MeetInnovators™

Learn About How VCs Raise Money By Someone Who Was Pitched by Fred Wilson

Learn How EzineArticles gets 30M uniques/month and delivers 200,000 clicks/day to its members

How The Dominican Republic Could Have A Brand New City As Powerful As NYC Within 10 Years

Learn The Inside Story From One Of The Members Of The MIT Blackjack Card Counting Team

Did You Know 24/7 Real Media Is An $800M Advertising Business In NYC?

Learn How Venture Capitalist Brad Feld Thinks About YCombinator And The Angel Business

Find Out How A Wall Street Veteran Successfully Became A NYC Startup Investor. Learn How To Raise Money From A NYC Angel/VC Investor. Find Out How Roger Ehrenberg Has One Of The Strongest Investment Strategies I Have Heard

Why David Kidder Is Building His Third Company In New York City. How Clickable Is Borrowing From Apple's Philosophy In Building Its Company. The Difference Between "Cheap" Money And "Expensive" Money When Raising Capital.

Learn from one of the top angels in NYC – David S Rose. Hear What David S Rose Thinks About Jason Calacanis’s Anti-Angel Payment Rants. Find Out How David S Rose Got His Start As An Angel Investor

Find Out About A Non Profit Which Has A Very Scalable Affiliate Program. Learn How You Can Help US Schools In A Way Which Is Very Personal To You. Why Are The Top Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Supporting This Non Profit?

Derek Sivers from CD Baby sold his company, as sole owner, for $22 million. His company was running fully automated and generating $4 million a year in profits. He shares his business philosophy and the unusual strategies he took after his big payday.

How Guys Like Tony Bacigalupo Are Figuring Out How Work From Home Should Really Work. The New Trend: Communual Workspaces – How Tony Bacigalupo Is Doing It In New York City. The Cheap Way To Get Your Startup Running – Coworkspaces – Learn From The Guys Who Make It Happen.

Learn The Secrets Of Winning the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge. Read How To Dramatically Increase Your Fundraising Online. Discover How Sarah Bunting From Tomato Nation Has Massive User Engagement & Monetization With A Small Amount Of Traffic

Learn How NYC Based MediaWhiz Competes Effectively With Cheap Marketing Companies Worldwide. Find Out What The CEO Of MediaWhiz Thinks Will Happen To Regulation In The Online Marketing Industry. Read How MediaWhiz Evaluates Potential Acquisitions.

Learn How A Leading NYC CTO Went From Being An Isolated Tech Introvert To Managing 100+ People. Find Out How To Qualify For The Private Invite-Only NYC CTO Club. Discover How Jon Williams (ex CTO iVilliage) Stays Current With Technology.

Learn About Chris's New Project, Hunch.com, cofounded with Caterina Fake of Flickr. Find Out How Chris Does Angel Investing In The NYC Area. Read How Chris, Cofounder of SiteAdvisor.com Sold To McAfee

Find out how to raise money from Fred's VC firm. Learn about the investor who may be becoming the #1 VC In The World. Listen to Fred's Opinions On The Startup Scene In The NYC Area.

Learn how Nick started with nothing (his family grew up in China during the cultural revolution) and founded 2 successful companies. Find out how he plans on competing with Google in China -- and also worldwide. Read about the management structure he borrowed from the swiss government -- which is working successfully in Beijing.

Learn from the youtube of China - with 250 million daily pageviews. Find out how they are monetizing video content. Read about how they handle government relations and not being shut down.

Find out how YeePay processes US$6B in online payments in China annually. Learn which business models in china have the most processing. See how payments and trust is handled in a country famous for generating online fraud.

Learn where Michael Jenkins thinks the affiliate industry is going (hint: its the tip of the iceberg). Find out how Market Leverage handles fraud and international affiliates. See how they handle FTC issues.

Meet Dan Brody, a former American Google guy running a Chinese incubator. See photos of one of the most spectacular offices I saw in China. Find out about how they are building some of the top kids social networking sites.

A rare interview with China's fastest growing social network. Read about Kaixin001, in their first ever english language interview. Get a feel for how competitive copying is inside the online market in China.

Meet one of the few successful foreign entrepreneurs in China. Find out about how he cofounded Tudou, China's version of Youtube. Learn about casual gaming, one of the major growing online markets and the business model behind it. Play one of their most popular games (scroll to the end of the interview)!

HotOrNot.com has inspired thousands of startups. They bootstrapped entirely, built everything themselves, and had a nice sale when they were tired of running the business. While I knew they did well, I didn't know the specifics until this interview - they were making around $7M/year (mostly profits) between the two partners, and then sold for over $20M. And, all that time James and his partner were working 10 hours per week! Read on to find out how they did it, including the critical role PR played in the success of their business. I've seen quite a few other interviews with James, but nothing like this. Its one of the more inspiring interviews I've done.

