Mr Startup Accelerator

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Don Dodge’s Twitter profile says he’s a “startup guy,” but he hasn’t founded any startups of his own. What he does is help accelerate startups’ growth.

He does that at Google, where he introduced a developer to the company’s app marketplace and helped turn a side project into a profitable business. And he did that at the five startups that he worked in earlier in his career. I invited him to Mixergy to talk about his experiences.

Don Dodge

Don Dodge

Don Dodge is a Developer Advocate at Google helping developers build new applications on Google platforms and technologies. Prior to joining Google Don was a startup evangelist at Microsoft. Don is also a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks.

 

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Full Interview Transcript

Hey, before we get started, I want to show you that I just got new business cards from PrintPrintPrint.biz. Here, let’s open them up. There they are. I asked for very plain cards, just my name and contact information. If you need business cards, go to PrintPrintPrint.biz and use the discount code, Mixergy. So, PrintPrintPrint.biz. They came within a couple of days, and they look great.

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Here’s the program.

Andrew: Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious startup. My goal for this interview is to learn about entrepreneurship from the experiences of someone who’s been in the tech startup scene from the days when AltaVista was the only search company.

Joining me is Don Dodge, a veteran of five startups, including AltaVista and Napster. He later went on to become Microsoft’s startup evangelist. Today, he’s a developer advocate at Google. Don, welcome to Mixergy.

Don: Hey, thanks for having me.

Andrew: I was looking at your Twitter profile. It says that you’re a startup guy. If you’re a startup guy, why haven’t you started your own startup?

Don: Well, that’s a good question. I’ve been part of the management team of five startups and some of them very high profile, like Napster and AltaVista and Groove Networks. So, I was the vice president of those companies and part of the early startup team. But you’re right, I haven’t started one myself where I was the CEO and I started it. But I’m still young. Who knows? I can still do that.

Andrew: Why not? Why not? You’ve had a lot of experience at high profile startups, as you said. You’ve helped a lot of other startups. You’ve reported about it on the scene. What is it about launching your own business that hasn’t yet gibed with who you are?

Don: Well, that’s a good question. I think it’s timing. Doing a startup, and I’ve done five of them, it’s a very, very intense kind of experience. It takes the culmination and convergence of a great idea and the right people and the right time.

Those things haven’t come together for me personally at the right space and time. So, I’ve always joined somebody else’s startup and worked from there. But, you know, I could do it at any time. So, you never know.

Andrew: Okay. And how many startups have you helped out when you were at Microsoft?

Don: Wow. Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds. At Microsoft, I saw about 500 startups a year every year. I didn’t help all of those startups, but I would say I probably helped on the order of 50 every year, so 250 during my time at Microsoft. I’m continuing that work at Google, too. I still see probably 400 or 500 startups a year, and I help lots of them in my day job at Google. On the side I’m also an angel investor. So, I’ve invested in several small startups now, 12 right now.

Andrew: Oh, wow. And you’re also someone who, just from my experience, it feels like you’re always at tech events. I used to think that you lived in Southern California because I’d go to TwiistUp and other events like that, and you were just always there. Then, I saw you on TechCrunch, and I started to see you at other events. I started to realize, he doesn’t live here in our neighborhood. He just happens to constantly travel out to events.

So, from the entrepreneurs that you see at events, the entrepreneurs that you worked with directly at the startups that you were part of the founding team of, and the entrepreneurs who’ve come to talk to you at Google and Microsoft, can you tell me about one person who you admire who, maybe, doesn’t get a lot of recognition? I want to get a sense of some entrepreneurs that you work with.

Don: That’s an interesting question, too. Like I said, I see 400 or 500 new startups every year. They’re all interesting in their own way. Entrepreneurs are very much alike. They’re very driven. They have interesting ideas. They look at things in a totally different way.

I always say, if it was obvious, everyone would have done it. So, the ideas that entrepreneurs have are usually quirky and seem odd or unusual at first or don’t make any sense at all. That’s to be expected because if it was obvious, everyone would have done it.

The entrepreneurs that I’ve seen all have those characteristics. They look at things in a different way. They can see around corners. They look at a problem and see different opportunities.

Andrew: Give me an example of an entrepreneur who you’ve worked with who saw around a corner.

Don: So, Shawn Fanning is a great example.

Andrew: Napster.

