Back to the blog!

April 15th, 2010 • General, Uncategorized • Comments Off

Its been a good two years since I have been blogging, and I guess its time for a change! Many of you regular visitors may have seen my portfolio up here before but as I have increasing commitments I am tapering off of taking new projects so a portfolio no longer made any sense. Stay tuned for some great posts on website brokering, and enjoy the old posts I pulled out from my hard drive from 2007!

Interview: Zachary Suchin President & CEO of CollegeTonight.com

December 12th, 2007 • Interviews, Uncategorized • Comments Off

Today, I got to sit down with Zachary Suchin the President and CEO of CollegeTonight.com. We talked about his journey as a entrepreneur and starting up his new venture CollegeTonight.com. I had a great chat with him, and its basically a good read, check it out below.

Milov Patel: Can you please provide us with a bit of your personal background in business and entrepreneurship.

Zachary Suchin: During college, I provided marketing and branding for several different companies and organized high-profile nightlife events for college students and celebrities. It was a very unique situation because the celebrities loved hanging out with the college students and obviously, the college students were thrilled to party with their favorite artists.

It really was a unique melding of the two worlds that I’ve never seen reproduced anywhere else. Atlanta is a very unique town with a great sense of individuality and so the artists there have a very down-to-Earth attitude. They down sit with an elitist attitude in the VIP- most of the time they were dancing with students, performing etc… those were a very special 4 years.

I’ve since been back to Atlanta several times and the scene seems to have changed for various reasons. Atlanta isn’t the new “mo-town” like it once was in the early “ots” and many of the venues I used to promote have since been turned into condominiums.

Towards the end of college, I started developing the College Tonight concept with my partner Jason after a microcosmic success story in a conference called “Emory Nightlife” on the school’s server. While the server was meant for strict academic and school sponsored extra-curricular, what was started as a conduit of communication between myself and small group of friends, quickly turned into the most populated group on the school server, with hundreds of “add-me” requests being processed each day.

We eventually reached about 80% of the undergraduate populous @ Emory University with a strictly opt-in population. there was even a practical sub-module in the group called “Drunk Lost & Found” meant for those who lost items at various events around town, which ended up becoming more relevant than the official school’s lost and found conference. since nov. ‘05, my partner and I have been developing CT.

Milov Patel: Great, well with that information I’m definitely going to be buying stock in your company; Facebook started out the same way heh. Anyways, can you tell us more about your current venture collegetonight.com.

Zachary Suchin: As you can see, CT was started completely organically, through a natural need at one school in Atlanta. My partner and I realized that this was by no means an isolated vacuum in the market and we each put all of our money into creating version .5 of CT.

He put in all of the money he had made over the years from his web design and development company (PhillyDesigns.com) and I put in all of the money from my promotions and branding company. This beta version of the services was meant to test with the Emory community exactly what features were going to be utilized and would be worth expanding upon.

In September of 2006, we had a beta launch event that attracted many people, including the largest periodical in the South, the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC). We started to get press that we didn’t expect. At this point we knew it was time to take our knowledge of what worked and what didn’t, and start to raise funding for a more official version of the service. We hustled and finally achieved enough funding for us to develop the current version of the site.

Milov Patel: I saw that you guys received funding of more then a million dollars. Can tell us the experience you had while trying to find funding, and what you recommend to new startups..

Zachary Suchin: After we secured an initial round of private financing, we started to analyze an opportunity that arose in the public arena. Simex Technologies approached us with the opportunity for a reverse merger. This is a fairly unique method of raising funds, as we’re one of the only social networks that has decided to follow this path, but it’s extremely helpful to us for various reasons. We have a certain level of liquidity, which really helps us to attract talent that we otherwise may not have been able to secure. Our open market value is fairly obvious- there are no guessing games to play or $15 billion valuations to argue. The market will naturally value the company at a fair worth. Our company’s vision and wide variety of unique revenue streams will soon begin to dictate our young company’s stock value.

Raising money is certainly never an easy task. It’s actually a very herculean task. Part of the game for an entrepreneur is to live and die with your product. If we were unable to secure the necessary funding, a piece of me would have died with the service. Thankfully, I was able to find the right individuals to share my vision of taking social networking and overall collegiate networking to where it should be in 2007/2008. It certainly shouldn’t limit someone to a physical computer, and mobile WAP sites that simply mirror a service are not taking the necessary next step either. It will take some time to prove to people that the future of social networking is largely mobile, but it’s become part of our mission. If MySpace is a NAVY ship sailing the seas and Funky Sexy Cool is a helicopter patrolling the skies, I see our product as a navy ship with an airbase on board. We are anchored on the physical internet, but the CT experience extends far beyond.

