Matt Moog from Viewpoints Network
SEO, affiliate marketing, community, lead generation, media buying, venture capital, viral marketing
Matt Moog was previously the CEO of CoolSavings and before that did presentations with Bill Gates at Microsoft. Matt talks about his time at CoolSavings (the original coupon site on the web), which included taking the company public and then back to being private. He also talks about how Viewpoints is creating a modern version of epinions, and which could become an amazing lead generation platform for advertisers, offering hot transfer leads from customers who are ready to buy. He's doing this while providing a lot of value to consumers. He's finding a way to generate leads which should generate a lot of loyalty from consumers.Full Interview »
Matt Hill is the CEO of Shopit.com. Shopit is like eBay for social networking sites. According to Matt, Shopit is now the fastest growing e-commerce application on Facebook. EBay has had a lot of fraud problems, and a lot of people don't like using it anymore. After interviewing Matt, I wrote about 
Jason Fried from 37signals joins me for this interview. 37signals builds Web-based software and service products for small businesses. They're pretty famous in the web2.0 crowd for being easy to use. They are a relatively tiny company - typical of today's best startups, with a small team who are all high-caliber guys. Jason talks about how the company is able to meet deadlines and deliverables even though all 10 employees work remotely. They even have an 
This interview is with John Marshall. He started his first software business around the age of 13 by making and selling video games. His most recent businesses have included ClickTracks, which is a Web analytics company, and now Market Motive, which provides online marketing training material. John talks about what prompted him to eventually sell ClickTracks. He also explains why he involved an investment bank in the selling process. John never took VC money to grow his business, and talks about why that is a better approach.
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.
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 week’s interview is with Gary Swart, the CEO of oDesk. oDesk is like Elance except it’s primarily for programmers, and it incorporates a lot of tools to make working with programmers easier. I also spoke in depth with Gary about how to hire an experienced CEO – Gary was brought in to take over the management of oDesk.
This interview is with Scott Rewick who was one of the Netblue (now Connexus) founders. Some key points of the interview: Hear from one of the Netblue (now Connexus) founders about how the company was started. Learn what impact taking venture capital can have on your company. Discover how Scott invests in companies – and how you can too!