Don: Shawn was just 18 years old when he launched Napster. He did it by pulling together some existing technologies in a very new and different way that no one had thought of. Instant messaging had been around for a long time. File sharing via FTP had been around for a long time. He took that and a few other technologies and mixed them together in an interesting way to create Napster. It was sensational. It changed the world, but he did it when he was 18 years old and did it with existing technologies that everyone already knew about, but he just put it together in a very different way.

That’s an example of once it’s done and you see it, you say, oh, yeah, of course, that’s obvious. But it wasn’t obvious, and Shawn just saw it in a different way.

Andrew: You said they’re very motivated. What was Shawn motivated by? Why did he go through the trouble of building the first version of Napster? Why did he go through the trouble of fighting the record industry?

Don: Well, when he started, it wasn’t with the idea of building a big company that made lots of money and changed the world. He had, I think, very modest goals in doing it. He was teaching himself how to program and how to build applications. He was interested in C++, and he just started building things to help him learn how to do things.

The second motivation was at that time he was in college, and all of his friends wanted to share music and find music, and it was very difficult to do at the time. So, he came up with an interesting way to be able to easily find music and share it. So, that was his motivation, but he was only 18 at the time.

Since then, he has started three more companies. He’s a very motivated kind of person, and it’s not about money. With most entrepreneurs it isn’t about money. It’s about solving a big problem and the rush that you get from seeing your ideas used by millions and millions of people.

Andrew: I see. That is a big rush. In fact, why do you think it is that that is a bigger rush and a bigger motivation for some entrepreneurs today than money? Why is the rush that comes with notoriety with having people talk about you and use your app, why does that trump money which gives you so much more power it seems?

Don: Well, it’s true, Andrew, in all walks of life and everything you do. Take Steve Ballmer, for example, at Microsoft. He’s, I think, the sixth richest person in the world. He’s worth, I don’t know, $20 billion. It’s some huge number. He stopped working for money 20 years ago. 20 years ago he had more money than he could ever possibly spend.

Why does he come to work every single day passionate, motivated, working his butt off for 14, 16 hours a day? It’s the same reason that entrepreneurs do it who have nothing. It’s not about the money. It’s about having an idea and seeing it come to reality and making a difference and seeing millions of people get excited about it.

That’s what motivates all of us. It’s not money because beyond a certain point . . . here’s the thing. Mark Cuban, he’s a multibillionaire. Steve Ballmer’s a multibillionaire, and nobody works harder than those guys. The point is that it’s not about money, because once you have $5 million, you can live the lifestyle of someone who has $50 million or $500 million. Beyond a certain point, money doesn’t matter.

Andrew: I see. But with $5 million you can’t get your own jet.

Don: That’s true, but you can fly first class. Mark Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks.

Andrew: Right.

Don: But I can go and sit in the front row and watch the Dallas Mavericks basketball game, and I don’t have to be worth $5 billion. So, the lifestyle that you’re able to get, it really doesn’t take a lot of money to have a really terrific lifestyle. So, it’s not about the money beyond a certain point.

Andrew: All right. How about a story from another startup that you were involved with? How about AltaVista? What was AltaVista like in the early days?

Don: Well, Alta Vista was another one that it started with very modest goals. It was part of Digital Equipment Corporation, an old computer company. We had just come out with a 64-bit processor which opened up huge memory and computing capacity. There weren’t very many demos that you could do to demonstrate this 64-bit address space and computing power. So one of the researchers came up with the idea of, well, what’s the biggest index or file that we can imagine that we could sort through.

The Web was just sort of emerging at that time. So, we said, “Why don’t we make an index of every single website there is out there and use this to demonstrate the power of the 64-bit alpha chip?” So that’s how it started.

Of course, it caught on very fast. At the time, AltaVista was the search engine that everyone used. It was the first on the Web, and it was the best.

Andrew: And you said, I think it was in your LinkedIn profile that the reason that . . . well, let’s see. Where is that? I like your LinkedIn profile a lot because in two or three sentences you really summarize the history of every company that you worked for.

Oh, here we go. This is the second sentence, I think, from your description of AltaVista. All the great engineering feats went down the toilet when we tried to be a Web portal and compete with Yahoo, Excite, MSN, etc. A sad story.

So, how does that happen? How do you go from being number one in search to suddenly trying to take on Yahoo, trying to beat Excite, trying to compete with Microsoft’s MSN?

