Tag Archives: Qbiquity Corp.

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 4252 days ago E-Commerce

Menu Driven

Letter From Silicon Valley “What separates us from other competitors is passion.” – CEO of a now-defunct online natural-products retailer, October 1999 “I have learned from those mistakes, and I am passionate about the need for campaign-finance reform.” – Al Gore, speaking about campaign-finance legislation, March 2000 “I am passionate about delivering B2B E-commerce solutions to my clients.” – Web consultant who once dated my friend Ellen, December 2000 Passion. A lot of people have been throwing that word around the past few years, and not all of them live in Silicon Valley. Needless to say, the three passionate gentlemen quoted above were all looking for new objects of affection in 2001. So I was skeptical when I received an E-mail from Jim Leff telling me about his community Web site for food lovers, Chowhound.com. The E-mail included a review from the Boston Phoenix newspaper that said that Chowhound exhibited “a burning passion rarely seen outside of the Middle East or the Napster controversy.” Jim was writing to say that he enjoyed my column and that my references to sushi, sand dabs, and other seafood consumed at various milestones in the history of my former company, Gazooba, made him think I might be a closet chowhound. Jim also noted that we played the same musical instrument. “I have really clever and ambitious biz plans but could use some trombone-brotherhood commiseration,” he wrote. Since I was heading to Long Island to see my family at the time, I cleared one afternoon to meet with Jim, who lives in Queens. Before leaving San Francisco, I visited the Chowhound site ( www.chowhound.com), where I learned the difference between a chowhound and a foodie. As Jim had suspected, the chowhound label fit me like a lobster bib. “Foodies fuss endlessly about ingredients, a fixation which strikes chowhounds as sheer culinary materialism,” the site explained. “Chowhounds can be spotted at Lespinasse insouciantly swirling their merlot but, unlike foodies, we have not the slightest compunction about stopping for a really great slice on the way home.” We met in Manhattan, and over large bowls of Korean beef soup, Jim told me that he wanted to make money from the site and was growing desperate for either a bright idea that would pull in revenues or an investor with deep pockets. Chowhound was attracting about 16,000 regulars worldwide (plus another 100,000 occasional visitors), and Jim was shelling out $600 a month for Web hosting. He was funding the payments and his apartment rent with money he was making as a food writer and jazz trombonist. Jim said that when he founded Chowhound with a tech-savvy buddy, in 1996, a revenue model was the furthest thing from his mind. Already a professional food writer, Jim knew there were others who wanted to pool grassroots restaurant knowledge rather than rely solely on professional critics or Zagat. “For years I had met fellow chowhounds in furtive circumstances, whispering tips at bagel counters,” Jim said. Now, in the spring of 2001, just when the Web was at its least welcoming, he wanted to turn his hobby into a business. Jim was hopeful about an upcoming trip to San Francisco, and not just because he’d be able to score his favorite potato chips at La Palma Mexicatessan in the Mission. A Chowhound regular who also happened to be a recent hire at a famous Silicon Valley law firm had signed up Chowhound as his first client, then egged Jim on to create a business plan and get venture capital. Another Bay Area fan was offering to write the business plan, and two chowhound rock-star programmers were going to “semidonate” their services. With the Nasdaq in tatters, I was doubtful about Chowhound’s ability to do an equity round, but Jim remained confident. “Andy, I know you’re connected enough to know that there’s about to be a huge wave of investment in consumer-oriented content sites,” he told me. I wasn’t sure whether he was kidding or whether I was just really unconnected. Jim flew out here a few weeks later. He reserved a banquet table at R&G Lounge, his favorite Cantonese place in San Francisco, renowned for its chicken, and invited 10 people who had offered to help, guide, support, counsel, and connect him. The woman who had volunteered to help with the business plan was there and turned out to be a fellow Wharton alum whom I had met once at a party. Other entrepreneurs who were present were either chowhounds or friends of chowhounds. The chicken was everything Jim had promised. And things were so bad on the dot-com scene that nobody wanted to talk about anything except the food. Some of my fellow diners had been laid off or were about to be. No one was encouraging about the possibility of Chowhound’s getting funded. For Jim, his guests’ frankness was a harsh-tasting morsel he was loath to swallow. “As anybody will say, the hardest thing in business is when you’re in relentless mode,” Jim explained later. “You’re pursuing an end in spite of everything, and people are saying it can’t be done. I’m thinking of those Japanese guys in the jungle thinking they’re fighting World War II in 1975. Now I understand those guys so well. It doesn’t just switch off.” Later, over beers, I did my best to drag Jim out of the jungle. I told him that venture money might not be the best thing for Chowhound anyway. I recounted the time at Gazooba when our VCs rejected a buyout offer that they had deemed insufficient. “They want a home run, a billion-dollar company, and they want it quickly,” I said. “They’re OK if 9 out of their 10 companies strike out trying to get there.” Jim dreamed of building Chowhound into an international brand for restaurant and food information, but I suggested he throttle back. He finally allowed that if he put a business plan together, he could probably round up a few hundred thousand in angel money, enough to hire some people and print Chowhound-branded restaurant guides. Jim seemed deflated but thankful for the straight talk. When I checked in with Jim again a few months later, he was still using trombone and freelance-writing money to pay Chowhound’s bills — now $800 a month to support 20,000 regular users and 3 million page views. One minor bit of progress was that he had identified a personal weakness of his that was impeding any major bits of progress where the site was concerned. “Here’s the deal, Andy,” said Jim. “I hate asking for money, and I’m bad at it. I’m proud of what I did with the site. But I’m like one of those weight lifters who forgot to work on his legs. I can’t spend the next six months of my life just schmoozing investors and trying to get checks from them. It’s just not what I do.” Like a battle-scarred soldier watching a new recruit struggling in the field, I want to help Jim write his business plan. But if and when Jim wants help, he’ll ask for it. Meanwhile, a generous chowhound has offered to front him a couple thousand dollars to produce Chowhound merchandise, which Jim hopes will recoup the $18,000 he’s spent on the site so far. Chowhound buttons will read, “No, I would NOT like some freshly ground black pepper on that.” And Chowhound “passports,” with sayings such as “Thai equals spicy, spicy equals Thai. I love spicy real Thai food!” written in 10 languages, for example, will let the waiter know that “you mean business and want the real shit,” says Jim. Jim was also working on the pilot episode of a Chowhound television show. “It’s going to be a game show for savvy diners, sort of a reality-TV thing,” he says. He plans to shop the show around to cable networks and hopes the exposure will do for the Chowhound brand what he once thought a big investment would. “My model, strangely enough, is Martha Stewart,” Jim says. “We are the anti-Martha Stewart in terms of what our content is and who our audience is. But the business model is the same. Get people who are disenfranchised — who have never had a voice in the media speaking to them — make them superloyal, and give them content across all media. It’s about focusing this community of people who are always tirelessly searching for something better. And the only reason it works is because I’m one of those people.” Time will tell if Chowhound will make it as a business. If it does, look no further than Jim Leff’s passion for the reason why. I told him to keep in touch and mentioned that I’d be in New York soon. Could we get together and catch up on how things were progressing? “Yeah, we could do that,” Jim said. “But will you have time to eat?” Andrew Raskin is the cofounder and former CEO of Gazooba Corp. (now Qbiquity Corp.) and a contributing writer for Inc. He will drive a long way for good fatty tuna. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.