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About 4221 days ago E-Commerce

Where Have All the Dot-Commers Gone?

Letter From Silicon Valley About once a week I go out with the Pro Leisure Tour, a bunch of Bay Area ex-dot-commers who get together for coffee, movies, and other poor substitutes for a full and rewarding workday. The Tour started out as an elite club for newly free and empowered individuals. Now that all the work is gone, it’s an excuse for people to get out of their pajamas. Sometimes we meet for 11 a.m. poker at the Grove — the Marina’s sorority-girl salad hangout — although the highest ante anyone can afford is about four Jujubes. One recent Wednesday I was running late for a Tour event at the Embarcadero — a matinee of Hedwig and the Angry Inch — so I hailed a cab. En route I asked my driver how business was going, since I’d heard that San Francisco cab revenues were down 50% from last year’s. The cabbie, it turned out, wasn’t in a position to make any comparisons. The year before he had been working as a contract recruiter for HearMe, a provider of live-voice technology for the Internet, which announced in July that it would cease operations and sell its assets. But he did hold forth at some length about the hiring process at high-tech start-ups, of which he had a poor opinion. “I used to work in financial services, which was a lot easier because they would have one supreme being making hiring decisions,” he said. “At these high-tech companies, they have a committee make the call, but six people can make the same dumb decision that one person can.” When I was CEO of online-marketing company Gazooba Corp. (now called Qbiquity Corp.), I used to grovel before people like that cabbie, showering them with $100-an-hour fees plus stock options in the desperate hope of landing a database architect, say. Still, I respected the guy for picking up the pieces and finding a way to put some money in his pocket. As I paid my fare, he told me that he expected the job market to improve in a year or so and hoped one day to return to recruiting. “I don’t know that driving a taxi has a great future,” he said. “I made a nice chunk of change before, without a lot of aggravation.” The self-reinvention theme surfaced again during the film, which was about a transsexual singer who overcomes a broken heart, copyright infringement, and other challenges (it wasn’t always an inch) to find true love and stardom. Chatting with my fellow Tourists after the show, I learned that Hedwig and the cabbie weren’t the only ones remaking themselves in the face of adversity. One woman brought up the example of a former high-tech-magazine writer who was training to be a dominatrix. “She was going to a place in San Mateo or someplace Silicon Valley like that,” the woman said. “I don’t know if it’s all whips and chains, but it’s some kind of dominant work.” My friend Carla, a onetime consultant to the dot-com stars, is researching a new product idea with the help of a career-life coach in Boulder, Colo., whom she phones once a week. As old habits die hard, Carla was in stealth mode with the project. But when I told her I was interested in professional reincarnations, she didn’t hesitate. “You should talk to my friend the Doggie Dentist,” she said. The Doggie Dentist, it turned out, was 33-year-old Kimberly Testa. Kimberly used to work at Alexa Internet, a software company that Amazon.com acquired in 1999 for more than $250 million in stock. Kimberly had gotten laid off in March. “I spent two months licking my wounds from the torture,” Kimberly told me when I reached her by phone. “And by torture I don’t mean the layoff. I mean the dot-com-in-general torture. I went from salesperson to project manager to media buyer to trade-show coordinator, with a different job every month. I’d work eight days a week to get something done, and then I’d find out it was irrelevant because the company had changed strategy again.” Kimberly had longed for a career that would “put a smile on my face — where I would know at the end of the day that I’d accomplished something that mattered to someone.” One day she brought her cat, Rufus, to the vet, where she met a woman doing anesthesia-free teeth cleaning. Intrigued, Kimberly struck a licensing deal with the woman, who was based in San Diego. The teeth cleaner would train Kimberly to whiten up those Old Yellers, and Kimberly would pay the woman a percentage of her business for five years. Having mastered the art of holding an animal in a towel and saying “Sit,” “Stay,” and “Good doggie” as if she meant business, Kimberly posted a sign-up sheet for her services at Alpha Dog, a pet store in Mill Valley. By the end of the first day she had a day’s worth of appointments and was soon booked solid two months out. “It’s all word-of-mouth marketing,” said Kimberly. “People don’t want to put their pets to sleep during the cleaning, but I don’t know a lot of people who