When I was sitting in attendance at Tech Crunch 40, Marc Andreessen mentioned how you have to be crazy to be CEO of a company. He is right.
LIFE AS A CEO continue reading...
In 2005 Yahoo! released its search API, the developer community went crazy… I assembled a couple of programmers and built a vertical search engine called MetaMojo.com. We subsequently moved away from Yahoo!’s API and built a Nutch-based crawler instead because Yahoo! took one step forward but two step back.
Today Yahoo! Search goes open… This basically allows publishers to tweak Yahoo!’s search, though they cannot tweak results. I think this will be noise today, gone tomorrow. Yahoo! should have really opened up its search platform then, fully. It didn’t. My frustrations working with Yahoo! then were emblematic of everything that is being written about Yahoo! today. continue reading...
Well, it’s happening. The cycle continues. As more and more people are receiving pink slips, the evolution of business cycles enters a new phase: a bunch of YHOO staffers with more experience than they know what to do are leaving. A very small few will launch new businesses, some will enter established corporations, a handful will join startup companies on the rise.
When I started Mojo Supreme, it was because I wanted to hire people and build something big. I no longer have to think about it, I can actually do it. So, if you have left YHOO or simply looking for a gig, check out what we do and drop me a line. continue reading...
For the longest time, I’ve been hinting at private equity firms to give me a call so we can rescue Yahoo! That might happen, it might not. But to pull that off, you need a good $40B or so. With Yahoo! at $25B - and reporting earnings as we speak - it might happen.
But today, an easier target. No, I’m not talking about CNET - though I’d love to manage CNET and whip it into shape, too. CNET is in fact facing a hostile takeover from Jana Partners, who has built up a 20% stake in the company. continue reading...
IAC separated its vast arsenal of assets into five companies.
Yahoo! is under pressure to streamline its portfolio of assets, too. continue reading...
Last week, Microsoft’s Don Dodge listed 50+ video search companies. It’s a good overview of the market, which has gotten quite crowded. I am not sure who will win the space, not even sure if one player will emerge victorious, given how fragmented the Web has gotten. Mind you, if one company does win, the odds on favorite are Google/YouTube, owner of the world’s best search technology, the world’s largest archive of videos and the world’s most valuable ad network.
While it’s not exactly a core focus of our company, we have a meta video search product, too. I figured it would be a nice addition to our product line given our core focus in video production and syndication and other search applications. continue reading...
“If you saw this one coming, give yourself a very large prize.”
Tech Crunch’s Duncan Riley
I can probably find it in an email, a presentation… though it was probably verbal… but since 2005 when we built the first product in the Mojo Supreme assortment of goodies, the MetaMojo.com search engine, I figured it was a matter of time before Google would do two things: continue reading...
Jack Welch argued that you should compete in a market so long as you could be #1 or #2 in that market.
Apparently, a lot of current VCs are students of Jack Welch. YouTube is the undisputed king of online video, then the market is fragmented: continue reading...
Yesterday Joost co-founder Niklas Zennstrom made the announcement that Joost had 1M users. A lot of writers jumped on it to discern whether he meant 1M downloads, 1M users in all since launch or 1M concurrent users.
I have no clue which one he meant. Also, I wish Joost a lot of success, sure, WatchMojo.com is a content provider and all to them, but I wish them well because anything that gets more consumers viewing online video online is a good thing, independent of whether WatchMojo.com’s content happens to be on deck. continue reading...
I’m not sure if Jesus had a computer, high-speed Internet access and time on his hands to kill, so let me ask you this instead. In fact, Jeremy Liew today talks about vertical sites, behavior targeting and synthetic channels so I might as well ask what would Jeremy do…
Anyway, we’re really close to relaunching our flagship WatchMojo.com web video site, and I’m flirting with one of two strategies. continue reading...