Milov Patel: I have been following Facebook and MySpace for quite some time now and its evident that Facebooks advertiser platform wasn’t much of a success, and the crowded profiles and phishing is tanking MySpace. This comes into play when you mentioned that you have a wide variety of revenue streams, how will you stack up against your competition?

Zachary Suchin: MySpace and Facebook are fantastic online utilities. The traditional banner ad model is an extremely ineffective branding methodology. Every study I’ve read has listed statistic after statistic, stating how poor the click through rate is on both of the juggernaut networking sites. This is why our focus is on eliminating such ineffective campaigns within our service. Those SITES focus on monetizing a user’s sedentary lifestyle. Our SERVICE focuses on branding in ways that are inherently a part of the college experience. Overtly throwing your brand in front of a college student’s eyes is not going to work. No college student is going to be fooled by the “punch the monkey, win a free iPod campaign.”

We have several developments in play that will brand in much more effective ways. We will monetize our users’ mobility. Through a deal we announced last week with Jangl, our click-to-call features will allow brands to MUCH MORE effectively engage our user base. Our revenue is also more dependent on a variety of other streams that are less traditional in the social networking realm such as our venue subscriptions which offer bars, clubs and high end restaurants an amazing opportunity to engage these trendsetters and “tastemakers” that utilize our service. They post their nightly specials, and users can subscribe to their feeds to keep track of venues in a similar fashion to how they can their entourage on our service.

We see ourselves indirectly competing with many sites, but as a service I think we stand alone. We aren’t going depend on monetizing page clicks, we’re much more interested in allowing our advertising partners access to their real life activities, which is what we are doing through our 116 campus tour.

Milov Patel: I particularly like the idea of where restaurants etc can keep local college students up to date – good thinking. How many employees do you have currently? Do you feel its important for your employees to share the same drive that you have?

Zachary Suchin: We have 7 employees and a slew of other contributors who help to make this the special service that it is. It’s as important for your employees to share your vision as it is for you to maintain your own optimism. Every ounce of effort counts and in our office environment, everyone is encouraged to speak up no matter their position or where they come from. I value everyone’s opinion equally, from one of our interns, to our COO. Each opinion comes from a unique place and it’s important to consider why someone has a thought and how it’s applicable to your vision.

Milov Patel: If you want people to remember one thing about CollegeTonight.com, what would it be?

Zachary Suchin: I would want people to know that there is an overabundance of networking options on the internet today and that they’re all promoting the same sedentary concept. It’s time for the next step in the evolution of social networking. We plan to mobilize people to understand that the future is in mobility.

Milov Patel: Great, well its been a pleasure talking to you Zachary. I hope you enjoyed the interview, and I’m sure every one will appreciate what you had to say. Thanks again!

Zachary Suchin: Thanks Milov

Interview: Collin LaHay President of The Hugger Network

December 11th, 2007 • Interviews, Uncategorized • Comments Off

I finally got around to interviewing my long time colleague Collin LaHay President of RssHugger.com and WordHugger.com or as I like calling it, “The Hugger Empire.” Collin is a young entrepreneur that’s still in college and manages to expand his website network along side paying for his college tuition. The interview is short, but gives sight into what Collin does and what his network is all about.

Milov Patel: Can you please provide us with a bit of your personal background in business and entrepreneurship.

Collin LaHay: I have been interested in business and marketing for a long time. Ever since I was a teenager, I was running all sorts of small businesses. It started off as small webhosting companies, and grew to gameservers, and ultimately I do internet marketing nearly full time now. I love developing crazy ideas that benefit other people, and make me money in the process.

Milov Patel: Great, could you tell us more about your current ventures?

Collin LaHay: Sure, I have recently (within the last year) sold off most of my small “made for adsense” content websites, and now focus on pioneering creative web 2.0 technology websites that benefit webmasters and bloggers, as well as help me pay for my college tuition.