like their dog’s breath. So there’s a lot of demand.” At $75 a cleaning (or more if the need for a doggie mint is severe), Kimberly projects annual revenues of more than $80,000 — and that’s for scraping tartar just three days a week. To grow the business, she wants to offer her services in pet-grooming shops. Kimberly finds her new customers easier to deal with than her former colleagues. At Alexa, “nobody knew what they were doing, especially with the direction changing so much,” she says. “With these animals, I clean their teeth, I give them a doggie treat, and they wag their tails. The relationship is very clear.” Not every apple has fallen as far from the dot-com tree as Kimberly has. Former Qbiquity marketing director Paul Allen (loyal readers of this column will recall that, no, he’s not that Paul Allen) remains part of the tech start-up scene, albeit in a very different role. When I hired Paul as employee number five, back in 1999, I didn’t know that he had already achieved some local prominence by throwing Jewish networking parties: so-called Jewcrew events. He also operates a message board (www.Jewniverse.com) that is a kind of Craig’s List for the Jewish community, publishing listings of jobs, apartments, and things for sale, as well as book, movie, and restaurant reviews. At the height of the dot-com frenzy, friends and people who knew Paul through his Jewcrew and Jewniverse activities began E-mailing their business plans to him. “They considered me the master networker,” he says. After leaving Qbiquity, in December, Paul announced to his Jewcrew and Jewniverse comrades that he was launching something called the Tribe of Angels, a group for accredited investors, entrepreneurs, and vendors with an interest in the Jewish community. Within a week 50 investors and 30 entrepreneurs had joined the Tribe. Paul held the first Tribe of Angels party at the San Francisco Park Hyatt in January. He has since held four Tribe events, and word has gotten back to him that investors and entrepreneurs are indeed hooking up at the shindigs. Entrance fees from the events and advertising revenues from his E-mail newsletter, TribeWire, cover the Tribe of Angels’ operating costs. But Paul wants to get more involved in the deal flow he’s generating and to work closely with both sides of the funding equation. Paul’s idea is to hold private angel-investor briefings in which he’d present companies that are seeking funding to investors, à la Silicon Valley’s famous Band of Angels. After doing some research, however, Paul has found that with only a master’s degree in social work, he isn’t yet qualified to take finder’s fees on deals. “There were some SEC requirements about that,” he says. As Paul studies for his Series 7 exam, Kimberly massages the gums of a basenji, and a former tech writer whips something other than hyperbolic verbiage into submission, I find myself feeling strangely hopeful. Perhaps — like a California redwood sapling that sprouts up through fire-scorched earth — a (dare I say it?) new economy is rising from the ashes in Silicon Valley. An economy where the Internet is just another medium. Where not everything is about stock options. Where Kimberly Testa — not to mention her customers — can smile at the end of the day. Andrew Raskin is the cofounder and former CEO of Gazooba Corp. (now Qbiquity Corp.) and a contributing writer for Inc. Though he is not a dog, he could get used to the idea of being held in a towel while someone brushes his teeth. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4556 days ago E-Commerce

I Really Must Be Going

E-Diaries An Internet entrepreneur bids farewell to his firstborn Although I’ve never been very religious, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Moses. The guy leads his people out of Egypt, parts the Red Sea, hands over the reins to someone else, glimpses the Promised Land, and goes off to die. All of which was necessary in the greater scheme of things, I suppose. But hard cheese on Moses, all the same. Readers of my last column will have some idea why I’ve got Moses on the brain. In July, about a year after founding a marketing-services Internet company called Gazooba with my buddies Zen and Shanti, I stepped down as CEO to make room for a been-there-done-that executive named Colin Campbell. Venture capitalists had been telling me they’d invest only in a CEO with a track record of hiring and managing dozens — if not hundreds — of people. And, in fact, Colin almost immediately secured a handsome round of financing for the company. I harbor no doubts that passing the crown was the right move. Clearly, I wasn’t the man for this particular job. But that begged the question, Having hired Colin to be Gazooba’s CEO, what job was I the man for? Not long after coming on board, Colin asked me to propose a new role for myself. In an effort to come up with something, I spent one Sunday morning at a Starbucks on Polk Street, comparing my skills and passions with Gazooba’s hiring needs. Sipping a tall chai tea latte, I composed a list of things I’d learned to do — and loved doing — as a CEO and an entrepreneur. Here it is: 1. Persuaded a bunch of venture capitalists to back my half-baked idea. 2. Persuaded a bunch of smart people to leave cushy jobs to work for a company based on a half-baked idea and run by people with names like Zen and Shanti. 