How Persistent Upstarts Built MySpace — The Julia Angwin Interview
on Mar 20, 2009 - 9:00 PM PSTSummary:
I first met Brad Greenspan, the CEO of the company that created MySpace, when he called me up to tell me that he knew how much money my greeting card company made and that he wanted into the business. That’s the way his company, eUniverse, worked. Whenever they saw a business with potential, they jumped into it.
Julia Angwin’s book, “Stealing MySpace,” chronicles some of the businesses they got into. For startup entrepreneurs, it’s an incredibly motivating book.
In the video summary, I showed some of the businesses they got into. In the full interview I recorded with Julia, you’ll get a detailed look at how they built the business that gave birth to MySpace, one of the Internet’s biggest successes.
The Full Story:
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March 21st, 2009 at 7:26 am
We're asking ourselves the same question constantly these last few months. I'd say we are on our 6th shot in 5 years, with little to show for success currently.
A few months ago, we decided we were going to do 15 small-ish projects at 6 weeks development and marketing time each for the next 2 years, as opposed to 1 or 2 really big projects.
It has its ups and its downs. The advantages are you can re-use code, ideas, and strategies from one successful project to the other, the dis-advantages, obviously, it means its harder to dedicate quality time to each project as the 6 week deadline passes, but we're trying to create robotic models.
So i think only time wil tell for us, but i would love to see what others think.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:37 am
Andrew, this interview is hilarious
March 21st, 2009 at 8:35 am
Nice interview Andrew. I think myspace should start a Publishing company where they do sort of American Idols kind of shows and sell content on their website. That is if they haven't done so already. Because facebook has clearly taken over Social Media and Networking.
Otherwise congratulations to them for the hustle.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Great interview – Well done…
March 21st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
You are right about the Forbes fantasy… present the sanitised version of life again and again and again… Manufacturing Consent anyone?
:-)
March 21st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
My sense is that they set out to be fast followers.
They were going to copy and improve on any business that someone else built
if it had potential to pay off.
So even though it seemed like they had the attention span of a gnat, they
were really very focused.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I don't get why these smart marketers who had a huge head start are being
beaten by Facebook.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:21 pm
That's a key part of my mission with this site: to get at the truth.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Thanks Georgios!
March 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I think its an issue of leadership, not that Tom and Greenspan are bad leaders its that Zuckerburg has his hands on the technical development of facebook and had the great insight to follow google's model of totally concentrating on technology.
So my humble guess is that facebook maximizes its effort on technology and code and primarily relies on word of mouth by facebook users to grow while spending most of the money on new technologies.
What can we call this kind of business model? Technology Driven Model
March 21st, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I wonder if ownership has something to do with it. Maybe the MySpace guys
don't own the company so they don't have the same incentive.
Andrew Warner
Founder, Mixergy.com
March 21st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for another awesome interview and a big round of applause to Julia Angwin for taking the time to share her in-depth book, Stealing Myspace, with us. Its interesting to see that Tom is usually the one that gets all the credit for the founding, success and growth of Myspace. With this interview, however, I am glad that you have dug deep and with help of Julia, have revealed a lot more of the true origins of this social community site and have given credit to others that also deserve it. Looking forward to a future interview with Brad Greenspan, lets see what he has to say…..
Salmiler
March 21st, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Thanks. Brad says he wants to do an interview, but I haven't been able to
confirm a date.
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:08 am
Well here's the thing: Many people have ideas that are great. They are called creative thinkers and they will be driving down the road one day and a light bulb will go off. But implementation is another ball game. It takes experience first of all. And you can't be afraid to fail; for how else are you going to learn. I love Nike's quote because it sums up the gist of it: Just do it! You have to just take the first step and then you will get further guidance and direction.
Andrew hit on the other point of tenacity and preserverence. These guys seemed like they didn't have good “ideas” or they stole (perfectly legal if not trademarked) IDEAS (which in actuality are “floating” “out there” where any receptive minds can pick up on” and then they used their previous failures or business know how to improve on an already existing product and in turn used their previous experience to make it better.
