Where In The World Is Web 1.0’s “Glamor Girl”?

I remember Katrina Garnett being a big source of conversation in the tech industry during the 90’s. As the founder of CrossWorlds Software, she somehow managed to keep getting the industry spotlight on herself and on her startup. When she wore a black dress in one her company’s ads it probably became the only time Enterprise Application Integration drew the attention of Vanity Fair readers.

In this interview, you’ll hear about the launch and sale of CrossWorlds. You’ll also hear how Katrina is turning her love of world travel into My Little Swans, a company that shows families how to travel without compromises.

Katrina Garnett

Katrina Garnett

My Little Swans

Katrina Garnett is the Founder of My Little Swans, a travel site for families who want only the very best holidays for themselves and their children. Previously, she was as the Founder, Chairman and President/CEO of CrossWorlds Software Inc. from its inception in 1996 to a successful public offering on Nasdaq (CWLD) in 2000 and acquisition by IBM in 2001.

 

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Full Interview Transcript

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Andrew: Hey everyone, it’s Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstarts. You guys know what we do here. Everyday I bring a different entrepreneur to talk about his or her experience. Today I’ve got Katrina Garnett. She launched Crossworlds Software which was sold to IBM. She is also the founder today of My Little Swans-a travel site for families that want to tour the world with their kids without compromise. I’m going to be asking her about Crossworlds Software. I’m going to be asking her about what kind of travel she’s done. I’m going to be asking her about My Little Swans-how she’s launched and built that business. But let me hold off on that because when we talked before the interview started she said she was willing to talk about women in technology, why they aren’t enough. I’m going to jump in on that opportunity because I want to do more interviews on female entrepreneurs here. I’ve been having a hard time finding them and I get a lot of criticism for maybe discriminating against women or not being open minded…I don’t know. What do you feel about this issue?

Interviewee: Well I personally I’ve never had discrimination. I mean part of it is women go into the scenario with a bit of guilt. They are victimization mentality. I think you’ve got to go in a little bit more optimistic, challenge your bosses. I always challenge my bosses at work on [Oakland].I always said if I deliver, what do I get after that? I mean they said I was partly horrible to manage because I always delivered. Executed results are all that matters and then you say you treat me the same as the man. If I’m going to be a VP I want to prove I’m being…total compensation, rewards, everything else is the same as the male. I just don’t treat me any different. But that also means you have to deliver. So part of it is managing up to your management if you are inside a large company. When planning your career, don’t take anything as an accident or don’t wait for the hand out. Go challenge your boss and say well what do I need to do next to move up the management? When I finally left I was a Oakland for four years, Sybase for six years, they were great environments. There were not many women at all but they were great environments to learn. So you kind of figure out what is it that I want to do long term. The jobs I wanted to do long term were not there. That’s why I eventually started Crossworlds because I bored. And it was because it’s like I had already done as many things inside those companies and it was time to move on and meeting something on a high note so I can say they must be in shock. Why are you leaving? And a lot of celebration from women because I was a woman who thought that maybe VP at Sybase and I’m like “guys you know you can do that too”. So I do a lot of, well I used to do a lot more of it, speaking to innocent consultants that were women APs,a lot of them married to their clients, woke up at sort of fifty realizing they still have to go on holidays with their mother. They have no life; they’ve missed out, not had kids, not gotten married and they are pretty sad. You can’t wind the clock back. So that’s not saying that it’s bad but it’s like you can’t have it all. Should you do both, don’t put your personal life and your career on halt. And partly I’m hoping I’m a good role model for that cause I believe I’ve truly done it all, had it all and I’m very happy and uncompromised so then I don’t have any regrets.

Andrew: Why do you think there are more women in technology? More women C.E.OS, more women on the Forbes 400 list who’ve earned…who earn money through entrepreneurship?

Interviewee: It’s a great question. When I’ve lectured at in the entrepreneurship program at Stanford, it’s mostly the women that come to this course and are asking really practical questions. And they are all entirely smart but none of them have had the initiative to go take a class in law school or going to take a class in computer science department. A lot of them are not cross pollinating. They may be great with numbers but you know…And the last thing they want to hear is go carry a bag for…you know go be on the frontline and do sales for the first years of their career. There’s a little bit of…and I think the economy has changed a lot of arrogance at this point, it’s like take whatever job you can get, but we always like to hire people that have tried you know, a variety of things. Pretty much if it’s someone smart, they can figure how to do anything. And so when we start companies you want that kind of personality, attitude, the DNA, the chemistry and then because companies grow through thresholds from, you know getting to the first million is very hard. Getting to the next 10million is very hard, getting to in to the next 100 million; you have to have people who can scale their skills. They are not quitters, I hire by personalities. So I don’t actually care if it’s a man or woman, but we never found enough female resumes just coming to us. And so we thought, since it’s not a, since it’s not a real, it’s not a discrimination. She’s not that many women out there. Although they say now 60% of the graduates coming out of academic schools, are more women than men. So, but they didn’t get specific about what, where or is it journalism, is it communications, is it marketing, getting advanced specific about it.

