them say no.
    • Issue: Has recession had big impact?
      Advice: Some good things actually, where competitors are very limited because its harder to startup, leaving less competition and more revenue for you. It hurts if you need to raise funds though.
    • Issue: State of economy now?
      Advice: Things are much better now, but not good. Having a restaurant is a great indicator, showing how people spend per night. For example, some buy more expensive bottles of wines than others, and seen a pickup in high priced bottles of wines since September.
  • Episode 20
    • Issue:
      How do I keep a startup from failing and raise money?
      Advice:
      If you have office space, get rid of it, and start to do a marketing plan that spreads by word-of-mouth. Start a blog or a Twitter account where you advertise yourself as being the best/brand yourself. Also you purple cow business cards, something out of the ordinary.
    • Issue:
      If you are a service provider how do you monotize the employer side?
      Advice:
      Establish contacts with the employers and then after you get a strong following you raise your prices on them because they will need your service.
  • Episode 21
    • Issue: When you have an idea, and people don't understand your idea at the beginning, then they say that its never going to work, then once you prove that its going to work, they claim you got lucky. How do you deal with the pressures?
      Advice: People are like modems, they eventually need to disconnect, shutdown, and reboot. After a while, humans "overload on bandwidth" and need to disconnect their "modems," or else they just can't function. Ask yourself, did your breakthrough precede a breakdown? Don't do anything to make the breakdown worse for 48 hours. Make sure you don't get mad, blame others, blame yourself, etc. and you will most likely discover a breakthrough or a vision.
    • Issue: How do you maintain a high level of motivation in a startup company?
      Advice: Stop abusing your people, based on the idea that your startup is going to fail. You agitate your people by "spinning them" and assuming they're going to read your mind. Some of the greatest tragedies in startups is firing the young people. Instead, give the young the skills to succeed. After explaining something to an employtee, don't ask "do you understand what you need to do," ask "what do you understand about what we talked about and why is it important."
    • Issue: How do you deal with when you are out of sync with someone you hired, and when they don't care/aren't motivated in the startup?
      Advice: Only work with people who are excellent (people who go beyond expectations). Ask your employees, "Do you know how good you are? This is how good you are, and you are dishonoring your gift." Give the employees the opportunity to realize what they have on their own. Two key aspects to keeping your employees motivated is reflection and insight. Reflection - change the awareness of your employees. Insight - "If I really work hard, I can get far with this opportunity."
    • Issue: What are some of the tips/techniques to be able to listen to each other in a startup, clear your "modem?"
      Advice: Best way to clear your modem is to imagine rocking in place until you find your midpoint, then get to that midpoint, and execute. If you think about autistic kids who are constantly rocking, they can't seem to find their midpoint. As an entrepreneur, imagining you are rocking and looking for that midpoint is key to re-centering yourself to be able to execute and succeed in your startup.
    • Issue: How do you deal with a narcissistic boss, or how can I make sure I don't become that boss who develops a narcissistic personality disorder?
      Advice: The world is rewarding people being goal-oriented, because nothing gets them off course. So they plow through people to get the job done, but end up being jerks in general. Jason states, "I was that guy because I didn't have good enough people." Ask your employees, "if you don't meet the target, what do you want me to do when you don't meet it? Do you want me to humiliate you in front of everyone, do you want me to pull you aside? And make sure to repeat his answer back to him to reinforce it.
  • Episode 22
    • Issue: Q at 2:25 - Why did you start this company (a music company, everyone said not to do it)
      Advice: A - Saw an oportunity. There was an open spot for music in the home. Knew some households were spending 100,000 on some of the hardware. SONOS went cheaper.
    • Issue: Q - How do you get people who think the price is too high?
      Advice: A - Just keep trying to bring the cost down and the word of mouth from customers who love the product.
    • Issue: Q at 8:36- How competitive with Apple products are you?
      Advice: A - Does not think they focus on that market at all, they may one day look to the market but currently the relationship is great.
    • Issue: Q - In 5 years will it be primarily buying music or subscribing for music?
      Advice: A - Thinks the subscription service will be the primary if and when they master it (it currently needs work).
    • Issue: Q - What is the newest addiction found in the US?
      Advice: A - App abuse, iPhone app abuse can even hurt your health.
  • Episode 23
    • Issue: What is the advantage of building vs. buying for engines running a question and answer service, such as stack overflow? (Stackexchange.com – provider)
      Advice: Depends on the amount of resources you have. If you think the business is going to be large then you may want to invest the money in building your own code so that you can easily add and adapt to new features and services you have to own. If you want to get your business up and running quickly you can outsource and use a provider but when the company gets larger you’ll be completely dependent on the provider. Earlier in your career you should outsource until you have the experience and then you can start creating your own software.
    • Issue: If I meet an angel who wants to help me raise money but charges a success fee, what should I do?
      Advice: If an angel is going to invest in your idea, they should not be helping to raise additional funds and charging an additional success fee for funds raised. If this is the case, there’s a big chance that they’re part of a scam or leading you on and taking more money from you than a typical investor would ever ask for. Your best bet is to ditch this investor and seek other investors.
  • Episode 24
    • Issue: Entrepreneur have two great ideas does know which idea to follow?
      Advice: Flip a coin and go all in.
    • Issue: How far to take your company and what big risks would you take?
      Advice: Never make a bet that you will not have a house but put in the time and effort.
    • Issue: Trying to develop accounting software does not have the money to make the software.
      Advice: Find a partner help develop the software.
  • Episode 25
    • ISSUE: How to raise money with angel investors?
      ADVICE: Decide upon definitive amounts of money and what it is going to be used for, this builds investor confidence.
    • ISSUE: Entrepreneur and Working at the same time?
      ADVICE: Quit your job and dedicate yourself to your idea it boosts confidence for investment.
    • ISSUE: Pitch advice?
      ADVICE: Try to start with the big vision then present smaller steps.
    • ISSUE: How to get advertisers?
      ADVICE: Find someone who has a vested interest. Either they will come to you or you will have to sell it to them.
    • ISSUE: What is important to start-up investors?
      ADVICE: The management team.
  • Episode 26
    • Issue:What was Moveable Type's problem with pricing and distribution?
      Advice:You could buy unlimited servers, but only host a few blogs per server. Also, there was a possibility that the service could stop at any point and that would be the end of your blog.
    • Issue:How do you go from open source to open source as a business?
      Advice:In this case they separated WordPress in to WordPress.com and WordPress.org and the code and community could be found on one site while the other provided hosting and support for a fee.
    • Issue:Did the fact that the founder was only 21 affect him negatively?
      Advice:He was still referred to as a "kid" and people did not take him as seriously as he had hoped. Sort of created some doubts about his ability due to age, but being risk averse and not overly ambitious helped him.
    • Issue:Why do you think people use your API and continue to program for WordPress?
      Advice:People in a sense own everything they make in WordPress due to the open source nature so it gives a sense of safety when developing or using WordPress.
    • Issue:How do people make money off WordPress?
      Advice:As long as they conform to the GPL license they can create themes, host sites, offer development services, and many other things. Technically it means it does not need to be open source which entices more people as well.
    • Issue:Why did you walk away from offers of multi-million dollars?
      Advice:There was too much left that he wanted to accomplish before he would sell and he enjoyed working on the project too much to give it up so soon.
    • Issue:What do you mean when you say you don't believe in a "universal interface"?
      Advice:An API allows utilization of the system on any interface people are willing to program for so adoption of markets is key in being successful. By having an API the program becomes universal and can be adapted to any device making it a "universal interface".
    • Issue:How do you find and hire great talent when you can't offer them a lot because you are a startup?
      Advice:Leave little clues in programs about how to contact us and other little things to find the people who are really into developing and coding for them. Also the people who are persistent in asking for an interview as well as those people that continuously show a lot of commitment to the project.
    • Issue:How do you deal with international clients?
      Advice:That usually handles itself because of the nature of open source. If people want something, they will translate it.
  • Episode 27
    • Issue: Why be an angel investor?
      Advice: The love of the game. One, the creative fun and proving people wrong who doubt your idea. Two, major changes that affect a number of people. The process is addictive but also draining. It is ultimately a great experience.