Don: Yeah. Again, that happens more often than you might imagine.

Andrew: By the way, when we hear that, if I just read those two sentences, I go, of course, that’s not what you’re supposed to do. But when I’m in my business doing things day to day that it takes to compete, doing things day to day that it takes to grow my company, it’s easy for me to forget the lesson of that and just start shifting towards trying to compete with everybody.

So, if you tell me how it went down internally, maybe, when it happens to me or my viewers and listeners, they’ll recognize the same pattern in their own lives and avoid it.

Don: Well, the same thing almost happened to Google, because all of this happened because we were looking for a monetization path. Search was an interesting kind of intellectual exercise, but it wasn’t a way to make money. The only way to make money in that day was with banner advertisements. There wasn’t anything else. There were just banner ads.

So, how do you monetize banner ads? You get content that people want to read and time on site and all these sticky services. I don’t know if you remember that word. But sticky content and sticky services would attract an audience to which you could put banner advertisements and then monetize the business.

At the time, the conventional wisdom was that you needed to build this audience and build a portal that had all of this information and was basically your gateway to the Internet. So AOL did that. Yahoo did that and then Excite and several others did it. And it was a great business.

So, we thought search was just the loss leader, one of those ways to attract an audience, but it wasn’t enough. I think that happens all the time where you lose sight of what your core value proposition is and what your core value is, and you start casting about for revenue and customers in places that you shouldn’t.

It happens with software products, too. I call it painting yourself into a corner where you chase big customers who have product requirements for things that really are kind of adjacent to what you do. They’re not really what you do. And so many startups fall prey to these features in order to get those customers so that they can get their early revenue, and they end up off track in a place that they never intended to be. That’s what happened to AltaVista.

Andrew: Looking back, knowing what you know now, how would you have transitioned it knowing that you shouldn’t start competing, you shouldn’t become a portal if your core DNA is search?

Don: Well again, Andrew, it wasn’t obvious at the time. It is in retrospect. It wasn’t at the time. To get revenue and to be a significant business, it looks like that is what you had to do because there were several proof points like AOL and Yahoo and Excite and others who had done that successfully.

If you’re close to your customer and you understand the value that you bring to the customer, then you can stay focused. Eventually, revenue will emerge. I think that’s the mistake that we made at AltaVista is we didn’t really know who our customer was and what they wanted from us. So we started an email thing, and we started a chat thing, and we started content rooms and all this kind of stuff that just was not our core value position.

Andrew: That did work for other sites. Not to spend too much time on AltaVista, but from what I remember Lycos, I think, started out as search, right? That’s what the name Lycos refers to, the spider in the web. Excite was a little more portal, but it also featured search. There were other sites that seemed to have made the transition to portal. Why didn’t AltaVista do it?

Don: I think because we were fifth or sixth in line in doing it. In any business, any business you choose, there’s the gorilla, there’s the chimp, there’s the monkey and everybody else. Meaning, if you’re first, second, or third, you’re probably okay. If you’re fourth, fifth, sixth or anything beyond that, it’s probably not a good strategy.

So, I think that’s what happened to AltaVista was that we were fifth or sixth in line to do this, and after the top three really did it very, very well. Google made a different choice. They didn’t go for the portal. They didn’t go for banner ads, and they went for these little text ads that were basically unknown at the time.

The second thing they did is they went for the long tail rather than the Fortune 500 big advertisers. Both of those things were unconventional and untested at the time. The big guys didn’t believe it would work, but here we are 5 or 10 years later, and we know they were right.

Andrew: All right. I’m actually looking at your CrunchBase profile, a LinkedIn profile as we’re doing this interview. I don’t see a list of the companies that you’ve invested in.

Don: No, I don’t disclose that publicly.

Andrew: Why?

Don: Well, because of the job that I do. When I was working at Microsoft and now at Google, I don’t think it’s wise to publish a list of company that I’m an angel investor in because . . . well, several reasons. One is people could get the wrong idea that that’s where I put all my time and energy and that I’m somehow conflicted or that sort of thing.

I’m not. I work for Google, and Google is where I intend to be for a long time, and I give 100 percent of my attention to Google. So, that’s number one.

Number two, I see hundreds and hundreds of startups every year, and I don’t want whatever small investment I might make in a startup to cloud people’s perception of me and what I can do to help them. So I’d rather just keep them private.

