How The Creator Of “America’s Most Wanted” Is Building One Of The Biggest Sites You Never Heard Of – with Stephen Chao
Stephen Chao says he doesn’t spend much time going to tech conferences. Maybe that’s why the big tech bloggers, like TechCrunch, seem to be ignoring his site, Wonder How To. But they should check it out, and you should to, because according to Quantcast, it has about 6 million monthly users. And according to Stephen, even though his site is less than 2 years old, it’s profitable.
I invited him to Mixergy so we could learn from the way he did it.
I also wanted to hear about his more well-known background in media — like how, when he was an upstart with little more than ambition to do something big, he found a way to get hired by Rupert Murdoch. And how he created well-known shows like “America’s Most Wanted” and “Cops.”
Stephen Chao is the co-founder and CEO of Wonder How To, a community-fueled, search engine and directory for free how-to videos. Previously, he was a reporter for the National Enquirer, co-wrote a Fodor’s travel guide for Turkey, was one of the first executives at FOX television, flipped burgers at McDonald’s, ran his own production company, and was president of programming and marketing for USA Networks.
AD:Andrew: This interview is sponsored by Haystack, that is where you are going to find the right webdesigner for your next project. Check them out, haystack.com.Hey its Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart and I got with me a guy who started out working at Fodors and National Enquirer and then went onto Fox and then got fired and will talk a little about that and ended up, is this true by the way Steven you ended up at McDonalds.
Interviewee: Yes I did end up at McDonalds for about six weeks.
Andrew: Working six weeks?
Interviewee: Yeah it was pretty tough. It was actually the hardest job. It was the job I was the most incompetent at, to tell you the truth, and the lowest paid.
Andrew: Alright we will get into that. And then you resurrected, got back into television, we will be talking about how you worked with Barry Diller, how you helped create ‘Monk’ the TV show, is that right.
Interviewee: Sure,...
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