    • Issue: How do companies pitch you? What impresses you?
      Advice: People I may know. Is the company clear about what they are trying to do? Do they know the market? Also, know your competition. How are you going to distribute your ideas and your final product? The founders are able to program or know exactly what they want programmed to produce the product.
    • Issue: How important is it to iterate quick?
      Advice: It's very situational. Companies that are not startups can iterate very quickly. Depends on the growth of the company.
    • Issue: Dealing with frustration?
      Advice: If you're frustrated with something, fix it! Frustration creates new ideas that entrepreneurs should develop.
    • Issue: If you have an idea, how do you protect your idea?
      Advice: Don't be as protective as you think you need to be. Share your idea with others so they can give you feedback. Investors don't have time to steal ideas. Where you start is not where you're going to end up. Do not worry about it. However, don't give out your entire idea. Execution is more important than the idea.
    • Issue: How do I get my company out on the social network?
      Advice: Create a blog and write up your company's business and events. Join Facebook and Twitter. Respond to other Facebook pages. Link everything back to your website. Educate consumers on the product and what it is used for.
    • Issue: How to communicate?
      Advice: Be as precise as possible. Do not send eight page emails explaining your idea.
    • Issue: When selling your business:
      Advice: Spend as much time as possible as to why another company wants to buy you. They may be irrational or misleading. Optimize your business' importance.
    • Issue: Pitch or not to pitch to investors who charge to hear your pitch?
      Advice: Don't do it. They are typically not in it as some other angel investors who won't make you pay.
  • Episode 28
    • Issue How many years until you sold your company and how much?
      Advice We started in 1999 and sold in 2005. After only 6 years we sold for 500 million dollars.
    • Issue What was the premise of your idea for pricegrabber.com.
      Advice People have always comparison shopped for things. We realized that and decided to consolidate the large amounts of commercial data that was available and put it on the web. We wanted to make something that could help the average consumer compare prices for whatever they are looking for.
    • Issue What are you doing now?
      Advice I just started a new company called bestcovery. The point of it is to help people make educated decisions on products to buy, by having in-depth reviews for the consumers to read. We find experts in different topics such as ‘what is the best travel laptop’ or ‘best bang for your buck stereo system’ and then they write reviews for these products so the average person can make a good decision.
    • Issue What are good and bad ways to get in touch with investors?
      Advice One bad thing you can do is try to call an investor specifically since it makes you seem overzealous and thus makes the investor uncomfortable. Another bad thing to do is just send your business idea to them since there is a good chance they will never be read. Lastly being very secretive about your idea is also a turn off. What you should do is research those investors. Find out which kinds of companies they have invested in, who worked there, and the leaders in those companies. The best way to get in touch with a VC is by knowing a CEO they have previously and successfully invested in. Also knowing people in the service side of that company, such as a lawyer or recruiter, are also a good way to meet a VC. A good step to take is to try to raise money from friends and family first, so when you present your idea to the VC, its already off the ground, showing the VC your commitment to your idea and also giving them a better idea of your product and business plan.
    • Issue Why are you an angel investor now?
      Advice One reason is the passing of the torch. “Someone invested in my idea, so now I’ll try to help someone else’s get off the ground.” Also at the same time I think to myself, my idea made some investor very rich, why can’t it be my turn.
    • Issue Whats involved in a good pitch?
      Advice clear and concise stay away from buzz words have something to show the investor, back up your idea know what people want or need short but still detailed enough to get the idea across
    • Issue Biggest Challenge?
      Advice Not taking the money, we were competing against multi-million businesses with only 1.5 million
  • Episode 29
    • Issue: Stay Innovative!
      Advice: 1) Don't aim for a slow market that might be big, hook a few small customers that are ready to spend right away.
      2) Try using a freemium into premium model.
      3) There is a new claim it model, a company will make a webpage for another company and then have the company pay for it if the company likes it.
      4) Naming is very important.
      5) Did eBay make a mistake with the buy it now option?
      a) It lost its personal community a lot are just stores selling things as buy it nows.
      b) Buy it now may be at $100 but the selling price is at $50 but hasn't met reserve, what do I do?
      c) Ebay should innovate a new company because they have such large cash flow.
      6) A company will continue to do well if they have continuous innovative output.
      7) People will lose interest and think a company is dying if there is no innovation.
      8) Most competitive businesses will have innovation because if you stop running you die.
  • Episode 30
    • Issue: Poker
      Advice: and more Poker...
  • Episode 31
    • 17:18 Should you monitor employee internet usage to prevent abuse?
      Jack Andrys: Have a good policy in place. Let the employees know that you can look through logs and will know what they are doing. The other alternative is blocking sites, but that is the wrong way to go. The internet is there to be used and private use should be allowed.
    • 00:24 I completed a website for a customer, and when they wanted the site updated, they refused to pay for them. Then they sued me, what should I do?
      Jack Andrys: Can you talk to them and try to settle it out of court? Something sounds not right about this person and this situation. You have more important things to do besides get this held up in court.
      Jason Calacanis: Make sure your contracts are explicit about scope of work and what is covered in payments and make sure you get them signed.
    • 00:35 How can I grow my online community website? I've used twitter and facebook, but I am looking for more exposure.
      Jason Calacanis: Sites need excitement. I call this demonstrable growth; show that the site is building. People want to be involved in something that is growing. Have something every week, a webcast maybe to talk about the site. Have a way for existing members to invite their friends.
      Jack Andrys: Look at you user base now and see how you can improve the experience for them.
      Jason Calacanis: People are driven by recognition and affiliation. Your book list stands out to me; there is something there that can scale. You can make this social and have people discuss the books online. Pick the book tha is most popular today, if the author finds out, maybe you can get them to participate.
    • 00:53 How did you find information when you were starting out?
      Jack Andrys: You had to figure it out on your own. Now there is lot of help out there for entrepreneurs. You people should maybe get a job in their industry to see what they can learn. Pick up the phone and ask someone for help.
      Jason Calacanis: It is amazing how if you ask for help, how many people will help you.
    News with Lon Harris
    • 01:34 Twitter came out with their own mobile site, can existing companies that provided the same service stay alive?
      Jason Calacanis: If you base your company on an existing company, that's the risk you take. Look at Microsoft Word versus WordPerfect, etc. What will happen is Twitter will either crush or purchase the existing twitter based companies.
    • 01:47 The crunchpad is dead and will be released by the hardware vendor instead of techcrunch. How do you prevent disputes when doing business?
      Jason Calacanis: Don't come out guns blazing with legal issues. Just try to work things out. In this case the hardware company doesn't realize that the brand is a big part of this.
    • 01:55 A new documentary is coming out about people whose lives have been changed by second life. Do people underestimate second life?
      Jason Calacanis: If I wanted to see people who have no lives and were living digitally, I would go to San Francisco lol. I am not quite sure what people see in second life.
  • Episode 32
    • Issue: I'm Working on my first start up - macsupport.com - working with two consultants who do enterprise support. Couldn't be helped by them because they were home based users. Saw a need, set up a call center, been in business for a few weeks now. Problem we have is having a very hard time getting customers. Right now, we're seeing a bit more friction than we like for actually getting customers.
      Advice: What I don't see is a money back guarantee. Do an AB / multi variant testing - must do it on this page and figure out how you can get more people to put in their credit card information. Whole business behind having pages designed for this. Another way is to get on twitter, so that you can get your name out there. (Already on twitter, perform Free Support Fridays) See if you can get people you help during Free Support Fridays to tweet about your business - have twenty people or so retweet so that you can get your name out there. GN: It's also important to advertise that you are US based support - advertising concrete and local support. It's how DNAMail is able to compete and win against with AT&T and Verizon in the bandwidth arena. Also try to get some listening labs in place so that you can test how people see your website and if they understand what your business is based off of given what is on your page. Try utilizing your free support fridays to get a grip on advertisement - for example, video (with permission) a help session and put it on Ustream for people to see your level of service. Everyone starts at 0, you will need to build your company up one step at a time.
    • Issue: Our funding only has a few months left and that worries me.
