Wize-ing Up!

I have recently become the CEO of www.wize.com .  I arrive at Wize from my EIR (entrepreneur in residence) position at

Mayfield

. As an EIR, I had a chance to work with some great people and look at some very innovative companies along the way.  The journey from EIR at

Mayfield

to CEO at Wize has been an adventure filled one to say the least. 

So what compelled me to jump out of Mayfield and into Wize.com?

Well, it is interesting.  I actually was working on starting the same business myself before Wize even launched.  As an EIR, I had a chance to go out and talk to all kinds of people, Venture Capitalists, Thought Leaders, Entrepreneurs and of course, Consumers. Throughout all those fabulous meetings and a whole load of traditional analysis, it was apparent to me that it was still too hard to do online product research on the Web. It was too difficult to figure out what to buy in almost every product category.   I remember talking to my father who was trying to decide what computer to buy and I felt like I couldn’t help him unless I put a few hours worth of my own time into the process.   That bothered me…. a lot.  The web was designed to make things easy not hard especially around things like product purchases.  I remember talking with Yogen Dalal at

Mayfield

and he confirmed the big need for an improvement in this space from his vantage point.  Yogen and I agreed that what my father was experiencing was real and it was just too hard to do this type of product research quickly.   

From that point on, I kept waking up everyday with a growing inner voice telling me, that’s it.  Go do it.   

Well, I was in the process of doing it when www.wize.com launched.   I went out to meet Doug Baker the founder and we had a 2 hour conversation and it was one of those weird experiences where you kind of go “Did you read my business plan?” There were so many levels where we agreed about the problem and the solution.  At that point I was sold and I believe Doug was too.  We agreed that we had to go do this…. together.   Well, after that, we had go jump through a considerable amount of hurdles to make everything happen in order that we could join forces.  Well suffice to say, with Bessemer and

Mayfield

now behind us, we embark on an exciting 2007 to dramatically improve the “what to buy” process for everyone.  Our goal is to give powerful intuitive information to consumers that makes them feel smart, helps them make “wize” purchase decisions and hopefully improve their quality of living.   Please try out the site; we’d appreciate all your comments good or bad. Thanks!!!

Comments

[cw]

as an everyday user I see the site as useful with an easy, sharp design. same features as froogle but cleaner and less gook. the only thing was-- I couldn’t find any negative reviews on any of cameras I was looking at—for instance one says 750 of 800 reviews are positive. Those 50 that aren’t positive are also useful to me as a consumer. Even though there’s only 50 of them…

ps: thanks for the insight this morning Tom.
Just one thing I just have to say then I’m out: Berkeley is a great school!

[Tom]

CW, Thanks for the feedback. Berkeley is a great school on many levels. Love the bears. Sorry if that was unclear.....