Tony Hsieh from Zappos
callcenters, customer service, monetization, word of mouth
Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos. They're on track to do $1 billion dollars this year, all online. Tony previously founded LinkExchange which he sold for $265M to Microsoft in 1998. While Zappos started by selling shoes, Tony shares how Zappos' focus is really on the customer experience and customer service it provides. Tony talks about how he went from investor to full-time employee at Zappos because it was really taking off, and as Tony said, seemed fun.Full Interview »
Ethan Willis from Prosper, Inc. joins us for today’s interview. He's very undercover - I have been trying to get this interview for at least a year and finally managed to convince him. I think a lot of you don't even know what he looks like. Prosper focuses on producing leads, selling to those leads, and then providing fulfillment. They work with people like Ken Blanchard, Donald Trump, and Robert Allen. Ethan also talks about his new book with Ken Blanchard (from the One Minute Manager series).
This interview is with Mark Kahn of TRAFFIQ.com, which is a marketplace for branded traffic inventory a bit like eBay. Publishers put their inventory on it, and media buyers can buy it. Traffiq is an unusual company for our interviews since it’s raised quite a bit of VC capital. But they have a good model so it’s worth reading about. Mark talks about TRAFFIQ’s platform and inventory, and he shares how the level of information a seller provides can dramatically increase CPM prices.
Aaron Broder is the co-founder of Gorilla Nation. He's working with some sites which do considerable volume, and spends his time putting together branding deals. He has combined his expertise and family background in entertainment to create an online ad rep company for Web publishers. Aaron shares how Gorilla Nation started, how it found its niche with mid-tail sites, and how it plans to grow internationally. Many of us are direct response focused; it’s about time we learned a little about the branding side of things; there's a lot higher CPM's in it.
Matt Wise is the CEO of Q Interactive, and a really nice guy. But you're here for interviews, and so Q Interactive's interview is a good one – they actually started out as a coupons company (Cool Savings) and in the last few years completely reworked their direction to be a lead generation company. I think it’s yet another clear indicator that lead generation is one of the most powerful business models on the internet – many companies have reworked their business model in this same direction. We talk about the different methods of driving leads, what signifies "permission" and some sophisticated techniques to improve lead quality.
Meet Nathan Kinsella. He runs a $7M call center based in the Philippines. We had a very interesting conversation about how he acquires and works with clients, which is relevant to a large majority of the businesses here. If you're not working with a call center like the one Nathan runs, you're likely not selling enough and dramatically limiting the dollar revenue volume your business can do. And yes, call centers CAN work in an ethical manner that don't burn customers. You just need the right call center to work with.
PV Kannan runs 24/7, a $120M call center with 6000 seats. This was one of the top interviews. He's doing some very sophisticated data prediction to make his business extremely efficient; it's very impressive. Also impressive is the fact that his company is funded by Mike Moritz, the top VC from #1 VC firm Sequoia Capital. Mike Moritz is well known for funding Yahoo and Google and currently sits on the board of directors of Google. It's relatively unusual to hear about a call center in Silicon Valley (the HQ is based there), but as we all know direct response marketing is becoming more important so over time I expect to see more companies like 24/7 Customer.
This interview is with Ryan Allis who is the CEO of iContact. Ryan runs an ESP, or Email Service Provider, geared mainly to small businesses. I use it and their deliverability is great - we tested many before settling on iContact. I wanted to talk with Ryan to understand the latest on email deliverability - which I definitely got in this interview. However what I didn't realize was that this market he is serving is actually quite large. Constant contact, his main competitor is a $500M publicly traded company. Given Ryan founded iContact and they're a year or so away from going public, Ryan will probably be running a $300M public company before long.
Rob Jewell is the founder of the FreeiPod craze. Rob’s story is very insightful; he’s a determined entrepreneur.
This week we talk with Dean Graziosi, the infomercial king about his business. He’s doing tremendous volume through infomercials, and it’s working very well. He plays the down home boy that doesn’t know a lot, but I think after reading this you’ll agree with me that he’s as smart as they come.
Drew Curtis, the owner of Fark.com, generates 1.5M – 2M page views per day out of his house, all via public relations. I asked Drew a lot about how he monetizes Fark, and he gave some pretty interesting answers.