Andrew: Is there a conflict of interest if companies are talking to you about their development, if they’re talking to you about what they envision for their future, and you could potentially be competing with them or investing in a competitor of theirs?

Don: Well, I guess there could be a conflict, but I don’t let that happen. Just like venture capitalists, they talk to companies every day that potentially compete. So, I have the same sort of mode where I don’t talk about other companies. I don’t share the ideas that I’ve learned with other companies. This business is all about trust, and you can lose trust very quickly if you talk about someone else’s company or ideas.

I try to be as helpful as I can to as many entrepreneurs as I can, but I don’t share information between them. That’s pretty standard. You talk to any VC, and they’re the same way.

Andrew: All right. Can you tell me about some of the companies you’ve worked with at Google?

Don: Sure. At Google, I’m on the enterprise software side. So, I work with Google Apps, Gmail, Calendar, Google Apps, Docs, Spreadsheets, that kind of stuff. I tend to work with companies that are building applications on top of Gmail or Calendar or on top of Google Docs or Spreadsheets or that kind of thing.

Most of them are small startups so the names aren’t that recognizable, but they do things like customer relationship management or security or what else? Scheduling, calendaring, all these sort of enterprise type small business applications that work with Gmail and Google Apps.

Andrew: I’ve seen some of them from my audience. It’s so exciting to see that when these guys build up an app. A lot of times it’s buggy. A lot of times it’s just getting started, but they’ll send it to me, and I can see the possibilities in it, especially for email. I hate my Inbox, but I live in my Inbox. Now, because Google is opening itself up and allowing apps to be built on top of Gmail, I get all kinds of apps from my listeners that will help me sort through my email, that will help me clear out my Inbox.

It’s really exciting. I can see a day finally when just like spam’s been whipped, when my Inbox trouble will be whipped, I hope.

Don: Right. So, there are lots of those types of companies like Xobni and Gist, and there are several companies that do that sort of thing. CRM companies like Nimble. Nimble is a very new company coming out of Santa Monica. Mingly is another one.

Andrew: I don’t know that one. What does Mingly do?

Don: Mingly is a CRM type of contact management application that works with Gmail and helps you manage your contacts and people that you work with.

Andrew: So what do you do for these guys? If somebody in my audience has got an app, they’ve been developing it, they want to work with Google. They get to meet you. What do you do for them? How do you help them?

Don: There are several things. If they’ve having technical issues, I connect them with the technical people who can help them understand how our APIs work or get access to new things that are coming down the line. There are always two or three different ways to implement a feature or to use an API. Sometimes, they need help in understanding what is the optimal way to do something, or they have questions about . . . they’ve implemented something, and they have questions about the API and how to fix something.

If it’s on the technical side, we can help them with that. If it’s on the business side, we have the Google Apps Marketplace and the Android Marketplace and that sort of thing, so I can help get them on the Marketplace and promote them a bit. And then, sometimes they want to do advertising deals or sort of business development deals. So, I can introduce them to the people at Google who do that.

And then lastly, I also work with Google Ventures, which is the VC arm of Google. Occasionally, there are some really great companies who are looking for a financing round. So I’ll introduce them to Google Ventures.

It goes the whole span from technical to business to business development to venture capital.

Andrew: Can you give me a case study, maybe one company that you’ve helped out so that I can see how you and how Google helps out new companies?

Don: There are several. Insightly is one that I’ve helped recently. It’s an amazing story really.

Andrew: Tell me the story. I love stories.

Don: This guy was in Perth, Australia working for a large consulting firm during the day, doing consulting projects for companies all over the place. He came up with an interesting idea called Insightly, and it’s kind of a CRM project management, kind of management thing.

He started working on it nights and weekends. Then, over the course of three months, he built the application. We found out about him, I forgot now exactly how we found out, but we found out about his little application and said, “Hey, why don’t we put this on the Google Apps Marketplace?” So, we did, and the next week he had over a thousand customers a week signing up for this new application called Insightly.

He quit his consulting job, and now he’s doing his company full-time. So, he went from an idea while he was working at a consulting company to a full product and selling it worldwide on the Google Apps Marketplace in the span of three months.