My newest internet startup company is http://www.rsshugger.com, which is the web’s first viral RSS directory strictly for bloggers. The site helps bloggers promote their blog and helps readers find interesting blogs that relate to what they want to read about. The site requires bloggers to make their review of the site to get accepted and has resulted in a viral growth promoting everyone that uses the website.

Within the last few months, I have also recently launched http://www.wordhugger.com which is the first website to introduce “micro investments” which are the internet’s newest virtual real estate gold. Investors can pick a word based on their hobby, business, interests, or expertise in a particular field. For a one time investment of $60, anyone can own a page on WordHugger for 10 years, and make ample amounts of money back from advertisements and visitors, or reselling their rights to their word.

Milov Patel: It seems your business model is really aligned with a Web 2.0 style. Can you elaborate how your company’s approach on revenue creation aside from membership fees?

Collin LaHay: With the evolution of the internet and the new web2.0 technologies that are coming out, my startup WordHugger earns revenue from investors grabbing their piece of the website for $0.50 a month. My other startup rssHugger earns money by advertisements on the free blog listings, as well as a $20 option for blogs that do not want to make a public review of the site. By keeping my sites inexpensive and beneficial to everyone, it will make me more money in the long run than if I charged an entrance fee for everything. Keeping things free brings more visitors to the website and allows for faster word-of-mouth viral advertising, which I have already seen to be starting.

Milov Patel: What would you say are the most important elements for creating a flourishing startup company?

Collin LaHay: Always develop a website that has a large benefit to a big group of people, or else improve an already existing idea. Google was not the first search engine… Digg was not the first social news aggregation… Wikipedia was not the first online encyclopedia, but you can be damn sure they were far more improved than their competitors. Over time and with word of mouth advertising, they all dominate their markets now, and I will be awaiting someone else to develop something that benefits more people than the current websites already do, and become king of the hill.

Milov Patel: If you want people to remember one thing about your network, what is it?

Collin LaHay: I will always be developing unique websites that benefit everyone. My ultimate goals for my websites are that everyone that uses them benefits from them, ultimately making myself benefit in the process. I am always starting new creative entrepreneurial startups and you can read my blog at http://mixedmarketarts.com to keep up to date with my ventures. I have some big startups planned for the coming year, so sit back and come along with me on my journey to becoming an internet millionaire.

Milov Patel: Great, well I had a good time talking to you. I hope that every one will benefit from your experiences and also this rather short interview!

Collin LaHay: Thanks

Interview: Jon Aizen Co-Founder and CTO of Dapper.net

October 24th, 2007 • Interviews, Uncategorized • Comments Off

I got the time to sit down with Jon Aizen the Co-Founder and CTO of www.Dapper.net, we talked about his new startup company and his future plans for it. Dapper is “Data Mapper” you can create feeds, widget’s, API’s and etc using their service. I’m going to implement it on this blog soon so keep and eye out for that. I had a fantastic time talking to him, and I’m sure you guys will have a great time reading this interview!

Milov Patel: Can please provide us with a bit of your personal background in business and entrepreneurship.

Jon Aizen: I am a long time web-veteran, having started my first web company at the age of thirteen. I have always been passionate about the web and the ways in which it impacts our daily lives, and the power it has to change the way we interact with the world around us.

I attended Cornell University and obtained my degree in computer science. While studying at Cornell, I worked for Alexa Internet and when I was wrapping up my studies, I moved on to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), where I helped pioneer a major digital library website. It was during that time that I really developed my interest in and familiarity with web services, which is a big part of what we do at Dapper today. While working for the Archive, I met Eran Shir, with whom I founded Dapper. We started working together about two years ago, raised a series A from Accel Partners in London about a year ago, and now have a team of 15 people working away in Tel Aviv.

Milov Patel: Great, can you please tell us more about your current venture Dapper.net.

Jon Aizen: Dapper aims to make it incredibly easy to reuse content from any place on the web and to distribute content in new ways. We’ve built out a sophisticated technical platform that enables this. Specifically, our entire application is web-based and we have a visual, point-and-click interface that allows users to select content and build robust XML APIs for any website.
The technology is built on a technical platform that also protects the rights of content owners, who can select the ways in which their content can be used.

Milov Patel: What specifically led you to creating Dapper.net?

Jon Aizen: Personally, I found the challenge and the idea very compelling. I knew that the world needed something like Dapper and was eager to enable others to realize their creativity with such a platform.

Milov Patel: It seems your business model is really aligned with a Web 2.0 style. Can you elaborate how your company’s approach on revenue creation?