      Advice: You shouldn't need that much funding - use your savings or money from your day job to perform simple techniques such as having your video on Ustream to promote your company. The problem with service based companies is that they are not attractive to venture capitalists because you consistently live in between the lines of overcharging customers while minimizing the costs of employees.
    • Issue: Music trainer - video / music / instruction for guitar, keyboard, music training. Lessons primarily video based, PDF curriculum. Also forum support provided - instructors will be active. Site monetized through AdSense. Through PDF, have means of putting advertisement through PDFs. Live in Southern CA, so have musicians at disposal for instructors. I have about 100 lessons so far.
      Advice: You need to scale your site to 1million unique visitors in a year - and can do so by creating about 500 pages of lessons to serve off your site. Also, on the backend, you can work with teachers so that you can be a market middle man, where teachers can offer their services through your site.
    • Issue: I own other domains (ie cheftrainer.com) and are looking to get them up and running.
      Advice: With those domain names, you need to focus on scalability. Plan and focus out the business behind each of the ideas, then go into phase 2 by implementing the business. Scalability is absolutely necessary in order to survive.
    • Issue: Is being an entrepreneur the best thing in the world?
      Advice: I feel blessed doing it. My dad worked for RCA and he was not very happy about it. Thankfully, I have a great wife that supports me, and she is there for me no matter what. I have os many friends that go to work unhappy, while I'm excited to get into work. I have locations across the country, and I have to get up and get on the airplane to go where I needed to, and that's exciting for me. And you don't have to be a CEO to be an entrepreneur. Some of our technology people are the most entrepreneurial people I've met. George: I can't do everything on my own - and that's why I have my management team. It took me a few years to put together this team. We challenge each other, and I learn a whole lot more by doing so.
    • Issue: How do you know if you should buy a company or not? What do you look for in due diligence and what does the term mean to you when buying companies?
      Advice: What type of base do they really have, and the people. The people are what you are really buying. Do they want to stay with the business? Im not interested if they want to just sell and walk away. I need them to help keep the business open. Also, we want to see their growth within a few years (about two). ARE they growing, or why aren't they growing? If they aren't growing, I can't afford to buy it as I'm a small business paying it with debt. A few years ago that was not a problem, but now a days its easier.
    • Issue: Debt finance - you take a loan - some venture companies give 5, 10k loans to venture backed companies - what's different then getting a bank loan?
      Advice: Interest rates are different, they may have an option to buy a part of the company, or may want a chair within the board. You have to be careful during an acquisition, so I bring in my auditing firm to do so. It may cost 100k, but it's worth it. You can get so wrapped up in the deal, that you lose your objectivity. We've done three deals at IKANO, and I walked away from 1 at the 11th hour. It was hard to do because of all of the emotions tied in, but it was the best decision ever made since they were a Canadian based company and the US dollar fell. It would have costs a lot of problems.
    • Issue: What is synergy?
      Advice: See if this company has a call center, and if you have a call center - things like that. It's reviewing efficiencies when doing acquisitions. If you are not going to get efficiencies when doing acquisitions, then you're better of starting your own company from scratch.
    • Issue: If I'm an entrepreneur and want to be bought, I need to have a good team, have revenue and profit, and customers. If you're looking to sell - how much is talent a decision versus revenue and profit?
      Advice: Talent is at least half of the decision when trying to buy a company. One company we bought was primarily due to the CEO and his team within he company - I would have not bought the company if the CEO was not there. I had to make sure that himself and I would mesh well - it was his first time working under someone in 8 years. Thankfully, it all worked out well. Once you acquire a company, that's when the work starts. It's not simple, but it's exciting and fun.
    • Issue: How do you learn how to do acquisitions?
      Advice: It's exciting and challenging. It's also expensive. Perfect example - Verticore. We thought we could build it, but we couldn't get it off the ground. I went to the site, and two board members and said I needed to buy something in that particular space. They were incredible helpful and they said OK, we'll get an associate on it. They did, I met with the guy, but it took us 4-5 months to get comfortable. Once we were all comfortable, we started moving. Then we were able to get into financing and everything else. When you do a deal, sometimes you are paying other people (ie lawyers or intermediaries). Again, insight is very helpful in these situations.
  • Episode 33
    • Issue: Is it possible to come out of college in 4 years and do a startup off the bat, should I go work for an entrepreneur first?
      Advice: Both ways are great ways to learn, and considering he is one of 2% trying to go for an entrepreneurship and the other 98% are lazy, aka our generation. Benefit to working for an entrepreneur is you get thrown into the deep end of the pool and able to ask questions. It’s hard to get hired because you have no experience and cant bring much to the table, but explain you have what it takes and that you can learn quickly and are willing to.
    • Issue: Is location important?
      Advice: Yes, Wisconsin is not the place. In order, San Fransisco, NY, Boston, L.A., Seattle, and look to get into Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, etc.
    • Issue: One caller questions, what is the value of advertising to a certain group of people to attract them to a site that is for a specific community of people?
      Advice: Look what the community is doing, what the topic is, and look at keyword clusters of what the community is gathering around, and this will be a gauge about who to advertise to. Basically, leverage the existing advertising ecosystem, google adsense for example. Look up the highest attractions, like cars or video games, and build around that. Look at who is spending the money online.
    • Issue: Advice for a pitch?
      Advice: During an idea pitch, be simple and personable.
    • Issue: What are core fundamentals to make a business work?
      Advice: People are the first thing, empowering them, motivating them, and figuring out their ownership in the company. Second, cost; making more profit than cost and being cheap.
    • Issue: What type of people are you looking for?
      Advice: Underappreciated people, willing to work hard for less and work their way up to later get a job with higher pay.
    • Issue: What are two things a salesperson should posses?
      Advice: Empathy and ego drive; empathy to relate to your buyer and ego to close the deal. If you’re not fired up with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.
  • Episode 34
    • Issue:
      Blogging
      Advice:
      Pick a topic that your are interested in and passionate about. Then write reviews on things that fall into that category. Also it is important to pick a domain name that is interesting and will draw people.
    • Issue:
      How do you become an Angel Investor when you don't have a lot of captial?
      Advice:
      It is not good when your young and don't have an expendible income to become an angel investor because you have to diversify what you invest in. Instead, you should look into starting your own and do your own startup. Also, if you really want to pursue becoming an angel investor, become a journalist because you can get assigned to follow them. There, is also certian criteria that has to be met in order to become an angel investor.
    • Issue:
      How do you win a fight against a larger company when you are a startup?
      Advice:
      Give your product an edge that the larger company wouldn't be able to do. If you can talk to the company and figure out a way to work with them. If they don't want to work with you than find a way to make you product a lot better than theirs. Also, you should be aggressive.
    • Issue:
      How do you get your company/product more popular?
      Advice:
      Find a way to make your company more virial. Start with asking someone who has a large following on a social media sight to use your product or to mention your company.
  • Episode 35
    • Issue: What are angel investors specifically looking for in a startup presentation?
      Advice: Angel investors are looking for those who are going to run through everyone/everything. They don't care as much for your pretty presentation and nice looks, but more for someone who would kill for it and really wants the startup that bad.
    • Issue: Im an architect, but we're not CS majors, and we want to make web tools. Will investors be interested? What do we do?
      Advice: Ideas are easy, execution is hard. Get a technical lead to be one of the founders with you. Make sure he/she's going to be a real partner who's genuinely interested in the startup and will give it their all. Do not outsource. Investors would rather invest in technologist over simply someone with ideas but doesn't have a method of executing those ideas. Go to linkedin, hackerdoos, craigslist and look for a CIO who has been in a company already and who has had experience to be one of your co-founders.
    • Issue: What is some advice for giving a good presentation to investors?
      Advice: Wear your idea. Don't be too technical, aka don't memorize word for word what you are going to say. Be very comfortable in your ideas and live your brand. Show soul/emphasis and prove that you truly love the idea you are trying to push through.
    • Issue: What are the criteria you look at to invest into a company?
