Buddy Media launched as a virtual currency startup, but when its people tried persuading companies to use it, they heard responses like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” It was 2007, and most companies hadn’t even figured out Facebook, let alone virtual currency.

This is the story of how the company adjusted until it found its market.

Why didn’t Ask500People take off?

His money was hard-earned, so Aaron Dragushan didn’t casually toss $150,000 at his idea for a startup. And he wasn’t naive about what it took to build a successful online company. Aaron has been building profitable internet companies since 1998. So what went wrong?

The short answer is…

When I looked over the transcript of this interview, I noticed that Sally Hogshead used words like “involuntary” and “instinctive” to describe the drawing power of the triggers that she wrote about in her latest book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation.

In the interview, I asked Sally to explain how each of the triggers works, but also to beyond and…

Even though he was an introvert, Todd Smith HAD to learn to sell. “My wife got pregnant before we got married,” he said in this interview. “We were living in a 600 square foot apartment. Every time we’d pay bills, we’d get in a fight because the pressure was so great.”

In this interview, you’ll hear how turned it all around.

Vanity Fair said Amy Martin was the “tweetheart” with “1.2 million followers, who taught Shaquille O’Neal to tweet.” I invited her to Mixergy to talk about how she helped Shaq become one of the most engaging Twitter users and to learn how she’s helping brands like The Chicago White Sox, Discount Tire and The Cleveland Indians build communities and customers through social media.

One day in the late 90′s, Todd Friesen put up a quick web site to sell pills. “In the very first month,” he told me “I made $150. And I thought this is just silly.” But things changed quickly. “The second month Google picked it up and I got into the top three for some of the big keywords and made several thousand dollars. At that point my eyes got opened really wide and I started building web sites as fast as I could.” Then…

When I researched my interview with investor Brad Feld, I read that he called Service Metrics one of his best investments. So I invited the co-founder of Service Metrics, Niel Robertson, to talk about how he co-founded and built that business, and how it was sold for $280 million.

I also asked him about Trada, the company he launched which uses crowdsourcing to improve paid search clicks and conversions

What I admire about Patrick McKenzie is how methodical he was about building his online company, Bingo Card Creator. As a Japanese salaryman, he was expected to work long hours, but in his spare time (about 5 hours a week), he launched and grew his company.

In this interview, you’ll…

On June 19, 2008, Peldi launched Balsamiq, a one-man software company that helps people create quick & intuitive mockups. 3 weeks later, his revenue was $4,432. In less than 5 months, he reached $100,000. And 18 months later he crossed the $2 million mark.

In this program, I asked Peldi about the details of how he did it. I wanted to know …

You probably never heard of Paul Singh or MailFinch and might blow this interview off. Do NOT make that mistake!

If you listen, you’ll learn how Paul launched his business with nothing but a landing page and how he built it into a profitable, growing business by getting input from his users every step of the way.

One year and one day after he got funding for SiteAdvisor, Chris Dixon sold it to McAfee for $74 million. In this interview I take that one sentence and spend about an hour going through how it happened — from idea, to team-building, to product development, to sale.

We also talk about his latest company, Hunch, and his person investments in tech startups.

Listen around minute 9 of this interview and you’ll understand why I think talking about failure is so important. You’ll hear how one entrepreneur Brad invested in could have been a salve to the “never give up” cliché, but instead decided to build a successful business.

And, since Brad is one of the most admired tech startup investors (Zynga, Return Path, Service Metrics, etc), we spent a lot of time talking about what it takes to build a hit company.