Andrew: Okay. Well, I am opening up to anyone in the audience who has any feedback on it. I want to be open minded you guys think I am not. I’ll be, I’ll accept all the feedback that you have. Let’s move on with the interview and talk about you Katrina, first of all I am fascinated that you think that, you actually just don’t think but you are showing that people can travel with their kids. I just got married, Olivia and I are talking about having kids, one of my big concerns is, am not going to be able to travel. We hoped here to Buenos Aires, cut the flight I think a week or two before we flew down here, I don’t imagine I’ll be able to do much about when I have kids. You say there is a world of possibilities, let me ask you this, how old are your kids and what kind of travelling have you done?

Interviewee: Today they are, and this goes back to the fact that they have travelled for the last 15 years with me as I have worked full time as well. So live it is how you can split your own brain of just believing that you can do all the sleeping in the world when you are dead. You know you don’t necessarily have to say, it’s how you manage your life, you know and either being optimistic or not, I truly believe there’s a lot of places we cannot take our kids. You know 20 years down the road, the countries around the worlds are either just getting trampled with tourists or your kids just they are going to want to travel with you. I mean once you’re busy, they are adults with their own lives, it gets even harder. So, setting that sort of momentum and routine when they are younger travel start as soon as you can. And most people just sit and say “I am waiting, I am waiting”. They contrive reasons and excuses to not travel. ‘Oh he’s going to walk and be all over the plane’. We tell our kids you just don’t get up, you know it’s like you get off your plane seat, you loose your seat. Yeah it’s hard we got three kids today and they are 11, 12 and 16. They have all been travelling since they were one. And I think most of it is the creativity you put into planning the trips, making it age appropriate, but not compromising to your earlier point, nobody wants a compromised trip, I mean that just not reasonable but you want to do careful planning, so a lot of our trips have had a little bit of adventure based trips you talked about. Buenos Aires, when you took them to Argentina they did a lot of horse ridding and fishing, glacier climbing. In Brazil it was wining and __ we’ve never done these kinds of things before, so I think part of it is just getting a really good sense into what you want to do. The kids really bond on these trips you know, they are offline for once, which is a huge important thing in this day and age, getting them off something like facebook for a while. I think the kids just they build intimate relationships. They see cultures they’ll never see in a classroom. There are so many reasons to travel with your kids and then maybe they won’t realize it for five or ten years, but they do have this reflections.

Andrew: To other people, I am getting a question from our audience here, from my __ Herbart he is saying, ‘Do other passengers give you a hard time about your kids behavior?

Interviewee: No they are really good kids. Usually I am very tempted to give other parents with unruly kids. I don’t say anything because parents get really temperamental on planes. We are very sensor our kids understand that there is a protocol on the behavior that is expected, whether it’s in a five star restaurant, or in a play, or in a museum, or on a plane. I mean kids, partly too, I’ll give this as an example, depending on how you dress your kids, also dictates their behavior. If you are going to put them in play clothes at a fancy restaurant, they are going to think they can play. So if you made the effort to dress them up and say well you know three out of five dinners will be formal, make them dress up. Like give them some ability to have some decision in what they are doing, where they are going, balance out the antennary so that they have something they look forward to doing. So it’s just not about what the parents want to do. So, on a plane I think they know everyone else is staring at them.

Andrew: So this is a passion of yours that you have turned into a business back in ’07. Do you ever feel like the business is encroaching on the passion, that because you have to be aware of how you are having a good time on the trips so that you can take some of those tips back to the website, that maybe puts a damper on the trip a little bit? Do you ever feel anything like that?

Interviewee: okay. I am definitely I’m behind the camera and other tricks because this are better than mine but again this personal angle I drove a behavior with a lot of our friends, that then they just kept asking for the tricks, so I didn’t mind sharing them, so it’s become more of an efficient process to sort to have an accounting management that we can put all the details, so we don’t have to redistribute some of the redundant questions about how to pack, or just how long a drive was between point A and point B or just tips that we might take for granted because we are, we are packed, we probably expert packers at this point, but takes stress out of trips. You don’t want to come back from somewhere to and have someone tell you what you missed or “God I wish I had known how to do this, I would have done it differently”. So we spend a lot of money on this trips, so it’s sought of travel wisdom where I think my kids understand the routine because they have been doing tit for so long, I tried not to let it dominate or get into that way, but we travel for our passions, everybody whether be it for art for food or the riding or some cultural language experience everybody is wants everybody is getting their thing and it seems pretty happy and I don’t think it would work just then , we do look forward to our holidays.

Andrew: And you make sure all three kids get something that’s their thing and you married and your husband gets something that’s his thing and you have your own private time, all in a short trip.

