MeetInnovators™

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.