Now, he has his own company, and it’s growing incredibly fast and doing a great job. So, there’s a bunch of companies like that where they came from nowhere, some small little application, and we got them involved with Google Apps and on the Google Apps Marketplace. Instantly, they’re selling to over 3 million Google Apps users, well, 3 million businesses and 30 million users. It’s a great way to get started very quickly.

Andrew: Did Insightly not know that there was a Google Apps Marketplace? Did the founder not know how to get himself in the Marketplace?

Don: Yeah, he didn’t know. The Marketplace actually has only been . . . we launched it eight months ago. So, it hasn’t been around that long. We launched it eight months ago. He started his company four months ago. So it all came together pretty quickly. Now, he’s one of the largest selling applications on the Google Apps Marketplace.

Andrew: How about another story like that? That is inspiring.

Don: Yeah. So, Mingly is another company in Santa Monica doing, basically, the same thing. They’re located in the Coloft co-location facility there in Santa Monica. A couple of guys with a great idea and they’re launching the product. They just launched it last month or this month. I think it’s going to be another great success story. So, it can happen.

Andrew: All right. Well, if the founders of any of those companies that we mentioned here are listening, send me an email. I want to talk to you guys.

I’m noticing, by the way, as we’re doing this interview that your screen keeps going dark and then you move the mouse and it comes back up. Clearly you’re on a Mac and clearly also you need Caffeine. I’ve got to turn you on to Caffeine. Do you know that little App?

Don: No, I don’t.

Andrew: It keeps your screen from going dim. It’s especially good for presentations or videos or PowerPoint. It’s called Caffeine. It’s a great little app. That’s what I use to keep my screen from dimming.

Don: I’m a new conversion to Mac. After five years at Microsoft and many years before, I was a PC user. So I’m new to the Mac, but I’m loving it.

Andrew: You know what? That’s what I was going to ask you about. You went from Windows to Mac after you left Microsoft and went to Google. You went from talking up Outlook, and now you’re a Gmail user, from Explorer to Google Chrome, from Office to Google Apps. And not just to Google Apps, but to promoting Google Apps. What gives? What happened?

Don: Well, obviously, it was a change of job. Again, startups will understand this. When your head’s down on one thing, you don’t have time for anything else. You’re totally focused on the technologies in front of you and the things that you use. So, I really didn’t use anything else other than Microsoft technologies and products, and that was my life. So, when I left Microsoft and went to Google, it was an opportunity to try new things, try everything new.

So, I went from a PC to a Mac, and I went from Microsoft Office to Google Docs and from Outlook to Gmail, and just tried everything new. You don’t get too many opportunities to do that in your life. So, I said, “All right, I’m going to try everything new.” Now I don’t use any client-based applications at all. Everything is browser-based or in the Cloud, because I wanted to see if you could do it. I’ve been doing it for a year, and it’s been great.

Andrew: But you did say that Outlook was better than Gmail. In fact, I think you said that Outlook’s web version, Web Client, was better than Gmail. You did compare, what was it, Office to Google Apps, and some of the points that you made about Google, about Office still stand. It’s still a more robust application, right?

Don: Yes, it is. There’s no doubt about that, in my mind anyway. I’m not saying that that’s the way it will remain forever. Google Docs and Spreadsheets are adding features all the time, but they’re really coming at it from a different point of view, from a Web Cloud-based view where less is more and simpler use cases.

There are power users who will always use Microsoft Office for PowerPoint, Excel and Word, who are very power users and know how to use it very well. I don’t see them ever changing, and that’s okay. Just like there are power users of Photoshop or Adobe whatever. There are power users of those products who will never move away, and that’s great. But for the other 90 percent of us, we aren’t Photoshop experts and don’t need to be. We don’t use all the Adobe stuff, but that’s okay. We use the viewers and that kind of thing.

I think for most, like I said, I’ve been using Docs and Spreadsheets for the past year, and I haven’t had any issues with thinking, God, I’ve got to have Excel to do this, or I’ve got to have Word to do this, because 90 percent of the time the basic features are good enough.

I totally understand that Excel and PowerPoint and Word are great tools for power users, and millions and millions of people use them. No doubt about it. But Google Docs and Spreadsheets are very adequate for probably 90 percent of your needs, too. So, it’s just a different approach and a slightly different set of users.