Interviewee: I will give you an example, on Saturday we leave for Alaska and it’s because the kids love fishing and this is serious fishing not keep reminding it’s one of our partners up in Canada who keep saying we have children don’t forget this are not men and they are, and I love the approach when these lodges really want to share those kind of experiences is like they are making sure this kids can still participate. You know it’s a high end large which involves fishing, and the last time they went to Alaska they asked them back, the next trip is in July and they asked to go back to Greece to do a boat trip, it’s one of their favorite trips they know there is no sharks in the water, they love the food, my heritage is Greek so I think they are drawing me a down bow on that one letting know whose doesn’t want to go back , but part of it was my compromise is that we have to fly through somewhere, you can’t fly direct to Athens through San Francisco, so we go through Berlin, so guys we have to go to some of museum, we have not been back to those museums in ten years, and so much has changed in Berlin. So they are willing to do that for three days and I said they know that they’ve going to get there boat trip in Greece, everybody gets what they want.

Andrew: We will work our way backwards, I will come back to crossroads later on let’s quick My Little Swans, what is the business? You mentioned there are travel tips on there, am seeing lots of pictures, I’ve seen membership portions on the side, what is the business essentially?

Interviewee: Well it’s definitely in a nutshell cutting out the middle man so most people are pretty comfortable on researching the web for travel, I mean there is almost too much information on the web so part of it is looking at us as a filter, just to sought of say I don’t recommend something that was not good, it’s just not there, so there is not kind of ratings, it ‘s more about trying emulate a lifestyle to saying “well if they are enjoying it, the kids are smiling it’s probably good”. So most people that’s what they identify with the photos and if they want to see more photos they go to my MobileMe account and they get to see hundred of more photos. So then they know that’s real, I’ve paid for all this trips myself so it’s like no one is paying me for this, so again it’s real experiences, because I don’t actually think a paid travel rider is having the same experience of driving through children, and Jane packing and unpacking, it’s not just the same as one person being send to a wonderful star or a honeymoon place it’s not just the same. This kids just , if you can plan travel for kids at uncompromised level that’s the hardest king of travel to plan, because it means everything else is easy, but you know we have a lot of couples trips that on that, my husband and I have done together when the kids are either in school or just move it to a business trip or something like Bordeaux is on there, this people ask me all that time like when you take your kids to summer school then what do you guys do, there’s so much opportunity in the world and so.

Andrew: So we see the trips you take and we see the possibilities and what else is there to do on the side, can you, do you book the travel for us?

Interviewee: Well the question to the business model is that I actually don’t book anything, people, my goal I just want to see the experience I’ve had , they want to see the pictures, they want to see the map, so they can visualize from a geographical point exactly where went and then they want the itinerary, they want to know exactly day by day all the detail and it’s pretty easy once we see the pictures exactly memorizing where we went and reconstruct the trip and then the content management site let’s just explore and add those destinations quiet easily and when I go back, going back to Egypt, going back to Jordan a second time or Greece a third time you will see those trips could show up multiple times and people could sought of see all the trips.

Andrew: And where is the revenue?

Interviewee: The revenue comes from the partner model so once somebody has scanned one of my Africa trips for instance and they review it all or the regional best partners we have that I have travelled with all of them. So they’ve rolled a new verdict. I have personally said I have used this group of people as the best on the ground for whether it will be for region or a country they then book the trip. So the site is really efficient when we convert, when somebody scans to the partner page. That moment, you now the partner knows how to do best to sell the services of their business. They are the ones that are on the ground with no one else in the middle trying to interpret your needs. So once you start talking to that person right away they are the best qualified persons to say, well what do you really want to accomplish in this trip? What did you really want to see, you know what are the ages of your children, what kinds of passion do you have?

Andrew: Do you charge the partner site, advertising on the site or do you get a commission off of the sale?

Interviewee: It’s basically a booking referral fee. And that is the standard model for where our partners can include luxury products, because today we have, my French jeweler, Lawrence [IB] who does enjoy and jewelry for a [IB], a watch guy that is in Geneva who does just the most amazing, so its things that people can’t get here. So there is a huge open ended opportunity for luxury products, services as well, we are people still want something to hand hold them, so the interesting thing here is travel agents really want to participate. And I basically sort of said we can’t get to you right now, we want to go direct to out travel operators because most people, they are smart enough to figure out I don’t need to pay that uplift of a middleman. A reverse engineered about 17 trips and I realized how much we over paid. And it was, I don’t think a lot of people don’t do that they just keep booking future, than go back and live in the past with what they did.

Andrew: And then the travel partner keeps track of how many sales you’ve generated and sends back commission based on that.

Interviewee: We have background process used to track the clicks when they hit the partner page and then tracks and reconciliation report back to the partner. So it’s all background process in the site.