      Advice: Investing in something you don't care about or know anything about is dumb. The first thing an investor should make sure about, is whether they understand and truly care about the company they may potentially invest in. Next step, make sure that it fits the theme. If it doesn't, then say NO. Otherwise after finding interest and realizing it fits the theme, investors will ask themselves, "do I want to be partners with this entrepreneur for a long time," or "do I want to be around this person every day during the growth of this company." These are the criteria's an investor will generally go through to decide whether he/she wants to invest in a company.
    • Issue: What are the most brutal ways of a startup failing?
      Advice: There are two types of brutal failings, toxic and heartbreaking. Toxic meaning that the investors can't work with each other, they despise each other for whatever reason. The entrepreneur can be doing a great job and be pulling off the best presentations, but when theres a toxic atmosphere present, there's nothing the entrepreneur can do to progress and succeed. The other type is heartbreaking, where a startup has tons of potential, but for reasons outside of his/her control, the startup fails.
  • Episode 36
    • Issue: Q at 1:30 - Is the open angel forum only open to investors?
      Advice: A - The open angel forum is a forum to help entrepenuers raise angel investment.
    • Issue: Q - Jason sh*t talks for about 5 or 6 minutes.
      Advice: A - Tyler tries to back up the person that Jason is sh*t talking.
    • Issue: Q - Why did you use the open angel forum?
      Advice: A - Even if they werent amazing angels wouldnt be a waste of time due to track record and the application form only took about 30 minutes.
    • Advice: Advice for angel meetings: Question and Answer part is very important, and is also it is very important to find angels that have a background in either entrepenuership or your area of expertise.
    • Issue: Q - Why did you start with something obscure like sleep and not something like weight?
      Advice: A - The fitness area right now is really crowded, have nike plus and body bug. Also can add a lot of value to peoples sleep.
    • Advice: Advice for entrepenuership: The most successful people seem to be the college dropouts.
    • Issue: Q - What was you expectation going into the angel investor forum?
      Advice: A - Expectation was to get infront of some angels in the LA tech scene.
    • Issue: Q - What advice do you have for people who partake in future angel investor forums?
      Advice: A - Do your homework, 5 slides for deck at most, Competitive landscape, Business model, etc... Leave time and engage in the Q&A to keep investors interested.
  • Episode 37
    • Issue: What is an entrepreneur in residence?
      Advice: Is a position that a venture capitalist will sometimes offer a successful entrepreneur to work for their firm. While working for this firm, they typically don’t come up with new ideas; rather they help work on other peoples’ ideas. They still have the freedom to come up with ideas, and have a foot in the door by working for the VC and that investment firm.
    • Issue: What is more important to investors? Being in a hot sector or having a proven revenue model?
      Advice: It’s a lot harder to make something popular then it is to raise money after it’s already popular. If they ask about your revenue model it’s probably because your product is not a viral product. If you can build a great product, making money becomes easy. When Facebook first started people were questioning how it would make money. Once it reached 300+ million users, there were endless possibilities for revenues. Scalability of the product initially is much more important.
    • Issue: Phil Kaplan, How do you pick your investors?
      Advice: We knew plenty of people with a great deal of money however; we decided to pick people who really liked our product. After narrowing it down we picked people who would be influential in our business strategy and who can spread our product to other users.
    • Issue: At what point do you get a part of the transaction or determine what to do with it as an affiliate?
      Advice: As money comes in, you generally don’t tend to look at it if it’s under a certain amount because it becomes a distraction. When transactions reach a certain threshold, then you would typically take the time to assess the transactions and how to distribute them among the involved parties.
    • Issue: When making a business pitch, what are some points that should be emphasized?
      Advice: Establishing a unique name definitely is something that will stick with the audience you pitch. When the business name is too descriptive, it will become lost in all the other similar ideas that may have a more creative and memorable name.
  • Episode 38
    • Issue: How do I keep momentum with my blog, the uniques spike then plateau back to original values?
      Advice: Work on your SCO content and referrals. Need to do more posts and content up to 5 post per day. In depth porduct review to get people to keep coming back to the website.
    • Issue: A caller asks how to improve his pitch to investors?
      Advice: Start with the positive of the product when pitch to investors and make sure the problem clearly stated.
  • Episode 39
    • ISSUE: What has to be done for an acquisition?
      ADVICE: Need to determine how to best integrate the acquisition.
    • ISSUE: What is it like to come in as CEO after there is an original founder?
      ADVICE: It is good to have a supportive board. Need to have a supportive founder who is willing to give up the reigns.
  • Episode 40
    • Issue:Can entrepreneurs be made or are they born?
      Advice:Usually they are made at a young age due to their environment and family dynamic. The more they grow up around an entrepreneurial environment the more lively they are to want to pursue that kind of path later in life.
    • Issue:What are the core qualities of an entrepreneur?
      Advice:Parents were entrepreneurs, recklessness/gambling personalities, resiliency, focused, won't take no for an answer, work harder, and believe in themselves.
    • Issue:What kind of a relationship should you have with your employees?
      Advice:Don't see them as workers, but more as students. They learn the concepts and contribute a great deal to a project, but let them move on and pursue their own dreams if they wish to do so.
    • Issue:In the early stages of your company do you worry about intellectual property?
      Advice:You can push the envelope, but don't steal ideas or do anything illegal. It is never worth it. Entrepreneurship is not always fair and the nice guy does not always win in the end.
    • Issue:Can you be an entrepreneur within a company?
      Advice:It is very difficult and you will always be faced with an uphill battle. If you want the freedom then going entrepreneur is the better choice. You cannot dedicate yourself if you have another commitment.
  • Episode 41
    • Issue: Do I look for competitive bids from other VCs?
      Advice: Say you're running a process. We want to meet everyone and make an educated decision. Compare offers and decide who would be best to work with. Depeding on how good you are at judging VCs, you can decide faster. It's like picking your spouse, so take your time. Call other CEOs that have worked with the VCs, and get their input. Make sure your partner will be around for a while and that there are backup partners from the VC firm.
    • Issue: How do programmers get better at what they do?
      Advice: Learn a functional programming language. Give programmers a day off to work on side projects. Have them make plugins for a new tool.
    • Issue: Why take out loans?
      Advice: A debt is always cheaper than equity. You can afford to borrow against that revenue. Borrow money to buy servers than pay back to the bank on a certain interest rate. Bank receives some stock options. Depending on risk, the bank will take a higher piece of the company.
  • Episode 42
    • Issue (caller question) Is it fair to take a a reduced salary for equity in a company?
      Advice You need to find out the value of the shares at the last evaluation, how many shares there are and how many they are going to give you. Cash is guarantied, equity is speculative. It could be worth 4 times the amount you gave up or nothing at all.
    • Issue How did you start off?
      Advice He started consulting company for Local Area Networks out of college. Wrote software that scanned the network and returned the results.
    • Issue Advice on Failure
      Advice When it comes down to timing on big macro trends, its everything. If you are too early to arrive on it, and technology or society isn't ready for it yet, then your business wont take off
    • Issue How'd you become an entrepreneur?.
      Advice He didn't want to be poor and went out on a limb with mp3 format. At the time .wav was the dominant format for music. Not much was known about mp3 besides it was a different format.
    • Issue How was it opening at $28 a share and closing at $120 dollars the first day. How did you deal with that?
      Advice He never took the time to think about it. He didnt check the stock price. To him it was just imaginary money; its the worth of the company, but its not money in the bank. His advice is to not think the money and just keep working. You need to always figure out what you need to do next. A hard work
    • Issue How did you develope your business further after your initial success?
      Advice He planned ahead for where music would be going in the future. He had the idea of everyone's music would be in a cloud. Nobody would own the music, instead it would be streamed from central servers to the customer. Back in 1999 this was an unheard concept.
  • Episode 43
    • Issue: Talking to investors is Key!
      Advice: 1) When talking to investors, tell them who you are and what the market and size of the market you are targeting is.
      2) Most markets are large... define your market.
      3) Keep it simple...
      4) Meet with many VC's in order to obtain interest.
      5) Use your network in order to get an intro with VC's instead of going in blind.
      6) Sometimes VC's behave really badly. Get use to it.
      7) VC's will give you money but will not make or break how your company will perform.
      8) Your company will follow the trajectory of your hard work and precedence.