Andrew: What about this? Here’s what I was thinking as I read the criticism of you going from supporting and championing Microsoft products to now being a fan of their competitor’s products. I feel like it’s old-fashioned loyalty? You worked for Microsoft. Of course, you’re going to talk up Microsoft. That’s part of what you’re there to do. Of course, you’re going to be in love with the products, or else you wouldn’t be in there.

Once they tossed you out, and the way that they did really did feel like they were tossing you out, everyone in the world except for Microsoft seemed to have seen the value that you added to Microsoft. But to them, you were just another number in a big layoff. You said, “Screw them. I’m now with a new company. I’ve got new loyalties here to Google. So, I’m going to enjoy their Google Apps, and I’m also going to turn my back on them. Why should I support the Zune when the iPod and the iPhone are clearly superior?” That’s okay to say, right?

Don: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s fine, but you know, even then, five years ago at Microsoft or now at Google, it’s clear to me that there’s not one product, one solution that solves all use cases or work loads. So it’s a competitive environment, and there are lots of choices that you have in any space, be it email or office applications or enterprise applications. So there’s not one approach that’s best in all possible cases. That’s true of Microsoft. It’s true of Google. It’s true of anything.

My job as an advocate and an evangelist is to make sure that people are aware of Google products and how to use them and the cases where they might be a better solution for the work load that they have in mind.

Andrew: It even feels to me that, maybe, evangelist may not be the right title. It’s almost ambassador because I don’t feel that you and I don’t feel that other people who call themselves evangelists are proselytizing. It feels like you’re doing more introductions, more introducing to the biz part, more introducing to the Marketplace at Google. True?

Don: That is true, Andrew. In fact, at Google we aren’t called evangelists. We’re called advocates, and it’s with a reason. Evangelists are more like the television evangelists, the religious guys. That’s clearly not what we do at Google. We work with developers.

So, my title is developer advocate, and that means I work directly with developers and help them build their applications, get the help that they need to build their solutions and help them get on the Google Apps Marketplace or Android Marketplace or wherever they can sell their products.

We advocate for the developer back to the engineering teams and tell the engineering teams, “Hey, here are the features that the developers are asking for. We need to get those into the product.” It’s really a different job and yeah, we are advocates or ambassadors, and I don’t think evangelist is the right word for what we do.

Andrew: I feel that Microsoft just took that word from Apple. Apple did really well with their evangelists, and it’s in keeping with the spirit of what Apple is about. Then Microsoft, in keeping with the spirit of what they were about at the time said, “Oh, it’s working for them. Well, we’ll bring it on, and we’ll use it.”

Don: Yeah. Well, and I think it worked great for Microsoft, too. I worked there five years, and I enjoyed every day. I like Microsoft. I like the people there. I had a great time. Being an evangelist for Microsoft is a great job. I met a lot of great people in startups. I don’t regret it for a minute. So, it works well for them, and advocates work well for Google. It’s two different companies.

Andrew: Okay. And you know what? I don’t mean to put down Microsoft. I feel like I’m getting a little passionate here in your favor for no good reason here. It’s not like you’re upset with Microsoft. Why am I starting to champion that fight when you’re not even in that fight? I like Microsoft a lot too, and I do like their evangelists, really nice people.

I see you started blogging, it looks like in September of ’05.

Don: Yeah.

Andrew: What got you to start blogging?

Don: Interesting. It was Robert Scoble actually. I worked with Robert in the same division, not on the same team but in the same division at Microsoft. I liked what he was doing, and I thought maybe I’ll try that. So, Robert really pushed me to do it. I started and I actually enjoy it. I like blogging and I like sharing ideas.

Blogging sort of forces you to really think more deeply about your ideas and how to express them and how to make a complete rational thought. So I’ve really enjoyed it, and it also helps to communicate with people, your products and vision and ideas. So, it worked well with the job I was doing, too. So I have to thank Robert for that.

Scoble is also the one that got me started on Twitter, because originally I just didn’t see the value in Twitter. How can you express any reasonable thought in 140 characters? He, Robert, kept haranguing me to do it and do it. So I finally did. After using it for a while, I figured out, okay, now I understand how Twitter is different than blogging and how to use Twitter and how to use a blog. It’s been great.

One last point, Andrew. Somebody asked me about my experience last week, as a matter of fact. They asked me, “So what do you think made you successful in your career and where did you learn the most? How did you get to where you are?”

I have to say the single biggest thing that I did was to start blogging. When I started blogging, that put me on a whole different plain. I had always worked with great startups and done some very interesting things. Working at Microsoft put me on a different stage because it’s a global company and well known.