Andrew: I see. Okay

Interviewee: There is also community page. Where we do want to use have user generated feedback on trips as well. So somebody with the search facilities is fairly powerful. So somebody wants to say that are really into wine. Maybe a community member can share much more about their wine experience trips and it sort of the just then organically grow. So it’s just not just my content but a partner’s content it’s also a user generated community content and how they can post their past trips and everyone can share it. its a very facebook like community.

Andrew: So I read in your bio you invested 2.5 million of your own money into this business, where, does the money go in the business?

Interviewee: Well it took us a year to basically build what we had today. We had a full year of close membership to get feedback last year. So the year before we had to build it and write all the content so basically it’s a very large complex site. So I think we are probably, around 3, 300 000 into development at this point. Its, it required a sort of a back end [IB] which made it a lot to build. It also wanted to know it supported every browser, every device so it was written to support the Ipad which was just launched on, so obviously that to me was a very smooth transition. It’s a great way people can take their travel content with them when they go. You can publish yourself into the Iphone and the Ipad. And now there is a lot of

Andrew: Let me just get that, but when, even a content management program like word press with a couple of plug ins including a membership plug in allowing you to have a cross browser compatibility, the ability to launch an Ipad on day one, an Iphone on day one, and the ability to have a close community?

Interviewee: Well I think partly is, we always wanted not to have to re-write things that exist. So social engine is what we use but the social community and it is a large PhP site that was in terms of what we used to write the rest of the comm…. The search facility was critical, the CMS had to be extensible for freshness and in terms of just the template structure and how the menus were going to be basically scale out as we add content. The good news is it works the way it was designed because we got a lot of content, a lot of photos, so it was designed for large image handling, video, I think with the high quality experience that you get in the site, then people don’t get lost in terms of how the navigation works. Maps was a pretty big deal, not linking with just all the goggle maps, we follow the links on the sites, the properties and all the restaurants and how you just maintain all the cross linking. But just the larger maps for the countries which happened to generate a lot of those. Most people, you know some maps just have a lot of detail on them, that are not really relevant. So we wanted to see where we went. There is just a lot of

Andrew: Okay, but also that’s, that’s $300 000. What else did you invest in?

Interviewee: A lot of it was just in terms of the writing, the trips, you know the marketing. We have started now, it’s more about branding, this year is more about branding and just drive in traffic, so obviously we got a solely active twitter phone on and somebody the manages that part time. We will see the just sought of the marketing, the PR, the development and the writing. And see it has now been going on for three years but it a totally internet based company, there is no office , no one seeing around, one full time travel agent that is there incase someone wants very high end services she was __ trained agent for fifteen years, so she understands my trips without anybody having to explain them to her, she understands service.

Andrew: So she book trips for people on the site?

Interviewee: She doesn’t book them; we basically qualify to the right partner.

Andrew: I see.

Interviewee: It doesn’t need to sit on this.

Andrew: I see she would actually take a phone call from someone on the site and help out.

Interviewee: If somebody wants to do that they can.

Andrew: I see, she is a full timer at the company.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Andrew: Okay, are trips included here too so when you are travelling around, you, it’s considered research and you get to include that in the cost of doing business?

Interviewee: Yes.

Andrew: I see, Okay. How many members do you have so far?

Interviewee: we haven’t shared that but it only went live on April 7th, and we don’t have a lot of data in terms of month to month, but I think we are averaging about a hundred a month, and we got Google in our analytics so that basically the data we have since April 7th.

Andrew: A hundred registered members or a hundred uniques?

Interviewee: New uniques since April 7th per month.

Andrew: To the site, okay. Alright, by the way great write off if you end up in a business is around travel and you get to take as many trips you want and write then off.

Interviewee: I hope so.

Andrew: Okay, alright let’s go back to 1996 there was a previous company crossworld software, you said that a lot of student asking what was the aha moment was the big idea, I want to ask the same question. What was that?

Interviewee: I think partly if I hadn’t been at work on Saturday at database world I would not have the perspective of seeing, you have to anticipate where innovation and technology is going, unless you, you can have the right product at the wrong time or have you know may be the most awesome team and have you know a really terrible product but it’s the right time , there are a lot of variables you don’t control and may partly some people just, there is a natural momentum to things, so you just have to trust your own gut and make those big forks on the road, because you got some key decisions you have to make sometimes and your life can be so different depending on which decision track you take. I’ve seen people time and again had a couple of great opportunities pick one and their life was so changed and they always you don’t want to regret what I would I have done or how I would I be different if I took the other path. So it was at the point I when I finished at Oakland Sybase I ended up with a $150 million dollar business I was running through many development groups that distributed objects and connectivity group, I’ve worked a lot with the Wall Street business designing just really technical products, web server for global training apps. I really loved mission critical enterprise based apps where it challenged us technically, I think I just thrive on innovation, so going to cross worlds was mostly seeing an opportunity for innovation for enterprise apps because everything else had evolved up to stock and commoditized, but if I hadn’t worked on database I wouldn’t have seen that opportunity. So as database got commoditized, you know it did much matter which database you used basically, DB2,Oracle as you moved up the stack it’s was like then there was enterprise app like ASP and SeaBall and there’s hundreds more of those enterprise apps iTunes manages to __ whatever vertical industry you are going to there is a specific enterprise app and you are not a very compelling solution if you say “ oh by the way I only integrate a couple of them.” You have to integrate all of them, if demands raising a lot of money and almost meant getting source cards from all of the partners. So I didn’t choose to raise venture, raise many million by going to my partners most of them were really forced with cash at that time had secondaries that are on IPOs, so it was perfect timing for them to want also to be part of this and so think of us as we were the Switzerland of integration because there all competitors, they weren’t about to share and help each other so we commoditized integration and only because java made it possible for us to encapsulate the business logic, if that had never, if we didn’t have a an object language we would have never done it.