3. Chose for my company’s moniker a word that didn’t even exist but that we thought would make people smile. 4. Offered options to half the service population of northern California. 5. Presented my half-baked idea to big scary audiences at high-profile industry conferences. 6. Bribed real estate agents with T-shirts in order to secure prime San Francisco office space. 7. Made payroll by creatively cutting expenses, finagling bridge loans, and prostrating myself before vendors. 8. Persuaded big Web companies and even a major telecommunications company to pay money — money! — for my half-baked idea. 9. Chronicled the whole experience for a national business magazine whose editors kept warning me not to make anything up. I read over the list, and my eyes welled with tears as I recalled the thrills, chills, spills, and other nonrhyming but no less dramatic and emotionally charged events of the past year. Only then did I realize three things. First, no matter how much I loved working at Gazooba, I’d be bored silly with a job as vice-president of one thing or chief of another. Second, I was thoroughly addicted to whatever chemical is released by the brain upon the successful transformation of a half-baked idea into reality. And third, everyone in Starbucks was staring at me because I was sobbing like a schoolgirl. The next day Colin and I had lunch at the Tadich Grill, a venerable San Francisco seafood house around the corner from our office. Over sautéed sand dabs, I told Colin that I wasn’t sure there was a place for me in the new Gazooba or, more to the point, that there was a place for the new Gazooba in me. “Why don’t you give it some tame?” Colin said, his Scottish accent no longer impenetrable to me. “Next week we’re having some off-sites. I think they might give you a different perspayctive. Let’s feigned out how yer feeling in two weeks.” I was in no rush, especially if a fulfilling life at Gazooba was still possible. We set the clock ticking, and I promised to keep our conversation on the q.t. For many of my coworkers, my announcement was akin to the Jolly Green Giant’s declaring that he could no longer envision playing out his personal destiny among the sweet peas and pearl onions. But I soon discovered that my future happiness at Gazooba was not to be, chiefly because there was to be no Gazooba. It happened on a Friday morning. Colin called about 10 of us into the conference room and introduced a couple of gents from Idiom, a naming consultancy. “Great,” I thought. “We’re going to discuss some names for our new product extensions.” But no. “The reason we’re here,” said one of the Idiom guys, “is that now that your company has repositioned itself as a business-to-business provider” — a decision I had made prior to Colin’s arrival, partly at the urging of our board — “the name Gazooba doesn’t work anymore. We’re here to pick a new name.” My heart sank. Gazooba was emblazoned on my soul and my license plate. I couldn’t bear to see it die. I fully understood the rationale: we were selling to marketing managers at big corporations now, and our clients, perhaps understandably, weren’t comfortable cutting $100,000 checks to an outfit whose name was chosen, in part, because it sounded Dr. Seuss-ish. Suddenly, I realized that it wasn’t just the name change that was bringing me down. It was the whole concept of selling to marketing managers at big corporations. My company’s new direction was smart and strategic, and it left me absolutely cold. My feelings must have shown, because Colin didn’t invite me to any of the follow-up meetings. I felt left out, of course, and maybe a little resentful. But mostly I was relieved at not having to take part in the relegation of Gazooba to the dustbin of Internet history. In the end, the management team narrowed down the choices to two names: Qbiquity and Metafinity. Qbiquity and Metafinity. Qbiquity and Metafinity. I said the two words over and over, but they just weren’t … well, they just weren’t Gazooba. [Editor's note: the company ultimately settled on Qbiquity.] On the day of the off-site, my mind was already made up, although I don’t think I knew it yet. The event took place in a conference room at the nearby Hyatt Regency; the facilitator was Dan Foxx, a consultant who assists executive teams with goal setting. Dan led us through a series of visualization exercises. First, we were to imagine in great detail an initial public offering for Gazooba (or not-Gazooba). Dan then asked employees to calculate how much money