There are many ways to be successful and this is a good case study to reflect on. I know of one guy in my area (Houston) who actually resales computer software and started his company in 03' and has doubled revenue every year. Why? By taking care of the customer through superior customer service and service after the sale.
So I guess the lesson here is that the creative people who come up with the ideas are often times not the ones who make it big. It's often times the other's who have more tenacity and “AMBITION” who will load up the idea or product with big caliber bullets and fire while the original team may be shooting BB's. This could be summed up in one word: HAVE FAITH. ok that was two – I digress. Thanks for the clip.
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:17 am
To make another comment, or a mere observation -I think many creative thinkers; innovators; etc. all have the same problem of having too many ideas and NOT just focusing on one idea. They tend to “have the attention span of a gnat” and jump from one idea to the next without giving the universe proper time to “pave the way” of their original intention therefore abandoning their original plan. (Did the word universe seem too much?) haha
peace
March 22nd, 2009 at 8:11 am
Great, funny interview.
For me it raises a question though, which I guess is relevant whenever we are trying to learn from other peoples success – which bits of their life do we model and which bits do we make sure we don't?
Whenever we look back on someones career, particularly from a biography or sorts, (which has been written at least partly for entertainment value) it's easy to pay undue attention to all the quirky or downright wrong things people have done.
Some people will no doubt read this as the path to success = porn, spam and spy ware.
Whilst others will read that the guys didn't achieve the success that we are impressed by (myspace) until they moved away from those things and focused on a business that had more emphasis on delivering a real value – helping people connect mostly through music.
It's certainly wasn't their technology! If ever there was a living example of the ready, fire, aim principle mentioned in the last interview, myspace's technology development is it.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
No mp3 or YouTube? Flash player doesn't work on my G1.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Interesting interview. I don't like the things they did but I gotta respect the hustle. Kinda like Ann Coulter.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Yup.
I tend to think that ideas are worth less than people think. Most people I
interview on Mixergy either copied someone else's idea or happened onto
their idea.
What they spent more time and energy on was execution.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Sorry about that. YouTube won't let me post big files.
I'll add an mp3 later today. Thanks for the reminder.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Good point.
I also need to emphasize that I focused on the shocking stories. There were
some good businesses in there. They weren't mentioned in the book and I
didn't go out of my way to talk them up. In retrospect, maybe I should have.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Yeah. I'm motivated by their hustle.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Nothing wrong with a bit of character for entertainment value. And nothing wrong with a bit of entertainment value. Things can get dull pretty fast in the business world without it.
My heroes as a kid were Arthur Daley…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-dpFuiL-7U&feat...
and Del Boy Trotter…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NF2ospBanE
:)
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Okay. Done. Thanks for suggesting!
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
My feeling is that it's just like when AOL offered unlimited service and their lines kept being busy. For a the better part of a year MySpace just sucked. Pages took MINUTES to load and clicking around was torture. That gave another site a chance to impress new users.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I don't think it's that MySpace guys weren't motivated. They created a ton of code really fast. I think the problem is that they created it so fast that they weren't being neat. That allowed them to grow fast but not be able to handle the growth when it happened. I bet over 80% of the code for MySpace had to be rewritten because the code was developed with the “just get it out there” attitude.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
What hit me is technology is always innovative; meaning if you aren't moving you will get left behind (kinda like kodak did) so if you have an idea and jump into technology you could make a big splash which could lead to other things since technology is always moving higher. Now if the US would invest in tech instead of other things we could see this country move into a good direction! There has to be balance though of the heart as well meaning spirituality. Many business people won't acknowledge this is what the world is made out of. We are spiritual beings not business people. BUT only when we get this balance will the world be growing and will be sustainable. Without it we will swing from one extreme to the other or have these high's and low's.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
great interview! Thanks Andrew and Julia!
March 24th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Thanks Hung!
March 25th, 2009 at 12:39 am
great interview! Thanks Andrew and Julia!
March 25th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Thanks Hung!
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