Andrew: Let me down it down for people who are more like me, who didn’t, who were like me but spend a lot of research as I did today. In the dumb down version enterprise big companies have lots of different programs from lots of different providers, each one of them sits, each one of this programs in its own little world, what you did was you help them all talk to each other. Right, kind like the way for long time my Google contacts didn’t work with my Iphone contacts and everything else was on it. World companies have those kinds of issues in a bigger way. And you had a financial…you had a solution that you can bring to them; they would save their money over creating their own. Am I getting it right?

Interviewee: Yes. I mean it was the value of cost on ownership proposition that a very large company that were standardized on something like an S.A.P for inventory management or like a SeaBall for CRM or office automation, sales force management and contact management. How do you basically integrate? Everything was being done by Anderson and consultants to give an example. They were writing custom code. These guys cost a lot of money. So most of the customers were really happy to hear there was an alternative to finally have those people leave. Because what they were writing was point to point integrations that was custom. And so when the people upgraded their systems to the newer version of S.A.P or whatever…the integrations of the Anderson guys would break. Point to point doesn’t…it’s not version transparent. So what we mentioned earlier about being object oriented, those…that’s version transparent. So people just didn’t throw out the baby with the bath water so the integration kept working when they upgraded their systems.

Andrew: Okay, in addition to the money that you raise from companies like Intel, I’m reading off my list here,__,Michael Dell himself,__ Technology Partners and so on, you also, you and your husband, made a big point that you were investing your own money, 5.5 million of your own money, which is a bold thing for an entrepreneur to do. Where did that money come from?

Interviewee: Mostly from working at Orkland Sybase. That was again, managing my career to make sure I had acuity. So again if you don’t manage your career from the start you’re not ever going to have the acuity to do anything you want. And part of the reason for this was we let every round set the price and the terms and so our partners thought we had skin in the game as well to share the risk. I wasn’t sort off ploughing in early at a cheap price. It gave them comfort that we were all in there at the same price on each round and if they lost, I lost. If I won they won. So its sharing the risk…And it was just basically I think a better…that’s a lot what I talk about at Stanford. It’s like why did you choose to raise __ adventure. And I usually…I had two of my sons while I was running Crossworlds so the other question I always get well how do you raise money when you’re pregnant? I say well unless you make it an issue I don’t think it’s an issue. Just women are asked very strange question sometimes.

Andrew: Nobody asked a question about pregnancy at the time?

Interviewee: No.

Andrew: It wasn’t an issue. Wow!

Interviewee: Because we are executing and part of it is the other question I get is how do you do all this? Well I say this is __ people I’d worked with. All these partners, I’d already worked with them for ten years at Sybase and Oracle.These weren’t people I didn’t know. So they didn’t care that I was pregnant. I mean most of them were having kids too. And I mean I got asked once by…in a press interview which was entirely inappropriate, but somebody asked me when was I planning to have my next child. I said do you ask a male C.E.O those questions? So it was kind of like I think he crossed the line. Again that’s the gender issue. It should be completely irrelevant. As long as you make your investors’ money, it shouldn’t matter what you are.

Andrew: So did you make your investors money? I ask that because it looks like the company raised eighty million dollars; it was sold to IBM, according to their press release at the time, for one hundred and twenty nine million dollars. Did you make your investors’ money?

Interviewee: Of course we did. Yes. Yeah.

