- Impact
- 50
Back in 1999, I secured Naveen's Jain brother as my angel investor for a little startup called netgenShopper. Naveen Jain was CEO of Infospace. My friends were giving me high fives like I had hit the lottery. Two years later on 9/11/2001, we merged with Respond.com and got Jim Barksdale of Netscape fame on our board. I thought, "OK now I have an all star team on my board....we are set". I had Lyn Chitow Oakes, Flycast's former COO as my CEO and the current General Manager of Payal as CFO and myself of Lifeminders.com as CTO. We are set.
Ever go to Respond.com. The only name on that site is my name. Under the about us section - founder's letter.
Why? Because I realized having Big names on your board and all the star power in your management team, all the deals with industry leading sites like AOL and Lycos and Network Solutions and Verizon Superpages and Infospace.....does nothing.
Now, LocalExperts.com and Respond.com are fierce competitors, yet Respond has the CEO of their competitor still on their site.
Why? Because I got out, fought the brain trust, and personally saved the company from going out of business like every other competitor in our space.
For the last few months, I instructed the engineering team to work on revenue producing work and to ignore the CEO who was in CA - 3000 miles away. For the last two weeks, I didn't even accept phone calls from the CEO.
So how does this relate to .TV, who gives a crap about Richard Rosenblatt. He has his business, I have mine. All that energy many on here wasted attacking Snoop, or Demand Media, or Richard, or me
- focus that energy on building your business. Those other folks have NOTHING to do with your success or mine.
Because I can tell you, I've had $60M in VC money, I had deals with companies that would be an internet's CEO dream, I've had a all star management team and you know what I learned.
Do it yourself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't depend on anyone to make you a millionare.
Ever go to Respond.com. The only name on that site is my name. Under the about us section - founder's letter.
Why? Because I realized having Big names on your board and all the star power in your management team, all the deals with industry leading sites like AOL and Lycos and Network Solutions and Verizon Superpages and Infospace.....does nothing.
Now, LocalExperts.com and Respond.com are fierce competitors, yet Respond has the CEO of their competitor still on their site.
Why? Because I got out, fought the brain trust, and personally saved the company from going out of business like every other competitor in our space.
For the last few months, I instructed the engineering team to work on revenue producing work and to ignore the CEO who was in CA - 3000 miles away. For the last two weeks, I didn't even accept phone calls from the CEO.
So how does this relate to .TV, who gives a crap about Richard Rosenblatt. He has his business, I have mine. All that energy many on here wasted attacking Snoop, or Demand Media, or Richard, or me
- focus that energy on building your business. Those other folks have NOTHING to do with your success or mine.Because I can tell you, I've had $60M in VC money, I had deals with companies that would be an internet's CEO dream, I've had a all star management team and you know what I learned.
Do it yourself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't depend on anyone to make you a millionare.
Last edited:
