TP's Topics

Wize acquired by Nextag Inc

Today, I am happy to announce that we have agreed to sell Wize.com to Nextag.   

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/comparison-shopping-site-nextag-acquires-product-review-engine-wize/

I can't say enough about how excited we are to join Jeff Katz, Scott Simmons, Claire Hough, Craig Stern and then entire Nextag Team..   As many of you know Nextag has been a leader in online shopping for many years and we are energized to join forces into a new future vision for Nextag..  

It seemed like only yesterday, Rajesh Chandran (my co-founder) and I met in a starbucks across the street from Nextag..  Looking back on this time, it's truly amazing how much I've learned over the last 4 years...particularly about myself.  Life is so short. I feel that the true currency is the insight you create by challenging yourself both personally and professionally. It would not be possible without the relationships you build with people along that journey of understanding.. I have met so many amazing people along the way that have helped Wize.com move towards it's dream of becoming the "Consumer Reports of the Future and for that I am eternally blessed. 

So a few thank you's: 

I am blessed to have partnered with Rajesh, who has continued to be the engine behind Wize. I am so proud of the team we have assembled to do something that has never been done before on the Web.   Michael Shilman, Jay Raman, Joe Foo, Lucas  Wiman, Wayne Wight, Ethan Smith, Himanshu Shah are resilient and talented and most importantly winners..  

I want to thank our advisors Yaniv Bensadon, Keith Rabois, Chris Michel, Rob Goldman, Kevin Lattery, Ramano Rao and Peter Zandan for all the time they have spent on Wize and also want to thank them honoring me with their friendships.    

I want to also thank Jeff Glueck for joining as our board member and providing a lot of value to us in the short amount of time we worked with him.   

I also wanted to thank Ezra Roizen of Ackrell Capital who represented Wize in the transaction.. Ezra has been a true partner and friend to Wize and myself through this entire M&A process.  

We at Wize are also extremely grateful to Raj Kapoor and the entire family at the Mayfield Fund.  Raj and Mayfield's enduring support for Wize and me will never be forgotten and certainly speaks volumes of their reputation as being a real entrepreneurs venture firm..

I wanted to also thank Al Dobron from Providence Equity who connected me with Nextag in the first place..  Al is a great friend and we hope to be able to return the favor by building some great value with Nextag.  

There are many, many others that have meant a lot to Wize that I haven't had time to thank....Particularly, I wanted to share a deep thank you to all of you that I have spent time with in my personal life that I have met over the last 4 years(you know who you are).. Whether it was surfing,  talking about technology and business or just spending time talking about how the mind works and the meaning of life, it has meant the world to me and I thank you for our time together before and for the future..   

All the Best,

Tom

President  of Wize.com
Nextag Inc

  

A recent presentation at UCSB on starting and selling a company in 2010

http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/outreach/videos/fall2010_2.html

a recent presentation at UCSB (october 2010) on starting and selling a company in 2010....  

Deep Search and the Future of Finding Things...

http://blog.wize.com/my_weblog/2009/03/exploring-the-deep-web-and-the-future-of-finding-things-online-.html

A little post we came up with at Wize.com on the Future of Finding Things... Take a read and give us your thoughts...

My brother Sean and High Touch Leadership

There was a very flattering article written about my brother sean recently who runs a very well known modeling agency...Sean employs a very successful leadership style which is high touch with employees, customers, and all stakeholders... Sean is particularly adept at understanding people and their needs which creates trust and loyalty.  This is a very unique trait for the fashion industry...   Here is the article...   

http://www.100thousandclub.com/us/article.asp?ref=274023

Startups and the Psychology of Hiring Great People

I think at the highest level everybody looks for 3 things when trying to employ talent to their companies…. People typically look for people that are

• Intelligent
• Motivated
• Highly Functional in a Group Environment… 

Startups have their advantages and disadvantages when trying to entice talented people to come work for them…. Young organizations can provide intense challenges, more accountability, and a reduced bureaucracy among other things… A lot of times they can not provide things that more established organizations can such as higher than market pay, job security, a brand name, and a plethora of resources… 

So how do you bring the best of the best into your organization?   Well, it always starts with the CEO and the Founding Team…”A talent” is attracted to “A talent”. It is difficult typically to attract what you are not…So think wisely of who you choose to partner with to found a company and what their personal characteristics are….. While we all can’t change our IQ, keep in mind that intelligence is measured in different ways and not necessarily in how well you did on the SAT’s..  I’ve met some incredible emotionally intelligent people, and they could truly sell corn to a corn farmer… My advice to everyone is to accentuate what you are good at to prospective candidates but do not boast…talk about the things you enjoy doing which should be correlated to what you do well..  And remember to work at being the person that you want to hire… If you to hire someone that is highly motivated then you in turn must be willing to lead by example and make the personal sacrifices required in a startup… And we all can do a better job of sharing, trusting and working together with other people… So my punch-line is that when you grow as an individual, you increase the likelihood of attracting the right type of people.  Buy your founding team into growing as people and let it be a principle of the organization…

So how in a few interviews do you determine who is a good fit for your organization?  Most organizations look to the resumes and see how a person responds to hard interview questions to measure intelligence.  We typically get an additional assessment based on the candidate’s ability to drill deeply and adeptly into a subject matter.  I always ask questions about people’s past challenges and their willingness to personally sacrifice to achieve their goals.. This typically gives me a good read on the intrinsic motivation of a candidate. 

So how do you get a good indication of someone’s ability to be highly functional in your group environment?. My advice is to spend time on the value system of your organization and how business gets done at your company during the interview.  Describe the “way decisions get made”, “how conflict is resolved”, and other things like “the importance of deadlines” ….. Pay attention to their reactions and particularly to the words they use.  I remember interviewing a very talented person in the last two weeks from a well known company and as I described our organization, they kept using phrases like “my team has to win” and “I am great as long as I have authority”.  These may actually be warning signs of someone’s ability to work together with other people.  Pay attention to the words that they use as they describe their own experiences, it will typically tell you a lot more than when they are just answering a yes/no question directly. 

So what’s the psychology of closing great talent?  I honestly believe this is the easiest part.  Assuming that the candidate is bought into your vision for the company, and that the compensation is reasonable to market, the rest will be about fit.  People and Organizations that fit, kind of know it.  If you did a good job in describing the value systems of the company, people start to self select and understand whether the place is for them at a gut level.  You are almost drawn to each other because job satisfaction is typically about respect for the organization and the people around you. I am a big fan of letting a prospective hire know we want them, and that I am here to answer all of their questions but I don’t oversell or harass when trying to close someone. I let them know that if they don’t wake up thinking we are the place for them in their gut, they shouldn’t come to work for us.  This actually works out well for both of us because joining a startup is like a marriage or at least a serious relationship. The alignment of the value system is typically the true indicator of how long and how successful the relationship or the employment will be.

Texas Hold Em - Beginner's Strategy

This post really has nothing to do with the Web . However, next time you go to a "Web" Party... you can use this strategy to go into the Texas Hold Em tournament. I am sure they'll be giving away raffle tickets to sling boxes or veuve cliquot to the winner. 

My brother loves poker and he layed out this beginner's strategy which is called playing "tight"

For those of you that don't know a lot about Texas Hold Em. Here is a site that will give you the basic rules:

http://www.texasholdem-poker.com/beginnersintro

It's actually a very simple game to learn, however mastering it can take many many years. 

His advice if you are a beginner is to follow some very basic rules:

- Only play the top 10 hands if you are not already in a pot (meaning if you aren't one of the blindes/antes)
- The top ten hands are: 
Ace Ace
King King
Queen Queen
Jack Jack
Ten Ten
Nine Nine
Eight Eight
Seven Seven
Ace King
Ace Queen

You should only play these hands the whole tournament and if you play them you should raise them, meaning that even if there is action before you ie. people calling or raising, you should re-raise them at least 3 times their bet.  You should be willing to shove all your chips in with any of these hands (except AQ potentially be careful with that one). 

Other than that you should fold every other hand unless it does'nt cost you money/chips to enter the pot.

With this strategy (its' called playing "tight") you should statistically have a good shot at having the best hand pre-flop (meaning before the first 3 community cards are dealt).

Also, try to play very few hands early on in the tournament when the blindes are small.  Wait a little while till the blindes go up in value till you start playing more actively.  Also when you raise an unopened pot (meaning you are the first to act/bet) a good raise is 3 times the big blinde.  This is a standard poker raise.  Also if you are in a pot and want to bet once the community cards are dealt, always bet half the entire pot or the full pot, be careful not to bet less or much more. 

And of course "Be Aggressive" , poker is all about pressure and aggressiveness.  Don't act weak or people will take advantage of you.

Good Job Art and Good Luck to you new Hold Em Players! 

Wize 2.0 : Best For You

" Has someone taken your faith?
Its real, the pain you feel
You trust, you must confess
Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you? "

Best of You - Foo Fighters....

Well, being a child of grunge rock, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters are probably near the top of the list of bands that I love to see perform live.  I am actually not writing today about the song "Best of You" but how Wize is focused on presenting products that are the "Best For You". So please forgive me as I wanted to be the only blog on the internet today that has quoted the foo fighters.      

We've recently relaunched the site around the "Best for You" premise. I'd love you to check it out at wize.com . Feel free to leave me some feedback.   We've been hard at work over the last few months on creating what we believe is a pretty unique experience on the Web.  The premise is actually very simple.   Just tell us what you want, in your own words, and we'll show you the ten best products on the Web that meets that need, use or want.

Wize has built some patent pending technology that organizes the product data, reviews, and sentiment of the Web in a very unique way.  We do this work so you don't have to and the the best is yet to come.

I don't want to give too much away here but suffice to say we're excited......  "is someone giving the best, the best, the best to you? "  Wize would love to try...      

Trusting Web Content

So I read a great article recently in Newsweek about the next wave of User Generated Content…The gyst of the article was talking about how we are moving back in the direction of  “more trusted” content creation after a few years of widespread user generated content creation on the Web. 

I don’t think we are moving back to the days of Web 1.0 anytime soon (where we had editorial created by mostly professionals) but its interesting to think about the word “trusted” and how it applies to the future of reviews, ratings and information accessed on the Web.   

I like to think about the Web as one giant Reputation Management System.  A reputation management system we are integrating into our lives more and more every day.  We look to the web to give us a viewpoint on people, places, experiences, and products before we choose to spend our hard earned money or our precious time.  There is a lot of information out there now and it continues to grow from users at varying degrees of value and is providing a human’s opinion on just about everything.   

So how does all this content now become “more trusted” and give us an improved “reputation” snapshot.  I think the first thing that we have to do is talk about what “more trusted” means because I think we have two entities that need to see it that way.  The first entity is Google/other search engines and how they recognize your site as a source for search prioritization and the other is , of course, how consumers consume and use your service offering.   

With regards to Google I think there are a few rules that are increasing more and more in value to how the algorithm looks at you:

·        the first is how easily it reads the content off of your Web Page

·        the second is how unique/original that content on your site is

·        the third is how other valued Web sites feel about the content you have on your Web site. 

I am sure there are many more factors that google takes into account but let’s start with these.  A lot of the companies that have done well with Google have been the one’s that have created lots of unique focused content around a topic of interest to people.   

So now as turn to building consumer trust, let’s try to frame a few different Web Businesses and how they may convey trust to their consumers: 

·        The

Mahalo Way

– Focused well written editorial that is created internally and layed out in a very intuitive way around a subject with a layer of community that focus on topics that are tougher to justify and ROI on… This is a hybrid model where a lot of the central user experience engenders trust…      

·        The

Yelp Way

– Lots of User Generated Content from People who come to life in the Web experience and are expressed as true personalities… The trust is engendered when you can connect with people and what they write because of how transparent and real their identity is… 

·        The

Wize Way

– create content that starts with all of the collective opinion from the Web’s Best Sources that has been distilled down to an intuitive information summary. Create transparency on the breadth of coverage and the quality of the sources. Layer an expert community that manages and focuses on improving and owning things they feel passionate about to give it that human touch.

I am sure we will start seeing more user generated content business’ focus on how they convey they are a trusted source of content in the near term as more and more choices around User Generated Content become available….   

Collective editorial - the future of info is here

A friend of mine Dave Panos runs a great company called Pluck....Pluck is company that provides social interaction capabilities to large media properties... Pluck has one SAS(software as service) that allows people to comment after a story...... Seems simple right? A lot of times the best ideas are.  The technology is more powerful than you might think as the intuitiveness of presentation and scalability of it is a little more tricky than it may seem....

So I am a big baseball fan... a tried and true Yankee Fan (since birth in upstate New York watching Catfish Hunter and Thurman Munson) and I've been anxiously following the Johan Santana trade talks... My personal opinion is don't trade for em, keep the young guys.  What I've discovered through my obsession with this topic is that the "comments" after the newspaper article in the New York times was becoming much more informative than the article itself...The viewpoints, facts and details were so much more preferable than the article that I found myself going straight to the comments section...and boy did I find that there were some very informed and literate Yankees fans/sources in there..      

There was also a recent oil spill that took place in the San Francisco Bay which was a horrible Eco accident and also robbed me of some final fall surfing days.  I was looking for more information on the articles posted and right there in sfgate.com ...there were a number of updates on where the spill was and also some informed viewpoints on cleanup options from some professors at Berkeley...

So has the nature of editorial switched forever?   I believe so... I believe that what we are starting to see is the emergence of Collective Editorial... To borrow from the book often cited that was James Suroweicki ' Collective Wisdom of Crowd's,  any group of individuals is more informed and more predictive than any one expert.. Now of course this doesn't always hold true on certain topics because of say "access to new information" but I've started to see an invested group of people in the comments section across many media properties emerge that are as informed or more informed than the writer and are providing their opinion for a psychological reason rather than because they are getting paid. 

I also believe that there is a credibility question when dealing with this comment section but my belief is that as you read the opinions, see a lot of people there who don't get paid express themselves... the credibility of the crowd actually goes up not down...

We are also starting to see media properties interact with their fan base first and then create more informed stories that summarize their aggregate prediction on an outcome.   

I think we are reaching a tipping point on this and what I can tell you is that the way I read and consume media has changed forever.... I believe that it won't be long before we are searching into the comments and social discussion first on any topic and/or become an active participant ourselves.

Translating this to other experiences online... we've just recently launched some commenting sections on wize.com and we were impressed with the speed at which people started to interact with the site and others around products and the informed viewpoints they expressed...

Long live collective editorial! In the long run I believe we all benefit as the quality and speed of information will improve for all of us....   

Talking about Web 2.0 at UCSB

Bill Grant was nice enough to invite me down to University of California Santa Barbara to give a lecture to undergraduates about Wize.com,  Careers , Web 2.0, and starting a company.  I had a chance to muse on ideas and interact with an energetic and ambituous group of students.  I've included the link to the video below.  You'll have to wait a few minutes for it to load in the background.

  http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/extracurricular/videos/tmp_f07_3_mov.html

Interview on Vator.tv

Here is a post of a recent interview on Vator.TV where Bambi Francisco and I talk about Web 2.0 and how Wize.com is leveraging the collective to provide consumers with specific product answers...