they’d make on their options and what they’d do with their windfalls. Most replied that they would buy things for their families. I said I’d donate a hefty chunk to my old summer camp. After each person spoke, Dan smiled and said, “Wow. Thank you for sharing that.” Now that our dreams were on the table, Dan took one step back. “OK,” he said, “we know where we want to be. Now, what do we have to do to get there? To reach this stock price, how much revenue and profit would we need? How many customers? How many analysts covering the company? By when would we have to do all this?” While my colleagues responded to Dan’s questions, I stayed silent. I felt as though I were an oarsman headed someplace I didn’t want to go on a boat I had once steered. Dan, who had been writing on the board, paused and called a time-out. “I’ve run this exercise with a lot of other companies,” he said, looking out at us, “and there’s always a lot more excitement than there is here. Is there a dead moose in the room?” I knew what Dan meant. I was the moose. Looking over at Colin, I asked him with my eyes for permission to break my promise of confidentiality. He nodded. “Dan,” I said, “there is a moose here. I’ve been talking with Colin about what my role will be at Gazooba, and we’ve agreed that there isn’t one that will both fulfill me and benefit the company. So I’ll be leaving at the end of September.” My coworkers sat there, stunned. For many of them, I had become synonymous with Gazooba, and my announcement was akin to the Jolly Green Giant’s declaring that he could no longer envision playing out his personal destiny among the sweet peas and pearl onions. Dan broke the silence. “Andy,” he said, “I can see from your face that you are truly committed to Gazooba, and that this is a decision made out of commitment. Is there any message you’d like to leave the session with today?” I hadn’t prepared anything, but I blurted out: “Of all the things I’ve accomplished, I’m most proud of the people I’ve hired at Gazooba. This is an amazing group that will go on to achieve great things. I’ve worked for companies where people talk behind one another’s backs, where you have to assume people are talking about you behind your back. At Gazooba I never felt that, and I’m proud to call everyone here my friend.” By the end, I was choking back tears. In the preceding weeks I had discovered that one of my cofounders, Zen, had been traveling a similar path and had arrived at the identical destination. Now, seeing me bathed in the spotlight of emotional catharsis, Zen sought to steer some attention his way by announcing that he, too, would be leaving, as soon as someone could be found to assume his role of chief technology officer. Of the founding triumvirate, only Shanti — who had matured into a kick-ass product manager — would stay on. On my way out of the hotel, Doug Gross, our sales manager, stopped me in the hallway. “I just want you to know, Andy, that I joined Gazooba because of you, because of your vision and your enthusiasm,” he told me. I was enormously gratified, especially considering that Doug’s first impression of me was formed at our launch event, where I was acting as a mime. The fact that I could barely summon words to answer him seemed somehow fitting. So I didn’t reach the promised land with Gazooba after all. But I still own a chunk of it, and my severance package is nothing to sneeze at. What’s next for me? Well, since I seem unable to shed my entrepreneurial skin, I’ll stay out here in Silicon Valley looking for the next big thing and chronicling the search in my Inc. column. (Incidentally, readers who know of any next big things are invited to contact me at the E-mail address below.) But first I’m taking some time off to scuba dive, snowboard, windsurf, and participate in assorted other activities that don’t require a consultant. Zen has suggested that we rent a small office near our favorite windsurfing spot and use it to develop new business ideas. And I expect I’ll be wallowing — just a little — in nostalgia. Last night I reread the first installment of E-Diaries, which I wrote exactly a year ago. In what amounted to Gazooba’s birth legend, I described giving up the pleasant certainties of life in Manhattan for the shimmering question mark that is Silicon Valley. “It’s going to be hell out there,” whined the Andy of a year ago to Zen, “working 24 hours a day, beholden to a bunch of VCs.” “Yes,” Zen had replied. “And you’ll love it.” He was right. Andrew Raskin, the cofounder and former CEO of Gazooba Corp., is now a full-time seeker of opportunities in Silicon Valley and beyond. E-Diaries: Episode 1: A New Beginning The Game of the Name Take My Job Offer, Please. Pretty Please There’s No Such Thing as a Free Launch Gimme Shelter Bridge Financing over the River Scared Let the Good Times Roll There’s a New Man in Town I Really Must Be Going Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.