But it wasn’t until I had started blogging and doing Twitter that I really was able to connect with thousands and thousands of people and through that meet even more interesting people and be invited to speak at conferences and all that kind of thing.

So, I would encourage any entrepreneur to start blogging and use it as a way to clear your thoughts and think clearly about who your customer is and what your product is and what value it brings, and also to communicate with potential employees and partners and customers and press. I just think blogging and Twitter are the two things that really propelled me to a totally different level.

Andrew: Do you have an example of someone who you met because of blogging?

Don: Yeah, Mark Cuban. There are hundreds and hundreds of people I’ve met through blogging. Jason Calacanis is another. Mike Arrington is another.

Andrew: How did you meet Mark Cuban?

Don: Actually, I got into an argument with him about click fraud. So, this was four years ago, five years ago. Mark Cuban wrote this blog saying that click fraud was the biggest scandal ever and that some large percentage of Google’s clicks were fraudulent and la de da.

I knew from my experience at AltaVista that that simply wasn’t true. So, I wrote a blog saying that Mark Cuban doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is not true, and I explained the reasons why. Mark read that blog, and he fired back another one. So, we got into this volley back and forth. At the end of it, Mark understood where I was coming from and gained a lot of respect for what I knew about this. You know, that’s what blogging does. It’s a forum to really express your ideas in a deep and meaningful way and for people to engage on a topic.

So, I met Jason Calacanis in the same way. Jason started reading my blog. I started reading his blog and found out that we had some common interests. Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, the same thing.

Andrew: What was the common interest that you and Jason Calacanis had? Bulldogs?

Don: No, I don’t recall what the original one was. But, of course, Jason is a consummate entrepreneur, and he has thoughts on just about everything. So, yeah, there was a lot of common interest there.

Through blogging I met so many people that I never would have met otherwise, and we met in a way that had nothing to do with who we were or what job we had. It came from here’s an idea or a thought, and you gain respect and appreciation for someone in the way they think through reading their blog, in a way that you really couldn’t in a casual kind of introduction at a conference or in a business setting.

Andrew: How do you write so much? I’m looking here at your archives. You’re very consistent, September ’07, October ’07, November ’07, December ’07, January ’08. It’s like a calendar.

Don: Yeah.

Andrew: You’re just constantly putting stuff out there. I know it’s hard to look at that blank screen and try to come up with something interesting to say for the day. How do you do it? How do you do it so consistently?

Don: Well, it’s because I meet lots of interesting people every day. I basically write about the things I see, the companies I see, the people I meet, the ideas that come up and give my own sort of perspective on those things. It’s really not that hard.

I tell people that if it took you 10 minutes to read it, it took me 20 minutes to write it because I don’t research anything. It’s just, if I have to research something, it means I don’t know what I’m talking about. It comes from 30 years of experience in the business and just seeing things that are happening every day and relating them to experiences that I’ve had in the past.

I know for some people writing is like public speaking. It’s terrifying. They agonize over every word, and they try to get it just right. For me, I just sit down and start banging away, and it just sort of flows. So, it’s not work for me. It’s not hard.

Andrew: You know what? For me, it’s hard which is why I do interviews with people like you. I get to ask, maybe, 10 questions per interview, maybe 20 tops, and then you do all the hard work and fill in the gaps with real information that people can use.

I’m looking at these blog posts. They don’t look like quickie blog posts. They don’t look like long tweets. My first year at Google, it’s not about just your feelings the first year at Google. It’s about what’s going on at Google. It’s about developer relations. It’s about their hiring process. It’s about developer days, Google Ventures. You really just spent maybe 20 minutes writing this?

Don: Yeah.

Andrew: Really?

Don: It’s easy because that’s what I do every day. So, I’m not trying to research something or make things up. It’s just, hey, here’s what I’m thinking about today. Here’s the experience that I had, and I just share it. So, it’s really not hard for me.

I know people at Microsoft, particularly upper management, was concerned that I was spending too much time blogging. Because they were reading it every day or every other day whenever I posted, they thought, oh my God, if I was to write something like that, it would take me four or five hours. I’d tell them, look, it only took me 15 or 20 minutes. I usually write in the morning as soon as I get up, and then I start my day. That’s it.