Andrew: You…what about…but when it went public it went public at ten, when it sold it sold for three dollars fifty four cents a share. This company…

Interviewee: You got to remember that a lot of what the competitors didn’t get out. We were second last company to go public when the market shut down the first time. So that IPO window shut down completely. So once it didn’t get out, it didn’t get out at all. Their stock dropped to nothing. And I think if the alternative was to not go public, you know that’s why the IBM thing was already there I’d already talked…I wrote two patterns for the company…so that’s …I’d already been talking to IBM for a couple of years because the alternative as a C.E.O, you have to be considering if you can’t go public, what is the alternative? which is probably aim to sell. So I think keeping a company burning cash alive you know and seeing the market shut down, I think the only thing I would have changed is that our board was a little conservative. So I think you know sometimes that’s one thing I learnt in terms of board composition it’s hard to fire board members so make sure you hire the right board members. Make sure that whole D.N.A of…that we are all very…we were very sensitive. We had so much money in the deal personally that we bent over backwards to make sure everybody sort of did and we did what we thought was the right thing for the company. Otherwise you’re going to get a shareholder lawsuit. I mean the market’s fairly efficient so the fact that it did go public first is the alternative the competitors didn’t get out at all. And then yeah six months later IBM buying it sort of validates…I think its just that the market was so down at the time. At least we got out, that made employees and investors and partners all very happy and then the closure with the idea of sort of the cherry on the top for everybody.

Andrew: I see, what was you net gain on the money you invested?

Andrew: I mean I think in most cases if you can earn a minimum double you money , I mean two three time of this market or that market back then you can be too greedy, I think sometimes you have sort of see if there was going to be any less than that then you would have changed course. So, otherwise we would be loosing our own money as well.

Andrew: So you are saying that you were able to double the 5.5 million that I read so much about, you guys were able you double the 5.5 that you personally invested?

Interviewee: Yeah, I tried to always do two to three X minimum on any of my investments, whether it’s crossworld, I’ve got a lot of money in Tapulous which is an Iphone app company that we have, am the largest investor there and it’s up to twenty five million unique users in fifteen months, part of it is you got to have metrics of measurement, it can’t be subjective about just money, you got to have other measurements, but in the end it is about results of making money for your investors whether you are private or public.

Andrew: Okay, Tapulous, you mentioned that you invest in them, how did, did they create the tap-tap revenge game that is incredible popular, I think they’ve got, I don’t know how may people they have, it is 25 million people who are playing they games? It is.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Andrew: So how did you hook up to with the founders there?

Interviewee: Again it goes back to the Rolodex, is you know I have only ever lived and worked in Silicon Valley, I think that’s partly why I’m encouraging people to make sure they sort of focus on the networking for their own careers, because you never know who you are going to probably do a deal with down the road. And, so I can probably do about three companies a year as a private personal equity investor, if I don’t have at least ten percent it’s not really worth my time to seat on board because am a very hands-on operation type of person and usually it’s pretty very much that’s the fun that always face start ups, because you are starting it from a blank sheet of paper, so again these were people I’ve known, were all pretty much on the same page in terms of , I’ve been a CEO before so I knew I was not going to micro manage this guys then you are done it, so it’s like all founders care about is delusion and control, am like “you don’t have to preach that to me,” then they have done it. And so I can take their perspective sometimes am a more ideal investor because am already on the same page.

Andrew: How specifically did you connect with them? How did you know them?

Interviewee: Through other venture guys that I did private deals with, I do a lot intelligence on the same deals that go around, so I’d say this sort of beyond the angels guys doing, you know a little bit here and there, we are pretty serious about this kind of stuff.

Andrew: I see, so am I hearing it right that other angle investors who are looking at the company said “let’s bring her in, let’s show her the business”.

Interviewee: It was pretty much we were there when it first started.

Andrew: I see, that’s why am especially interested, who introduced you? Can you say that?

Interviewee: No I mean basically there is coupe of other guys that I’ve worked with that are now venture guys but they and I were at crossworlds and when I was at Sybase there Sun and then Neon, again if you go back in time, they were all people I’ve known that even before we started investment we were all in operating roles, so it’s all the same people I knew back then, so we were basically investing in trusting each other so we all bring each other deals all the time. That’s just how we work.

Andrew: I see.

Interviewee: We have been together on this and we decided to only fund the company, it’s very frugal, we didn’t need to raise venture.

Andrew: For Tapulous you didn’t.

Interviewee: Right, these companies don’t need that much money, that’s just not the same as enterprise software.

Andrew: What, how did you think they caught on? What is it about them that made them work? And then we can come back to crossworld in a bit.

Interviewee: I think most of it will be the organic, youthful way to adapt social sort of growth it’s out there, I think if somebody is older they’re not going to figure out how to adapt to the social upselling that goes on. And I think part of it is just moving so fast, it’s like try something, it’s almost like how fast we have to keep the freshness with my little swans and that why the site had to be really sought of scalable, it’s, you are trying to push a game or anything that is socially organic, it can get stale really fast, so it’s the same can be said for games, music, you community is going to just walk away if there is nothing of value that’s interesting and changing all the time, so new titles, obviously more social engagement those are key metrics for us, session times, innovation with Facebook for sharing scores, how do you integrate various games, so kids can play, I mean it’s mostly they tell us what they want in the social engagement, they will tell us things we need to do and it’s partly then you go, they feel like they have that intimate relationship with you, I think the larger game don’t have that intimacy that’s partly why they some of them haven’t executed in this area.