Jon Aizen: Most people are not familiar with our business model. We have no intention on charging for our core service. End-users are not accustomed to paying for services online and we don’t intend to charge them to use Dapper. As a result, our revenue model revolves around other, tangential services that rely on our core service. For example, http://www.dapperads.com. This is a new product that allows publishers to use Dapper’s platform to extract content from their sites and use that content to generate very targeted and meaningful advertisements.

Milov Patel: What would you say are the most important elements for a flourishing startup company?

Jon Aizen: 1. Founders. The founders have to be passionate about what they are doing. They have to be committed to the success and growth of the company, even when it involves personal sacrifice. They have to get along well and complement each other in appropriate ways.

2. Employees. The core team has to be exceptional, dedicated, and committed. Dapper’s team is incredible and our success is due in large part to their efforts. Finding incredible engineers and talented people is no easy task.

3. Vision. The founders and the team have to believe in the vision of the company.

4. Execution. No idea, no matter how good, can succeed if it isn’t executed well. A lot depends on timing and luck, but without good execution, there is nothing to talk about.

5. Product. Naturally, one of the most important things is to develop a good product – something that people need, want, and will use.

Milov Patel: You mentioned that you got some funding earlier can you disclose how much you got, and can you give us some detail on the process of finding funding?

Jon Aizen: We received a multi-million dollar Series A investment from Accel Partners in London. Accel are the ideal business partners in that their support goes beyong the finances and provides a tremendous advantage in terms of developing business direction, connections, and defining company strategy. The funding process itself, at least for us, was relatively straightforward – we developed a technology that had clear promise, and Accel saw eye-to-eye with us on its prospects.

Milov Patel: If you want people to remember one thing when they think about Dapper.net, what is it?

Jon Aizen: I want them to think of it as a way to enable the things they want to do with regard to content on the Internet, be it distributing their own content in new ways, or consuming other people’s contents in ways that are better for them.

Milov Patel: Great, well I had a great time talking to you today Jon. And id like to say thanks on my behalf and my readers.

Jon Aizen: Thanks for the opportunity to address them. It has been a pleasure

Interview: Ariel McNichol Co-Founder of mEgo.com

October 17th, 2007 • Interviews, Uncategorized • Comments Off

Ok, so over the past few days I got to talk to Ariel McNichol the CEO of mEgo.com. mEgo is a widget based social networking site sort to speak. It lets you create a mini character, and fill in information about your self from what you like to watch, all the way to your blog’s RSS (Check out my mEgo at the bottom of this post!). I was able to talk to her about the new start up company, and its future plans. Check out the great interview below!

Milov Patel: Can you please give us some of your background information in business and entrepreneurship.

Ariel McNichol: Sure. I have been involved with various start-ups since 1994, when I did graphics for a great company called IUMA.com. Since then, I have been specializing in developing product prototypes for both big and small ventures, ranging from ZDTV to Broadband Mechanics, to PCCW. I have also done ‘new feature prototypes’ for AOL and Yahoo!

I have had jobs that were less entrepreneurial, but found that I got bored after awhile, and would end up returning to the excitement of developing new applications.

Milov Patel: Great, so I presume that’s how you came about developing mego.com – can you tell us a bit more about that project?

Ariel McNichol: Sure! mEgo was actually something I wanted to make back in 1999! I tried to drum up interest back then for a portable profile that took the form of a character, but it was too early. I had to wait about 6 years – and was quite lucky because the rise of social networking and widgets and feeds has made the initial concept much more relevant today. mEgo solves the problem of having to manage multiple ‘one-site’ profiles and the difficulty in aggregating all your online feeds, widgets and media.

Milov Patel: Wow, finally got around to developing your dream project huh! As you mentioned earlier your original concept was back in 1999 when social networking wasn’t so big. What gave you the idea of creating a website like this back then, and why did you revisit your idea again today?

Ariel McNichol: Literally, the dream started because of a guy in a cube next to me who was filing out a bunch of different dating profiles – and his frustrations. His browser would time out, he would lose data…it was hilarious and painful to watch. Couple the profile frustration with my own frustrations with scattered bookmarks, account feeds, etc, and the concept of mEgo was born. I built some prototypes then, but they sat on the backburner while I had some really exciting jobs ~ but then in 2005, I picked them back up again hoping the time was right. At that time, my former colleague, Julia Johnston was in town for E3, and I showed her the prototypes and she said, “lets do this!” She’s the perfect partner for me she’s an incredibly savvy business woman, while I am the creative one. I must say that even in 2005, when I was touting how mEgo could take the form of a widget, people were telling us that the term widget was absurd, would never take off, etc. I think we have been very lucky to launch now.