  • Episode 44
    • Issue: when pitching to investors do I pitch the necessary intermediate stage of the idea or the big vision idea?
      Advice: Investors like seeing that you have built something that is working but letting them know what your big vision is.
    • Issue: what salary range should founders be in when taking an angel investment and follows up with how do you raise your salary once you have investment?
      Advice: Prefer to see lower founder salaries, 50k – 100k at the most. No salaries starting with 2’s.
    • Issue: Do you approach the board before you raise your salary?
      Advice: Yes, absolutely. Try to get all of this sorted when you are raising the money.
  • Episode 45
    • 00:19 Rob May, CEO of Backupify asks, How much focus should I place on competitors?
      Tony Hsieh: Don't worry about competitors at all. Focus on your users and the user's experience. Focus on teambuilding. Don't worry so much about the short term.
    • 00:23 Don Dodge, Developer Advocate at Google asks, If you took Tony out of Zappos would Zappos be successful and follows up could Tony turn around an old company like General Motors?
      Tony Hsieh: When companies are smaller, then the individual employees are important. Now at Zappos, the team is more important than the individual.
    • Tony Hsieh
      Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of the soon to be released book Deliverying Happiness
    • 00:49 What is the best advice you can give entrepreneurs?
      Number one, follow your passion. Figure out what your passion is and what you would be happy doing for ten years. Don't focus on money.
      Number two, figure out your core values and culture that you are willing to commit to. It will guide you as an employer and provide guidance for your employees.
    News with Lon Harris
    • 00:56 As a CEO, how do you decide when to send your employees to a conference?
      Jason Calacanis: The only reason people go to conferences is to network. 80% networking, 20% education. I don't think it is a good idea to spend money on this if you are a startup company.
  • Episode 46
    • Issue: Do you think the Weblogs model will work in today's work, does it need modification to work today, and/or does it work in a vertical or specific niche, ie only for African American website
      Advice: Problem today is that the niche is much more crowded space. It wasn't as crowded as it was before - you have to really be willing to invest money and go slow. These are hot/cold businesses - you need to fire up the hot embers (branding, reads). Everyone wants it to happen overnight, but the arena is already crowded. Start the network while it's high quality and start with one blog, see if advertising picks up for one of the blogs before you publish ten. Forget about the big architecture of the network and start small. See if you can get just one blog retweeted a few times, and go from there. That is what made blog sites like Engadget special - they made editorials that you could not ignore, and had impact. Think per post and per writer instead of per blog. Find a beach that not many people are surfing on, and innovate as the tides are getting better and better.
    • Issue: How did this all start - how did you get into technology and how did you get into the tech industry?
      Advice: Got my first computer at 6, and my friends were programmers - one thing I took from that was that I wasn't going to be a programmer. The programing languages I saw were Assembler and C++ and I was not interested. I started getting into Gaming Journalism, including Quake 3. At first I was paying another programmer, and got annoyed with asking someone else to get things done, so I started doing things myself. I learned PHP, and realized it wasn't so difficult. I kept on going with my blog, and then started working for an incubator. Thankfully, I didn't sign anything for VC money from banks because indviduals are responsible for paying back the banks.
    • Issue: Is that a reason why entreprenourship is down outside of the US?
      Advice: Partly, but I think of the flipside: it makes you think of what you can do without that money. I think it's a misconception that startups need to have venture capital money. There's nothing easier than spending other people's money, and you are more prone to make bad decisions with it. IE too much staff, too many computers, and not enough fire under your ass to get things done.
    • Issue: Do you think new entreprenours should be focused on building big, spending money and hoping for the best?
      Advice: No. I think that you have to have an instinct for making money. You should be focused on building out small and seeing the revenue flows in. 37Signals for the first year ran off of one server - by the time we came around to purchasing our second server, that 500 dollars did not matter because of the revenue we had made. However if you flip it, and spend money building a large infrastructure and hope for the best, you don't have great odds at succeeding. Yes Google, Facebook and Youtube are huge successes, but how many other companies are within their market segment that did not succeed? It's like playing the lottery - for that one person (ie Facebook), it was worth spending the money for the loterry ticket.
    • Issue: What about the flipside - Do you think that you have a great idea that takes a lot of people you would think about external financing?
      Advice: No, dead set against it. it's a practical thing. I don't want to be held to someone else. Why would I pick an idea, believing so much into it that I would put my own money into it?
    • Issue: How many team members at 37Signals?
      Advice: A: 16
    • Issue: Do you think building big companies like Facebook or Twitter would require more complications and people?
      Advice: If you build a company that is not about begging for advertising - one that scales (you need more hardware, you buy with revenue). If we get more users, the problem we have is that we have a lot of money coming into the company that we will use some for to buy more resources.
    • Issue: You don't subscribe to swinging to fences, raise a lot of capital get a ton of users and figure out how to make money after?
      Advice: Absolutely not. Why do you want to build big? Who cares about marketshare? I do not care, unless it means outside profits This is where Apple has it dead on right. People have said Mac has owned 7% of marketshare. But if they have 35% of the profits, then they are in good shape. The only thing that matters in the end is profit. Marketshare doesn't matter unless it leads to profits. I think there is an easier way to get to profits then worrying about marketshares.
    • Issue: What about building up your product and business to the best it can be in order to generate profit?
      Advice: Outside factors are too risky to focus on a magic switch - meaning building a great big product and putting everything in place, then flipping a switch to generate profit - ie advertisement.
    • Issue: Would you walk away from your company if the selling price was 10x greater than revenue generated?
      Advice: No. What else would I do with my time? I would take 20 years of steady revenue over a single pay day.
    • Issue: Is that an emotional thing?
      Advice: No, it's practical thing. The difference between having 2 million and 10 million is small compared to 15k to 1 million. I've hit the large numbers and I don't need anything more than what I have. It comes down to lifestyle and materials - do I need a private jet? No. I enjoy my job and realize that the notion for settling for a big pay day to go relax on a beach happens for maybe 3 months before you're back at it.
    • Issue: But what if you sold your company to start another?
      Advice: No. If you're not working on your best idea right now, then you should be quitting because you're not investing 100% into it that you could. I am working on my best idea. If i sell that, I'll have to work on my second best idea - why would I want to do that?
    • Issue: But if this idea is great - won't you have any more?
      Advice: I think it's the very best idea in my life. If you look at big companies right now, tons of them are banking off of there biggest best ideas to this day. Microsoft - they are banking off of Office and Windows - the biggest names since Microsoft started.
    • Issue: How can you focus on anything but profit? Isn't that what the baseline of business is - generating profit?
      Advice: A: Yes, but a factor has come into play to change this, and that is the exit.
    • Issue: Exits have changed business ideas from profit to scaling in order to be bought out at the best price.
      Advice: More power to you for doing so. But what is annoying is big companies buying these ideas for outside profits when it does not make financial sense. They think they can perform some magic trick when it doesn't work out. Very often, the big buyout does not work. Some company gets away for not being profitable, then someone buys them, and they end up squandering them. The vast majority of acquisitions just pan out.
    • Issue: Why do buyers keep buying?
      Advice: Delusions of grandeur. They think this time it will work. It seems as cases of insanity. Once in a while, you have a lottery. But is that a good way to build a business. Google for example - they have not made their money back yet. Also, Hotmail - Microsoft's web services has been on the decline for years now - buying Hotmail wasn't a good idea.
    • Issue: So this model benefits the entrepreneur?
      Advice: Yes, but why can't we go back to the basis and just build a profitable company? These are bubble games, and they do not build profit over time. Only management benefits. Looking at the overall system, it doesn't seem right. Lots of capital wasted, and people are laid off all of the time.
    • Issue: What do you think of the founder shares - where founders can take money out on the table.
      Advice: Yeah. Selling a stake of what you have without giving up control can be a good idea. Hopefully also encourages you to stay in the game longer.
  • Episode 47
    • Issue: What paperwork is involved in starting a company, who to go to in order to start an LLC?