Andrew: Okay. Back to Crossworlds; I did a search for your name, as I always Google people before they come here for the interview, and that ad came on. You know the ad I’m talking about?

Interviewee: Oh yes.

Andrew: Well how would you describe that ad to someone who hasn’t seen it? And then what’s your feeling on it all this years later?

Interviewee: Well I think that’s a great…it’s a great example of the people that have the most negative reaction to it were the people that were sitting in Silicon Valley because it changed the competitive landscape which was…

Andrew: Can you describe to people what it was? What was the ad?

Interviewee: I was in a black dress but clearly most people thought it was…I mean I don’t know how we are still different to L.A but clearly it was not appropriate for my stereotype of what people must think, a nerdy software C.E.O was supposed to do and wear. So I’m standing there like what was I supposed to dress like? So a challenged stereotype. I’m in a black dress. We hired Ritchie __ to take this shoot and the fact of the matter is we spent…we knew what we’d spend on it but it generated ten X in re-print and controversy of you know the amount ink that we got written about the company. So it was a branding ploy where I mean…got for me to explain Crossworlds in five seconds, it ‘s kind of…I loved the dive and technology. Partly that’s…that’s too hard to sell really quickly. So we placed the ad looking like editorial so we could brand the company with a face and a personality behind the company. And literally the further I went East and all the way to Europe, it was very well received. It was almost…it was hanging in people’s cubicles. It was kind of like we created a personality for the company. So the only people that had an issue with competitors didn’t know where to respond and even ad edge, advertising edge set was very successful cause it created that controversy and there was some kind of an emotional reaction that generated more people to write about it. So the re-writing actually kept us…it kept it bubbling for in the sort of online world. So you know you can’t regret anything but it was basically a branding strategy I just think in software, in tech people hadn’t done that before let alone a woman. But I challenge sort of saying what was I supposed to look like? You know…

Andrew: I remember seeing it for the first time before reading any articles about it. I think I saw it in Fortune Magazine. It caught my eye. I didn’t understand what the company was back then but I also didn’t think of it as scandalous. I read an article recently, in fact to day, in preparation for this interview that said it’s just not like a picture out of playboy but like a centerfold. I went back and I really looked at that picture to see did I miss something? I really don’t believe I did. It was one of the most tame, you can go pick up your kid from school picture ever.

Interviewee: I know. The most negative reaction were women in the Silicon Valley saying I’m not being a great role model for their daughters. And it was kind of like apparently I was revealing to you much. And my answer was but what was I supposed to look like as a stereotype? And I think challenging stereotypes is healthy but to your point, knowing you know I wasn’t nude, for God’s sake. You know it’s kind of like I have it on wanting to do something very professional __ for his name on it but also looking powerful. That was the…my main thing. Instead of doing the boring black suit. I mean we look at what’s going on with women in politics. It’s very predictable how you can get dressed to create a persona and then people just assume how you must be based on how you look. It was creating an image and I wanted to challenge the stereotype. But you’re right…

Andrew: You said that I wasn’t nude. I would bet you just about any entrepreneur worth his title would be willing to be nude on a magazine cover if that’s what it took. I would be willing to do it anywhere if that’s what it took to build your business and I can tell you not only would they but many have. You just need to do a Google search for Richard Branson for you to see him in that short where he is nude coming out of the ocean and not only are people not putting him down, they are cheering on and we should continue to cheer any entrepreneur that’s willing to do anything gutsy like that.

Interviewee: Well you have to draw your own line because…

Andrew: I got no line. Whatever it takes to build a business…believe me people are willing to sacrifice their families to build a business. They wouldn’t…A guy whose willing to sacrifice his business wouldn’t be willing to get in a black dress? Come on.

Interviewee: Well I think you have to live with it. You have t not regret your decisions no matter what you choose to do. I mean we’ve got way more stuff that you can’t …that’s online now that you can’t control. So I think the stakes are higher than what they were when I did this. And…But it’s an interesting…I think there’s a whole lot interesting about commentary online marketing and just how much the stakes are much much more critical. You’re right. I mean somebody’s…it’s micro fame it’s like quickly out there and it could have been the dumbest thing in the world but it’s going to push so many eyeballs. So I agree with you.

Andrew: Now you say it’s branding. What about, this is the criticism from the time, branding of your self or branding of the business? There was a lot of criticism that it was branding of you as the entrepreneur, you as the person. Cyber celebrity, or business celebrity…

Interviewee: Well not an easy thing to answer. When you have a very technical cell, as was crossworld to my point earlier, you even, most people said pretend you are talking to your mother when you are doing like the T.V adds or something like that, so you can dumb it down or say who it does from a solution perspective. I dived into technology quickly because I love it. But the bottom line is, it was putting a face on a company and humanizing it so that it didn’t feel like some big enterprise software and giant that no one could like figure out who was behind it. And I figured well, other aren’t many women doing this, we have got a lot of money at stake, all the partners know me, we are sharing the risk, why not just brand it? Otherwise you are trying to figure out how to put yourself in a, in an ad to generate business and all this is going to be ugly boring text about a product. So the alternatives for editorial, I mean what would it have been? I mean besides success stories and putting out customers and you know obvious testimonial kind of marketing. What were the alternatives? So we wanted to generate a buzz and brand it with our personality.