Milov Patel: Heh, It takes the phrase, “The best ideas are sitting right next to you” to a whole new level. The website’s model is really aligned with a Web 2.0 style. How do you intend to create revenue?

Ariel McNichol: Through advertising and peppering in a little ecommerce. We have various places in the application to feature ads from sponsored animations like Nike basketballs, to more standard banners, to contextually suggested services like offering dog training sites within an area where users feature their pets. We also want to explore in-mEgo advertising where the actual profile that is served on various sites takes sponsorship with it. We feel that its very important that users opt in for this kind of sponsorship and that they are empowered by it in someway, after all, it is literally their profile that is earning the revenue. Therefore, we will enable users to earmark a portion of any revenue their portable profiles generate for non-profits of their choice. This should help drive the update as well as helping us do a bit of good for this lovely world we live in.

Recently, there has been some exciting news from social networks about advertising on widgets like the buzz that MySpace’s widget platform will offering widget providers the ability to keep 100% of their revenue. In any case, we have thought a lot about diverse means to monetize the widget and agile enough as a group to keep ourselves on the cutting edge of web 2.0 ad revenue generation. We can experiment with different revenue sharing models as needed.

Milov Patel: Its great to see some new platforms being explored, in your techcrunch presentation you said you had some new mEgo features along the way, can you tell us more about that?

Ariel McNichol: Sure! mEgos upcoming features focus on 2 principles: First: utility. Second: viral growth. Because mEgo has collected a lot of profile information, there are a lot of utilities that naturally fall into place for the users that we can offer in a different mode of use that we’re calling the private mEgo mode. And, we plan on aggregating social networking alerts, contacts, links to IM, Skype, email clients etc, so that your private mEgo can be used a little launching pad. And, because the screen footprint is small, it can be an always on utility that doesn’t disrupt the persons visual field the way a large text based page would. On the viral front, we are designing some incentives to help mEgo growth, including exclusive mEgo to mEgo interaction where a user can do things like share media by drag-and-dropping between mEgos. Lastly, I’ll mention mobile mEgo which is a combo of both utility and viral potential. If you can imagine, the private mEgo mode on a cell phone will entail being able to take one-click to check your local traffic, order a pizza for delivery and for your social life, you can check out other people’s mEgos on your phone and know what their favorite drink is or what present they want for their birthday while on the go.

Milov Patel: Great, With so much competition in the widget market, how do you guys intend to get your new service out there?

Ariel McNichol: A few ways: 1. distribution partnerships / 2. Gorilla marketing / 3. Campaigns to promote viral growth.

We are aggressively perusing distribution partnerships. For example, we have a deal with Tagged.com, the 4th largest social network, to appear in prime screen real estate on their widget directory. We are looking into ways to get mEgo to appear with content partners that we already feature on mEgo.com

For Gorilla marketing, we are going to be making tons of online friends, and getting mEgo out there from the ground up, so to speak.

We also have some campaigns in plan which may drive uptake including some contests, and the donation drive for user-chosen non-profits.

Milov Patel: From a bit of research I conducted it shows that you guys received some funding, can you give me information on the process of finding funding?

Ariel McNichol: Our first seed money came from someone both Julia and I had worked for so there was an established relationship and trust that went into it. Since then, this initial investor and Julia have done an incredible job of finding smart, knowledgeable investors to come on board who have added great advice and relationships for mEgo.

We did do focus groups with our initial prototypes which gave us some great data to give to interested investors, and also gave us information about what our target users were really excited about. I would strongly advice getting early prototypes into the hands of your target demographic early on, and listening to what they say.

Milov Patel: If you want people to remember one thing about mEgo.com, what would it be?

Ariel McNichol: That it’s useful, addicting and it can make their online lives better.

Milov Patel: Well Ariel, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to conduct this interview with you. I gained a lot of information about your great new service, and company, and I’m sure my users are just as excited to hear from you.

Ariel McNichol: Thank You!

Also you can check out Ariel’s mEgo at http://mego.com/member/ariel.