TiE Chicago Chapter Start Up Stories

Moderator: Jai Shekhawat, CEO of Fieldglass

Alan Warms, former CEO of Participate and now Publisher of Real Politics (Buzztracker)

Matt Moog, CEO of Viewpoints

James Malackowski, CEO of Ocean Tomo

First up is Alan, founder of Buzztracker. Was part of Freeloader, eShare, Participate Systems, Realclearpolitics.com and now Buzztracker. The opportunity is to build the custom content feeds that can be delivered and used by the entire ecosystem of the Internet domain owners and management companies. I kept waiting for an explanation of how his site(s) added value to the Internet ecosystem from the user’s perspective – I’m still waiting for him to distinguish it significantly from a MFA Splog network.

Matt Moog, CEO and Founder of Viewpoints. Used to work at Q Interactive and Microsoft. We raised $50 Million and then $25 Million in the market and blew through that in 6 months. Recovered to be cashflow positive (2003) and net income (2004). Viewpoints has raised $4.7 Million in series A, currently 7 employees. The business is about reviews in different verticals.

James says that 79.2% of the economy is driven by intangible assets in 2005 and up from 16.2% in 1975. We created Ocean Tomo after we sold our first business. We are the Sotheby’s of intellectual property. People recognize it. Ocean Tomo 300 is now published. Innovation actually outperforms commodities. Ocean Tomo has not taken outside capital at this time.

Throughout the evening one could not help but be impressed by the uniqueness of James Malackowski’s ideas and execution and Matt Moog’s perseverance, transparency and desire to build anew.

What is the best way to become an entrepreneur?

Alan: Live for some period of time without a W-2. Test out a new hypothesis. Go to conferences seeing what people are doing. Start building some things, hire a developer, and try to get a customer or two. How do you decide whether the idea is big enough? Is the market ready for it?

Matt: I was working at Microsoft and was 25 years old. On the side, I took some money and built an application. It was on CD, pre-Internet. Speed up ten years, I wrote the initial plan in 2005 for Viewpoints. Then I left to found it 2006.

James: Unique combination of greed and panic!

Is it about the money?

James: Yes. It’s about sacrificing family and other things.

Alan: You care about the money.

Matt: You have an informal formula. I have not paid myself anything for the past year. I’d be currently willing to do this for up to 3 years.

James: People don’t hedge their bet. There is market space and risk. You can recover your investment.

Matt: With Coolsavings we raised angel money, then got on the hyper growth track of raising more money. A well known investment banker was telling us to raise more money. Then I had $15 Million in debt and $100,000 in cash. I needed to raise some money to hire a staff to do the stuff I couldn’t do. The later you spend the money, the smarter you’ll spend it.

How do you raise too much money?

Matt: I didn’t set out to raise as much as I did at Viewpoints. It’s possible to lose control. Each dollar raised the higher the investor expectation. This is kind of a funny dynamic.

Alan: You’re at point A and you want to get to point F. We try to raise $3 Million and got $13 Million. You get scar tissue.

James, you did it the smart way?

James: Over three years, I was burning up that non-compete, I went to institutional side looking for loans, Harris Bank told us no. Then we asked if they’d lend us $15,000 for a car and there were five of us so we raised $75,000. It’s all about the capital structure and how you communicate a request.

Matt: Always be transparent in everything you do.

Ron May brought up that Moog’s dad had invented the Moog synthesizer. (Matt seems to have a strong desire to stand on his own accomplishments). There was then a question on hiring.

James: The smartest person we hire at Ocean Tomo is the person we hire today.

How do you keep the group in tact?

James: We try to take people outside our industry. That is a huge attraction. You will be richer for the experience even if it doesn’t work. They not only have to believe in the vision, they have to believe in you.

Matt: Lon offered an office out of the blue. Most of the people come from Orbitz. People have to be jazzed about working at our company. I like the people who like to ask questions.

Matt: Lon Chow gave me a book. It’s a “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executives”. Are people aligned and communicating? In terms of the revenue model figure out how much do ads sell for, what do they look like? On the west coast, build an audience then figure it rules the day. Businesses never grow at the rate that they say they do. Sometimes you’ll grow three times as fast other times not as fast.

Great conversation and event by TiE!!!