Ask anyone, a singer, songwriter, or an author or anyone, they just sit down and start writing and it sort of comes naturally. They don’t have to think about it a whole lot.

Andrew: Even though I don’t say much during these interviews, there have been times when I go home or wake up in the middle of the night and say, “Why’d I say that? It’s too late to edit it out. Joe probably put it in already. It’s up on the site. Forget it.”

But do you ever feel that way with your posts?

Don: No. No, I don’t think so.

Andrew: Really?

Don: I can’t think of a situation where I wrote a post and thought, oh my God, why did I do that, or why did I say that? Everything comes from the heart. I don’t think too long about it. It’s just what I’m thinking. I’ve been at this a long, long time. So I know what to stay away from.

Andrew: Like what? What would you stay away from?

Don: Well, speculation. So, when you work for a big company like Microsoft or Google, people read what you write. They listen to what you say, and they’re going to extrapolate and maybe put meaning into it that you didn’t have. So, don’t help that by speculating on things. So, I don’t speculate.

I tend to be reflective. After something has already happened, I’ll look at it and say, hmm, that’s interesting. Here’s why I think that happened, or here’s what you can learn from this experience, and I relate it back to other startups that I’ve worked at or other experiences that I had. So, I try to be more reflective and have deeper kind of thoughts than just the headline. I try not to sensationalize things, but look more at the news of the day but relate it back to things that have happened in the past and how that might bring context to what’s happening now.

Andrew: You know, speculation and sensational headlines will get you a lot of traffic and get you connected on Techmeme. No interest there?

Don: Yeah.

Andrew: All right. Do you want to speculate about something over here? Andrew, you’re probably not going to make it. Do you like the apps better on the iPhone? Give me headline.

Don: Well, Techmeme is one of my favorite sources for information, and quite honestly the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is read Techmeme to see what’s happening and what topics are hot. Some days there’ll be 30 or 40 stories, and I really don’t have anything to add. I don’t have any experience that I can relate to, so I don’t write anything.

On other days, I see something and I say, oh, okay, I remember when something happened in the past, and I’ll relate that to the current news event and try to bring some perspective to it that other people haven’t. So, that’s what I try to do. I try not to speculate.

When you work for a big company, there are a couple of things you can’t talk about. One is you can’t talk about unreleased products. That will get you fired. You can’t talk about financial projections. That will get you fired. You can’t talk about potential acquisitions and what an acquisition might mean to the company. So, if you stay away from those three things, almost anything else is fair game and will be just fine.

Andrew: All right. Finally, let me ask you this. You’re talking to some of the biggest players in this space. Mark Cuban, the guy is flying around in a jet. The jet was such a small purchase for him. I think the first one he bought online. He didn’t even go in to kick the tires or check out the furniture inside the jet. Jason Calacanis, he talks big. Michael Arrington, all this stuff.

Do you ever say to yourself, “What the hell am I doing? I’m a small player in this big freaking game. I’m like the three foot tall basketball player.” Or, “I’ve got to go do something in order to compete with these guys.” Right, because you’re a man. I’m a man. We want to compete. We don’t want to just stand on the sidelines and talk to the players.

Don: Yeah, I say that every day, Andrew.

Andrew: So, what do you do about that?

Don: It’s real easy. When I come home at night, my wife and kids are there, and they remind me that I’m nobody. I’m just a regular guy. It really isn’t hard. Yeah, I take my wife and kids to conferences every once in a while so they can see the different side of me and what I do at work.

MC Hammer is a personal friend and Chamillionaire and Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore and Mark Cuban and Steve Ballmer and all these crazy people. But, you know what, at the end of the day, you come home and it’s just your wife and kids and your family, and that’s what matters. It really doesn’t matter.

Andrew: I see. All right. So, 10 foot basketball player in your wife’s eyes. That’s what’s important then.

Don: Maybe I’m a three foot basketball player in her eyes.

Andrew: All right. Well, thank you for doing the interview. It’s good to meet you, or actually you and I had met before. Everyone has met you. I don’t even know if you remember that you’ve met me because you’ve met so many people at conferences. But it’s good to spend this time with you. Thank you.

Don: Yeah, well, thank you very much. I appreciate that, Andrew.

Andrew: Cool. Thank you all for watching, listening, or reading the transcript, whatever you’re doing. Thank you for being a part of Mixergy, guys. Bye.

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