      Advice: Ask yourself if you have partners, have you done it before, and what resources do you have (how big will the company get). If you have partners, you need to worry about stock and ownership for them, if not, just start up the LLC and worry about taxes. He suggests finding a lawyer and saying you don’t have much money, but need advice. Many lawyers will offer a discount to young ambitious people trying to start because it grows a relationship for the future with you, which would be much profit for them if you succeed. Legal issues and accounting are the most two important things when starting up.
    • Issue: What is a great location?
      Advice: Boulder, CO. There are very few, yet high paying big startups there.
    • Issue: What does search engine marketing paid search mean?
      Advice: The process of going to a search engine and typing something in to search and you can put your ads on Google that will relate to what people are searching certain sites and when someone clicks on the ad, there is a payout. The highest bidder to Google gets to put their ads up. What Trada does is solve the problem by bringing the expertise to everyday people, creating a marketplace where an advertiser search engine marketer is willing to spend on the bid, and based on people who are willing to put a certain bid, it combines those people together to work together. The combined expertise of people will help narrow down the work and get more clicks. It also allows experts to help newcomers out.
    • Issue: What do you read to keep up with search engine marketing, why is it so underground?
      Advice: People conflate search engine marketing with search engine optimization. SEM is also paid click, etc, and has many different acronyms. Once you understand all the acronyms, you can find blogs. Also, the industry changes very quickly.
  • Episode 48
    • Issue:
      What is your formula for marketing?
      Advice:
      The best marketing is to make a good product and this will market itself, like the iPad. Use Purple Cow as a strategy, doing something unique in marketing and attaching your product to it.
    • Issue:
      Marketing vs. Distribution
      Advice:
      Marketing is for more creative people and distribution is for people who are good with not creative but more on the business end.
    • Issue:
      What should you do if you don't know what VC to use for your product/company?
      Advice:
      Look for another company/product that is similar to yours and work backwards to find where the funding came from.
    • Issue:
      How do you value your business?
      Advice:
      There are bankers who can tell you what someone paid for a similar business. It is harder with a service based business because they could give you a price and then ask you to stay on and work for them. If you can try and get all the money up front.
    • Issue:
      How do you know when to raise captial from VCs?
      Advice:
      If you have a good team, a good market, a good product and traction and at least an idea on how you will make money then it is probably a good idea to get money from VCs.
  • Episode 49
    • Issue: How formal should market research be when considering a startup?
      Advice: Jason states that his past ideas, 10-20% of friends understood his idea, 50% didn’t understand at all. Focus on what inspired you to the idea, what problem are you solving. Sky Dayton claims he uses/used 0% market research, but instead looks at what ways he can position the idea and how to price it.
    • Issue: What do you think when, "the idea is too small to be a business."
      Advice: If you really focus on what your passionate about, don't listen to everyone else, just stay true to your vision. Niche is the new mainstream.
    • Issue: What is your comments on Helio, a company that didn't necessarily succeed as much as your other companies, and looking back, what do you think about the way you did things there?
      Advice: It was a great learning experience. If your thinking about getting into the mobile industry, distribution is key. This is the reason why Apple works so well, they have their own stores that distribute their products. "I never left home plate. I stuck with it all the way through. Entrepreneurs don’t have reverse or neutral, they only have forward. I'm always thinking about ideas and when the time is right, I'll jump right in. This is an amazing time to be an entrepreneur."
  • Episode 50
    • Advice: Advice: Just because you F*ck up once doesn't mean you shouldn't try again.
    • Issue: Q - Two great ideas how do you choose which one to use as your future project?
      Advice: A - Get off the Bitch Train and just pick one.
  • Episode 51
    • Issue: Reloom.com, What do you do if you have a successful entrepreneur who wants to help your idea but can't fully commit? Should you consider him as a part-time co-founder?
      Advice: Once you are serious about something and have money invested into it, part-time is not going to work. 100% of the energy needs to be focused into the idea. You should talk about matters of equity to establish grounds if the prospective partner is only going to be part-time. You don't want to establish a partnership where you resent not having that conversation to start.
    • Issue: What if the part-timer has clout and prior success?
      Advice: You may want to consider him as an advisor not a founder.
  • Episode 52
    • Issue: How do you start a business with bad credit?
      Advice: You should start a service based business or a client backed company. Solve a companies problem and let the company license the product to use it, previous employers work best they know you and work backwards.
    • Issue: What is the key to your success with groupon?
      Advice: solving a problem in a way that entertains and stays focused on the long term goals.
  • Episode 53
    • ISSUE: How to find angel investors?
      ADVICE: Find people who have done something similar or have an interest into what you are trying to do. Try to go to tech events, Linkedin, etc.
    • ISSUE: How to get angel investors to invest?
      ADVICE: Make sure you have a clear exit strategy.
    • ISSUE: How to have a good pitch?
      ADVICE: Include an interesting and meaningful use case scenario.
  • Episode 54
    • Issue:How is Socialcast different from other blog sites/software?
      Advice:You can control your blogs and collaborative community as well as who has access to each section of the community. Also, since everything is secured, it is possible to host critical/confidential data on their servers.
    • Issue:How do you handle such a lrage demand on a network?
      Advice:It works similar to something such as Google Maps. A user can get a large, non-specific, overview of the entire network and drill down to specific section of the network and get more in depth information on that specific part. This way no one piece of the system is overloaded at the same time.
    • Issue:Where did a lot of your investment money going towards?
      Advice:A lot of it now is going to hiring and getting a little more staffing while the rest is going into innovation in order to help them continue to grow as well as stay ahead of the competition and keep their competitive edge in the market.
    • Issue:How are creative disputes handled in your company?
      Advice:They have a "meritocracy" in which the people who are known to have a little more talent in specific areas and have more experience have a bigger weight when deciding on what new things will be implemented and expanded upon or which ones will be pushed aside for the time being.
    • Issue:What kind of launch model did you use?
      Advice:They decided that they would only launch when they were good and ready. There would be an alpha and a beta, but the full release to the public would wait until as many of the bugs were worked out and it was really ready to be out in the marketplace. It is not worth jumping in too quickly if your product ends up being terrible. You only get one first impression.
  • Episode 55
    • Startup: Brand-Yourself
      Idea: A proactive approach to create a better reputation for yourself through online services.
    • Startup: Tonido
      Idea: A USB device and web server that allows users to run their own cloud. Able to share all personal documents, images and data on the web. Data can be accessed from anywhere.
    • Startup: Viralogy
      Idea: A set of tools that automates ecommerce intelligence. Tracks past orders and places recommendations for new products on the home page, product page and checkout page.
    • Startup: Turbo140
      Idea: A website used to find and source temp jobs.
    • Startup: ARM Insight
      Idea: A way to optimize your debit card by using data analytical approaches.
    • Startup: RRBO
      Idea: A StubHub like website for timeshare properties. Transactions occur through the site meaning no work for the owner.
    • Issue: Who can I trust my idea with? Should I be selective in who I talk to?
      Advice: Investors typically do not steal ideas. Give your idea in general terms and do not telegraph what your are going to do next. Try to only pitch to the number of investors necessary.
    • Startup: Admin Arsenal
      Idea: An application that allows sys admins to get their job done with an easy to use interface.
    • Startup: PPM Lite
      Idea: A Basecamp for project management tools such as MS Project. Able to visualize Basecamp project.
  • Episode 56
    • Issue Where can I find technical co-founders?
      Advice First step is chat rooms, shows like TWIST and blogs about starting a business. Make your own blog posts or even put ads on craiglist. First step is getting your name out there so people know you are looking to form a start up. Also going to start up events in your area and talking to people there is one of the best ways to start up. There are some websites to help such as twiststartupeffect.com.
    • Issue How do you know if an idea is marketable?
      Advice Find someone who has “domain expertise” and talk to them. Think of people you know or actually go out and ask employees that work in that field what they think of the market. See if that have One problem people have is that they think of ideas and solve them, but the only thing is no one had that problem to begin with, so it isnt marketable.
    • Issue Should I feel worried a VC may steal my idea?
      Advice While of course there is always a risk of someone stealing your idea, its not very likely a VC will take it. Its a good chance they have already thought of your idea and its sitting in a folder of things to do. They are too busy to steal an idea, as they are usually focusing on many other business ideas at once. Ideas are easy, but execution is what matters.