Andrew: Yeah the other thing I saw when I researched for this interview was your facebook which was open with your face-book photos. I felt a little embarrassed going through them. Is that intentional? Your mobile me pictures?

Interviewee: Which, you mean my personal facebook or the my little swans facebook?

Andrew: Your personal facebook including party pictures

Interviewee: Oh no because those people they were the first members at My Little Swans. So I was very considerate of putting those on my personal verses on the My Little Swans. They are on the my little swans I think that will cross the personal line of abusing my friendships. And

Andrew: But they were, having your pictures be public on facebook that’s part of the process. The world is all public now

Interviewee: Oh I am nowhere close to what my kids are doing on facebook. I don’t really do much am not very obsessive on it to be honest. I should be but I am not.

Andrew: Okay, going back to My Little Swans, a hundred uniques on the website a month. Is this business really just your way of travelling and getting a rider off the travel? You could tell me, you could tell me, we could be open to each other we are now friends.

Interviewee: Yes we are building, the value here, to figure how to value is, its the content site. So do we know how the market is going to value the content site? We don’t actually know that yet but because it’s such a shake out going on how content is going to be actually searched, and what the business model will be on like an Ipad for instance. The Atlantic article this month with goggle at the cover was talking about pain wall of how people were linking into newspapers and magazines. So I think people are still shaking this out. So I actually think during time of recession that it’s a great time to experiment or try new things because people think if you failed, then it was just the market conditions. It’s a great time to sort of heads down. I mean I am busier than I have ever been because I just think, you know a lot of people are just pretty much just miserable with not a whole lot more to do right now. But am like well it’s a great time if you haven’t got any other commitments or distractions then start something. Then if it doesn’t work, you can always go back to work. So part of it was the demand of a lot of people really wanting this stuff I’d ended up with 15 years of it and I said okay let me just get it online, let me just get it online. And the second part of it is, I’ll give you this, Julia __ took seven years to write her book. The content doesn’t happen over night. And I think building loyalty and community, you know most of the, part of it is making sure the experience doesn’t get compromised by just throwing any kind of crap on the site we are just not going to do that. So it’s just, we got a lot of content already that covers the world and if we don’t go some where we tell people. It’s sort of just like it will get there. And if I had only this is my entire existence, then you are right, I would probably maybe worry but its one of those, I am a long term investor, I don’t get in and out of the market quick. You know, you look for trends, you look for, and that was when I was going back to the timing issues for anything. Where there was Tapulous Crossworlds or mylittleswans timing is everything. And I think , you know __ is now on the Ipad, everybody is starting to try and get better, luxury experience is on the Ipad. So the worlds aren’t colliding now, I think our timing is really good and we have learnt a lot in the last two years. And I think, the interesting thing is the partners even get the model, that we don’t need middle men anymore. So then you just need to learn to trust that kind of site behavior, so I am not in a rush. Its adopting it quickly as it should. I mean it’s a pretty high end demography we are never going to have millions and millions of user.

Andrew: Alright, if people want to see it what the, I just say you can go to mylittleswans.com is there a section of the site you want to highlight where they can go check out to get a good sense of what it is all about?

Interviewee: I think mostly depending on where anybody thinks they usually think they really want to travel, look on that destination, you know some of the __ places that people ask about what the best in __ trips, because I’m Australian, Africa I’m not just not very objective we loved our African trips, I would go back there any minutes there is so many easiest trips too because it’s all casual , they give you a packing list, your kids are offline nobody can really get on their blackberry, so everyone is kind of focused on just being out there with nature, I think or Argentina.

Andrew: We are in Africa if am going to take a trip in Africa, if I’m going to say “Olivia I’m going to whisk you away before we have kids, maybe when we have kids take them on a plane too but before where would you say in Africa?” What a luxurious trip for us?

Interviewee: Probably Botswana because you can do ecolodges or you can do luxury, it really has, it’s the density that Botswana as a country has never has civil wars, because the animals come to you because they are water locked, so you don’t have to go jump out a jeep for eight-ten hours, I mean if you really don’t want to work too hard on your trip you can literally sit and choose what you want to go see because that delta there is just a such density of animals and lodges.

Andrew: Okay, but my Iphone will not work.

Interviewee: Hopefully not.

Andrew: Alright I will find away to live with that. Well thank you, thanks for doing the interview with everyone check out the website come back and make sure you give me the feedback on and on this interview, thanks for doing the interview, good to meet you.

Interviewee: Thank you, likewise, bye bye.

Andrew: Bye

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