Vincent is a superstar US technology executive who has moved back to China to lead one of the biggest up and coming startups -- PPLive. PPLive is a p2p TV service -- basically like Joost, except that it works! It has 120M installs, with 30M active users every month. They gave me a demo of PPLive in their office (its mostly only usable in China) and it took about 15 seconds for a new TV show or movie to start, tracking within a program took about 5 seconds. It looked to me like a pretty amazing replacement for network television, and it's all P2P!

This week kicks off a special series of interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs. With the help of Georg Godula from http://www.web2asia.com/, I've been getting interviews with some of the very top guys in China (ie those websites you've seen in Alexa's top 100 listing, but never had any clue what they are about!). China is an incredible market, here are some stats: - 300M people online (biggest in the world) - average US$200/month income - multiple $1 BILLION/year dollar business models already existing, built on this low income population of internet users. However, China has 1.3 billion people in the country, so many more will be coming online soon AND you can expect their monthly income to increase dramatically too, raising CPMs a lot. Bottom line: watch out for China, because this is going to change the internet landscape significantly. Our first interview is with Tao Zhang who is the CEO of Dianping.com basically the Chinese version of Yelp (that started 2 years before Yelp did!). Some of the points we discuss include: - how they handle fake reviews - how the site is monetized (its profitable Judys Book + others failed in this market), - their funding from Sequoia and Google - How US companies can expand to China - How US entrepreneurs can get started in China.

Shuji Honjo, our guest this week has a lot of experience with international companies in Japan, helping major companies like etrade enter japan. He's also a visiting professor at one of the universities and has written a couple of books on entrepreneurship. We talked in depth about how a successful US based company with talent, money and technology could enter the japanese market, and why Yahoo Japan has been hugely successful, while Ebay Japan was a huge failure. Thinking about entering the Japanese market? Here's Shuji's rule of thumb: If you expect you be able to generate more than 10% of your revenue from Japan, go for it. If the number is less than 10%, don't do it.

I met Dave about 10 years ago when I lived in Silicon Valley. He's now with the Founders Fund, a VC fund put together by some of the top entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. In this interview we talk about paypal, the paypal mafia, VC investing, internet marketing in Silicon Valley and how you can raise capital yourself. In fact, right now I'm travelling with Dave on his trip http://GeeksOnAPlane.com, a trip through Japan and China to learn about local internet industry.

Jeff Walker is going to tell us about the Product Launch Formula that is used to launch and re-launch products online. Jeff's a guy that can consistently get $1000 ECPM from his lists and now he'll tell you how he does it. :-) I'm quite familiar with Jeff's Product Launch Formula. I know it works. I've seen it work. It's about time we ran this interview with Jeff because this is good stuff. Apple and other companies use similar methods when they launch new products (another MeetInnovators list member guided Apple through this process using Jeff's methods).

Scott Tilton, the CEO of Loop'd Network is very much into action sports. And he has found a way to combine social media with sponsorships within the action sports world. Its a pretty interesting model, the best way of monetizing social networking sites I've ever heard of. He gets ECPM's in the multiple $$ ranges, compared to the miserable ECPM's of other social networking sites. Loop'd Network get users of the site to compete to become sponsored by brands. Its a great offer for the brands since they get some of the very best candidates available. (Note that Loop'd Network is completely different to Loopt, the iphone gps application). Since he's taken the venture funding route, Scott asked me to mention that Loop'd is currently profitable but are looking to grow the company even more quickly and is looking for investors. If you're interested, drop me a line, and I'll put you in touch. And if you're looking for ideas for monetizing social networking type traffic, Scott's interview is a good one to check out for a fresh approach.

Jason Nazar from Docstoc has created a site where any type of document can be uploaded or downloaded for free. You've probably seen the docstoc viewer on techcrunch. It sounds kind of uninteresting until you realise that the documents get a lot of search traffic (eg people looking for mortgage forms, legal forms, etc) and that they become a perfect tool for lead generation. If you're interested in working with Jason as a lead provider, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch.

Jon Praed is a total stud! He spends his time tracking down hard-core black-hat spammers. The kind that run illegal viagra, casino, porn and phishing spam. A lot of guys have made money in "grey" areas of internet marketing. Jon explains how gradually people are being forced to choose sides and that all the aggressive stuff is slowly going away. If you want to get an overall understanding on where the internet is going long term, this is the interview to check out. It was one of the most powerful and fascinating ones I've done. I think you'll find this interview worth listening to yourself. The audio is freely available; after the Fast Track Interview.