    • Issue How do I monetize a content website. (EX. tutorial website)
      Advice They are usually very hard to monetize in most cases unless you have higher viewer counts. Businesses are always looking for ways to get their name out there, so the more viewers you have, the better chance of a business endorsing. Also you can turn your website into a freemium model, where you can give some kind of trial to your website or reduced feature version for free and when that time period is up, the customer has the option to purchase the full access. Another way to do it is by using custom publishing. EXAMPLE: In this case, he could ask companies if he could make a certain amount of tutorials for their product in return for payment or endorsing.
    • Issue How do you define failure and cut your losses?
      Advice Well the most successful people are the ones who have failed the most. It means they've tried over and over to get to where they are. You learn from these failures and continually grow from them. A good attitude to have is a “never die” one, where you don't dwell on your losses and just fight through it. Sometimes when things are so messed up, it may just become easier to stop, wipe the slate clean, and start fresh. Because you are the creator of the idea, you can always create again. Failure is not the end of everything, it only means you have to rethink it and try again.
  • Episode 57
    • Issue: Have an Intuitive Design!
      Advice: 1) If your building something you would love to use, there will most likely be a market for it.
      2) Win over mom as a marketing strategy, she has the money to spend, not the kids.
      3) If you are a known entity you have a leg up because people can search for you.
      4) Content is king, if you have something that works well and has a good design, it will do well.
      5) Get exposure through promotion.
  • Episode 58
    • Issue: How do you maintain culture?
      Advice: They use current employees to help vet future employees and they are involved in the hiring process, they have a keyword document that helps guide them in every aspect of the company.
    • Issue: What did you learn at eBay?
      Advice: Learned a lot about culture and word-of-mouth marketing with incentives.
  • Episode 59
    • 00:07 Kevin Goldman Goldman Design His company has grown and he needs to bring in additional high level help, what is the best way to compensate and maintain incentives?
      Jason Calacanis: Find out where the person is at in their lives. Come up with a couple packages, consider equity with a vesting period. Meet five or so people and ask their expectations.
    • 00:27 Fan Bi Blank-Label At what stage do you bring in professionals?
      Jason Calacanis: You have a problem and that's a good thing, turn your weakness into a strength. To let your business catch up, limit further sales to something like 500 shirts for 500 amazing individuals for the next few months. You don't need to bring in professionals.
    • 00:41 Ken Seville Civi-Side Business development is ahead of product development but I have a great PR opportunity should I wait till my product catches up?
      Jason Calacanis: Don't worry and just be crappy or release when you have a great product. Both will work and neither is better but the opportunity to learn from the market and pivot to make your product better is easier once released.
    News with Lon Harris
    • 01:31 iPhone 4 was released yesterday. Will you upgrade?
      Jason Calacanis: Of course I am going to upgrade. Apple products are made well, the price is great and the products have become status symbols. The battery, the keyboard, the screen and the camera flash are all great.
    • 01:40 Is taking up other developers Playdom's fastest route to taking out Zynga? Is that how you would spend $76 million?
      Often VCs chase investments and if they don't get the number one, they will go after the number two or three company. Zynga is definitely number one. It will take a paradigm shift to displace them. If you are number two, you can make money and probably get an exit first.
    • 01:44 Will major sites focus their SEO on facebook as well as google?
      Jason Calacanis: Apple, Google, Facebook will eventually all have their own search, ad network and branch out into many other products. The internet singularity is coming.
    • 01:48 Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube was dismissed by a judge this week. Do you agree with the decision?
      Jason Calacanis: YouTube gave the media companies tools to takedown improper use of their content. They went above and beyond what they had to do.
  • Episode 60
    • Issue: When did you start NC Moco, and how is it doing? How long has it been around, how many people, founded?
      Advice: Started June 26th, 2008. Used to work for EA was a group general manager there. Fell in love with the iPhone, was great for gaming. So started NG Moco. Raised a round of financing working with MG Perkins. Today we have brand NG Moco, launched 25 apps, 16 in top 10 and many of those top 1. We have 120 people now between SF, NY and a small team in Portland. Going at it hard to create a great business. Most inflective moment in business life was turning our business into free to play model.
    • Issue: How many people have downloaded We Rule and how many people play everyday?
      Advice: Our Downloads are about 2.5 mil unique, and we don't talk about specifics of daily active uniques, but its in high hundreds of thousands and customers tend to come back every other day.
    • Issue: What do you credit the addictiveness of these games?
      Advice: There's the core convulsion loop - most great video games are tightly wound loop. If you took Diablo - kill enemies to get gold to buy things to kill things better, and repeat. At some interval you get experience points to level up to buy better things to kill things. Great video games at their core have simple convulsion loops - what we've done with We Loop is create a great convulsion loop to earn, build up and buy. Also is unique expression - your kingdom is unique to you and your visitors, so you get a thrill or rush by people viewing it. Social obligation - when ordering or responding to jobs, you're responding to loops of social obligation. IE when you get a push notification of NEil ordering 100k broomsticks from your kingdom and to accept, you have been trained to say yes, to engage in the social obligation.
    • Issue: Do you or anyone in your team have backgrounds in Psychology?
      Advice: No, we don't. We are game makers, we have just learned these things as we went along. At NG Moco we try to hire and grow the best game makers int he world and combine with the best analytics to create the best experience.
    • Issue: What do you think is the future of iPad gaming? What promise does it hold?
      Advice: It's a huge marketplace - when we started the company, we knew that approximately 5 billion people would be walking around with devices such as the iphone in their pocket. Tablet computing really put everything together, and we think that the gaming business will have a huge opportunity to harvest this potential.
  • Episode 61
    • Complaint: As a freelancer, she resented Jason’s request for freelancers to submit Launch Conference logo designs for free. She feels that, as Jason stands to profit from the conference, and has enough funds from previous investments and companies, he could easily afford to hire a talented designer and compensate them fairly rather than attempting to exploit free labor by making empty promises for tweets and exposure. Thinks Jason is a “cheap millionaire”…
      Answer: His responses were constantly cut off by her continuous arguing, but Jason feels a few things hold true: First, that in relation to free or cheap labor, outsourcing is ok in his opinion, as he believes in a global economy, with 40% of Mahalo dealing outside of the country and also that even though it may not give opportunity to US citizens, the workers from, for example, India, are more skilled and harder working than Americans. Also, Jason felt asking for a free thing here and there isn’t a big deal, just to get some ideas and such, and it was a casual request. The other calls were not informational.
  • Episode 62
    • Issue:
      If my company is in a high place of a market, how will pricing affect my product or service moving forward?
      Advice:
      Do not worry about your standing in a market instead worry about being better and cutting prices is not always the right place to start to gain market share. You want to work on marketing and connecting with people who don't really know where you place in the market. Work on promoting yourself.
    • Issue:
      What charateristics do you look for when hiring?
      Advice:
      People who are smart and work hard.
  • Episode 63
    • Issue: When should people start paying themselves a salary?
      Advice: "As soon as it starts making money. We didn't start taking money till we knew that we could afford to. Look at how much you have raised, how long will the company stay in if I take the salary. Don't take salary until the company can afford the burn rate."
    • Issue: What is the value of a co-founder?
      Advice: "It's very invaluable because everyone brings something to the table. Usually, the best way to go about it is having people with different points of views. If your looking for a co-founder, look for someone who thinks differently than you."
    • Issue: What qualities do you look for when hiring?
      Advice: I always loook for very smart/hard working people, but more important is belief. I only hire people who truly believe that the company is going to be one of the best in the world.
    • Issue: What mistakes have you learned to avoid when interviewing?
      Advice: I've learned to stay away from picking someone who only has their own belief. I ask them questions to make sure they have good work ethic and will work hard and be open to other's ideas.
    • Issue: What is your biggest mistake?
      Advice: Not planning enough for growth. You have to be prepared for unexpected growth. What I would do is plan for what could happen if things went wrong, but didn't really plan for the rapid growth.
  • Episode 64
    • Advice: Q - Do you play any games Jason?
      Advice: A - I play the Call of Duty on the XBox, Angry Birds on the iPad, never got into World of Warcraft. Well aware of games.