Renata Hesse from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) is with me for this interview about US antitrust law. Renata is a high-powered antitrust attorney who has been in the middle of some of the biggest antitrust cases in US history including the massive Microsoft antitrust case of the 1990's. I have found WSGR to be a great law firm to work with and they have helped me on a number of critical issues. My brother Matthew, who some of you have met, works for WSGR also on antitrust issues as in-house counsel at Google. I'm often surprised by seemingly smart internet companies making a lot of money have really poor legal representation. I think its a competitive advantage to have a great law firm on your side like these guys. They can be difficult to be accepted as a client (they normally represent companies like Google), so if you do want to switch your law firm and you know me personally, drop me a line and we can talk offline. Antitrust can come across as dry and boring - but in fact it can be a great way for a small company to beat a larger company in the market. Netscape vs Microsoft is obviously a case where it didn't work too well for Netscape, but there are many examples of smaller companies beating larger ones using antitrust law. Although I've talked with my brother about antitrust over the years, I didn't really understand how it could apply to someone like me - living in the Caribbean - and be an effective business tool - until after this interview. Renata explains how an antitrust investigation can be started for only $20,000 to $50,000 instead of the millions it can cost for a lawsuit - and how you gain tremendous leverage by having the US Government on your side against your competitors. If you are interested in keeping bigger companies from threatening you, protecting your company and staying competitive, this is a must read interview.

Alfred Lin from Zappos is with us for this interview. Alfred is the Zappos Chairman and COO - he's Tony Hsieh, the CEO's right hand man when it comes to handling finance and operations for Zappos. I wanted to interview Alfred to get his perspective as being the key guy working with Tony. I wanted to understand how they met and how they're building Zappos. Most successful technology companies were built by two guys working together (Google, HP, Microsoft, etc) and I thought this would be a good opportunity to understand this kind of relationship better. I didn't expect Alfred to focus so strongly on the importance of the entire team being strong, not just the Tony/Alfred relationship. In his mind they're successful because of the entire team, not just the two guys in the spotlight. On a side note, Alfred talks about how he and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos started working together. Tony sold pizza by the whole pie. Alfred sold pizza by the slice. Who do you think was the most profitable?

Eben Pagan from Hot Topic Media is with me for this interview. You might be more familiar with him by the name David DeAngelo and Double Your Dating. He has helped a lot of guys who are lost when it comes to getting a date. I thought we would cover marketing, split-testing, and Double Your Dating. Instead the conversation went in a completely different direction. We ended up talking about philosophy, Ayn Rand, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and insight from psychologist Claire Graves. Eben talks about how and why the Internet gives us all opportunities to make a difference in the world. I think it is the first time I've had a conversation like this during an interview.

This interview is one I've been waiting to do for quite a while. This guy is one of the most financially unsuccessful internet guys I know. At the same time he drives absolutely monster traffic and has a huge amount of influence in the internet world. For millions of people he is an absolute rockstar. His name is Andy Scorcini and his handle is Mr Babyman - he's the number one poster to Digg, the social news site. He controls a huge amount of traffic volume and IMHO is effectively the leader of the informal network that has developed among Digg's top users that decide which stories get posted to the site. The number one question Andy and the others is always asked - do they get paid for what they do. We discussed this in detail in the interview.

Have you ever wondered how the fortune 500 use direct response marketing? This week's interview is with the Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, Barry Judge (Fortune 500 rank: 72). Barry has a $500M annual advertising spend at his disposal. Most of their marketing online is direct response driven. But one of the really interesting things from the call was learning how they track and analyze everything within each store to find out what performs best - and everything is tracked back to overall demographics via your rewards card. Its working, since Best Buy is bringing in $35 billion annual revenue.

Anne Mitchell of SuretyMail can help you get your mail delivered if you want to handle your own e-mail deliverability. I have known Anne for a number of years and have learned a lot from her. She has a long history of working with Internet and e-mail. She even helped author part of CAN-SPAM - she's a Stanford lawyer, as well as being an e-mail tech-head. And talking about CAN-SPAM, Anne explains recent changes to the law and gives some pointers to consider to make sure you're in compliance. We all have the same goal: get our e-mails into the in-box instead of the junk folder. Anne helps us understand what it will take to do just that.

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos. They're on track to do $1 billion dollars this year, all online. Tony previously founded LinkExchange which he sold for $265M to Microsoft in 1998. While Zappos started by selling shoes, Tony shares how Zappos' focus is really on the customer experience and customer service it provides. Tony talks about how he went from investor to full-time employee at Zappos because it was really taking off, and as Tony said, seemed fun.

Matt Moog was previously the CEO of CoolSavings and before that did presentations with Bill Gates at Microsoft. Matt talks about his time at CoolSavings (the original coupon site on the web), which included taking the company public and then back to being private. He also talks about how Viewpoints is creating a modern version of epinions, and which could become an amazing lead generation platform for advertisers, offering hot transfer leads from customers who are ready to buy. He's doing this while providing a lot of value to consumers. He's finding a way to generate leads which should generate a lot of loyalty from consumers.

Abed Abusaleh from Euro RSCG is one of the very top media buyers from one of the top TV agencies so this was a pretty rare insight to get. Some Internet guys will be saying this is a pointless interview - but actually many direct response techniques we use to sell on the web came from TV. And these guys do a lot of volume, around $500M/year and run about 30% of the TV marketplace. Abed gives us an inside look at what it takes to get a show produced and enter the world of long-form (i.e. 30 min) infomercials. You can also find out how you can get your Internet products started on TV for $5k.

Hamlet Batista is the best SEO I've ever met. He cut his teeth by being at the top of Google for keywords like Viagra and Phentermine. You can't always tell who is good and who isn't in SEO. But I saw Hamlet on the front page of Google for the keyword Phentermine for at least 6 months. Hamlet has spent quite a bit of time in some controversial areas of the Internet and I present it without comment. It's rare someone like Hamlet speaks so directly about what he has done. Since that time Hamlet has evolved from being an affiliate to being a merchant to creating software, called RankSense, which helps people do their own SEO.

The nerd level of David Weekly from PBwiki is rather high since he proudly informed me during the interview that he started programming at the age of five. I've been watching David from a distance for a couple of years. He hasn't made his fortune yet, but he will. He's from the same mold as the Google founders and is always involved in interesting projects in Silicon Valley. His current site is PBWiki, which is a managed wiki service. The MeetInnovators publishing process is run on a PBWiki. My family also used a PBWiki for planning our family holiday. PBWiki is even being used by some US presidential campaigns, although David won't tell us which ones.

Matt Hill is the CEO of Shopit.com. Shopit is like eBay for social networking sites. According to Matt, Shopit is now the fastest growing e-commerce application on Facebook. EBay has had a lot of fraud problems, and a lot of people don't like using it anymore. After interviewing Matt, I wrote about eBay's problems and how Shopit could take over this space here. I think the model will take some work to implement properly, but they have a good team and a space with massive potential, so keep an eye on Matt and his team. Matt also talks about his involvement investing in a couple of successful companies including reunion.com.

Patrick Byrne from Overstock.com and his company made headlines for suing the state of New York over the issue of affiliate taxes. This issue doesn't just affect New York, as it could soon be the same nationwide. From my previous general knowledge about Patrick, I thought he was a bit of a crackpot. As I learned more about him, I came to the conclusion that he's a very bright guy who is surrounded by the right people and has plenty of resources behind him. He's someone I now respect a lot, and I think you should too - he's been unfairly bashed by the media. This interview is a good one.

Jason Fried from 37signals joins me for this interview. 37signals builds Web-based software and service products for small businesses. They're pretty famous in the web2.0 crowd for being easy to use. They are a relatively tiny company - typical of today's best startups, with a small team who are all high-caliber guys. Jason talks about how the company is able to meet deadlines and deliverables even though all 10 employees work remotely. They even have an e-book on how they work online. He also talks about the one investor 37signals has, Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com. I asked Jason quite a lot about their remote working methodology, and I came away pretty impressed.

Joe Abrams from The Software Toolworks was the key investor in the company that built MySpace - Intermix. He's extremely low profile, and it was something of a miracle to get this interview. Joe's made it through two boom periods - in the 90's he ran Software Toolworks, which was sold for around $450M. And then he did it again with MySpace. One of his companies distributed Defender of the Crown, a breakthrough game on the Commodore Amiga, which I spent many years on when I was growing up. I hope his interview inspires you as much as it inspired me. This was my interview of the year!

This interview is with Chris Young, who founded Klipmart, which he sold to DoubleClick. He recently started the Digital Broadcasting Group. His businesses have focused on online video, advertising, sponsorship, and promotion. Chris has worked on some really interesting things in the online world by incorporating video ads into web ads. His video advertising runs on sites like: MaximOnline.com, MTV, Heavy.com, IGN.com, GameSpy, Yahoo Games and MSN Entertainment.

This interview is with Mark Kahn of TRAFFIQ.com, which is a marketplace for branded traffic inventory a bit like eBay. Publishers put their inventory on it, and media buyers can buy it. Traffiq is an unusual company for our interviews since it's raised quite a bit of VC capital. But they have a good model so it's worth reading about. Mark talks about TRAFFIQ's platform and inventory, and he shares how the level of information a seller provides can dramatically increase CPM prices.