    • Issue: Q - How many employees do you have and how many game players are there?
      Advice: A - 50 employees at the headquarters and 10 in Asia. 6.4 Million registered users. On a monthly basis get about 2 million uniques coming through.
    • Issue: Q - What is the breakdown of your freenium model? What is your expectation of when you launch a game is that 1% of the people will pay? Is there a model that has emerged yet in the freenium space of games?
      Advice: A - About 10% - 15% of actives pay us from anywhere to $45 - $50 a month for 4 to 8 months.
    • Issue: Q - Who is paying kids or are they adults? I mean a kid cant spend like $300 on a game can they?
      Advice: A - I think society as a whole is looking for something interesting to do beyond movies and music. I think human beings as a whole are not 12 or 16 or 20.
    • Issue: Q - Whats the record of how much anyone has spent in your system?
      Advice: A - Well we've actually got familys that have paid like $120,000.
    • Issue: Q - Whats it like being a female CEO? Is there any difference being a female CEO than a male CEO in the technology businesss?
      Advice: A - Female CEOs should be judged on the same standards as any CEO. At the end of the day, the gamers, the customers, and the success metrics come from performance, not gender. Which is why awards such as best Female CEO are offensive.
    • Issue: Q - Do you think that less woman are interested in being a CEO?
      Advice: A - Traditionally the men go out and make all the money and the women spend it. Essentially the CEO role is not what most people think it is. The investors have to give a chance to women to be a leader.
    • Issue: Q - Is there racism in Venture Capitalists?
      Advice: A - There is definately profiling due to the fact that VCs operate on trends.
    • Issue: Q - What is it in social gaming that a CEO founder has to focus on?
      Advice: A - I think persistant observation of the trends in the game and in the community via data, via forum feedbacks, focus groups feedbacks. Talk to the QA guys and the Customer Support guys and the in game Game Master guys and see what the users are like.
    • Advice: Random Fact - Four types of people in a social game. 1) The Alpha Male/Female. 2) An organizer that wants to organize an event. 3) Likes to collect stuff. 4) Likes to be an observer. All Four types have to be in your game to make it a real community.
    • Issue: Q - Is html5 ever going to be a robust gaming platform?
      Advice: A - I think users don't care about the format, it is just the richness of the game.
    • Issue: Q - College recruitment website. Not a lot of information available, don't get the nitty gritty. Looking like your going to need more people to be able to launch it. How should you go about doing this?
      Advice: A - Look at where you are in your career. Some people may do good with a partner. Try to pick the road on least resistance try to pick the road to push the product forward. Different people can do different things.
  • Episode 65
    • Issue: What are the barriers for a VC or Angel to invest in a company a long ways away?
      Advice: Generally VC and Angels won’t invest in companies over an hour away, some will travel by plane short distances but you need to find someone local. Try to build an Angel investment community by finding someone successful in your area and play to their ego. Because, you live in such a remote location take a successful (locally oriented) idea from another country (like Groupon) and create it in your country. Play to your strengths which is little competition you could easily start a podcast and provide lead generation for the tourist industry.
  • Episode 66
    • Issue: I am having trouble finding my target community (manufacturers), how do I find them?
      Advice: You basically are looking for lead generation, create content around the subject and brand it well and make it memorable, write about services they use. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a good approach companies like Trada offer a compelling service. Writing a whitepaper that can be mailed out in a handwritten envelop is an option, it can be pricey but if it leads to a couple customers and your return is high that is an option. Create a really good landing page like 37signals they are good at getting information. Be creative and do something like Grasshopper and the chocolate grasshoppers they sent. The freemium / tiered model like Freshbooks maybe an approach, consider giving away the service for 6 months and ask for reviews. Be creative and they analyze the results.
    • Issue: What does the investor bring to the table?
      Advice: The value has to be key to the companies growth in order to sell the investor to the other investors.
    • Issue: 2006 was a very good time for an exit but how do you reconcile selling when you decided to sell and do you think about your timing?
      Advice: You think about it a lot but you really don't know, it's a personal answer you have to ask yourself if your still interested in the business, have you done due diligence for your investors, are you fully vested in the company.
  • Episode 67
    • ISSUE: How do I get people to know my product without spending money?
      ADVICE: Guerrilla marketing, putting fliers in different locations. Viral marketing, something inside the product that carries the message of the product.
  • Episode 68
    • Issue:How can you spin new technologies off of things developed within an existing company?
      Advice:Ideas are easy, but execution is hard. It is hard to manage multiple companies and make sure they go on track and become successful. You need to pick the best ideas and have the available resources in order to make sure everything goes smooth. It is usually not worth spreading out to more than one company, statistically speaking.
    • Issue:What makes the service different fron Angie's List or Craig's List?
      Advice:They both lack safety and security of the people offering the services that you need for the things that matter most to you. Each person is verified by a human team and is put through multiple criminal checks as well as other checks that verify identity and past history.
    • Issue:What makes the site special compared to other similar sites?
      Advice:Each post is made by a real person who has posted themselves and wanted themselves checked. They want to create a community built from people and not from scraped data or random unclaimed filler data from random sites. You can also contact the people directly and bid or request quotes on their services.
    • Issue:How many people built the basis of the site?
      Advice:There were only two engineers who built the first version of the site.
    • Issue:How do you find you employees?
      Advice:A lot of luck, but a lot is through personal connections and things like friends of friends or reaching out to specific communities based around what specific type of employee is needed. Places like campuses are also really great ways of finding people willing to work on a project.
    • Issue:How big of a deal is it to get the domain name and how did you get it?
      Advice:It made the difference in getting investments and it creates an image of the company and becomes something people can associate with. They got the domain by financing it in 3 pieces using its escrow and totalling $36,000 in total.
    • Issue:How did you find out what features to build in to the site?
      Advice:Simply by asking the first to adopt the system what they wanted in the site. This way you are getting the needs right from the people who use it and can develop knowing that the feature will actually be beneficial and used by the community.
    • Issue:How did you get your initial money to start the company?
      Advice:Basically they did not wait for investors to begin the project. They sought out friends and family in the first round and started work and as things progressed and they had more and more to show they got appointments with investors and then began looking for the larger sums of investment money to further their project development.
  • Episode 69
    • Issue: What is Mark Zuckerberg's exit strategy? Why is he staying in?
      Advice: Most rational people would sell their ultra-hot startup. Zuckerberg probably enjoys his job and likes having control. Stay in when the company is hot. Stop when you don't feel like doing it or the product stops selling. Also, he can start selling on the secondary market. Zuckerberg wants to be the next Bill Gates and may never sell.
    • Issue: (fFlick) What's it like being a startup right now?
      Advice: Exciting. Using Angel Investors and financially well-off friends to raise money. The name is out there, just working on growing. Alot of press and movie people excited about the product.
    • Issue: How to get noticed by Angels?
      Advice: Work for a successful tech company and make a name for yourself. Increase your credibility. Provide a useful and clean product.
  • Episode 70
    • Issue What should a start up do when threatened by a large or dominant competitor?
      Advice Well first you shouldn't immediately fear for your idea. If you believe your product is better, fighting up against a bigger company can bring the need attention and publicity that you need. It also brings feedback to your product, giving you an idea of what people want and don't want. Your focus is on building a product that people need and want, so feedback is very useful. You are basically baiting the other company to help you gain marketshare. It also motivates your employees to fight for the company and its idea, aiding you in building a stronger, closer community in your business. You should use all this “negative” publicity as a good thing.
    • Issue We want to sell ad's on our website. Any advice on that?
      Advice In Jason's exact words, all ad networks seem to suck equally. They have low inventory and sell to the worst advertisers. There are some high profile companies such as Federated Media that are better than the others, but not by much. It is important to find ad networks that are relevant to your business and synchronize it with your product's audience. Ad networks that make the most money off of affiliates or cost-per-click. Be careful of trap ads like blinking banners and leader board since these can actually drive people away from your site. At the same time, you don't want something a person considers a passion, now annoying. Someone who knows and loves a product most likely doesn't want to see ads for it all the time. It comes down to balance
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