Web Masters

In this Startup Gold episode of Web Masters, Aaron returns to the story of Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate Bay, a notorious file sharing website..The podcast explores how Sunde's journey challenges traditional views of entrepreneurship, focusing on his unique reasons for starting the controversial file-sharing site. Facing legal issues and even imprisonment, Sunde's experience raises questions about the true purpose of entrepreneurship.This episode of Web Masters will ask you to consider what drives entrepreneurs beyond the usual goals of profit and independence, and how do those motives impact outcomes?For a full transcript of the episode, click here.

In this Startup Gold episode of Web Masters, host Aaron explores some wisdom shared by Raj Kapoor, founder of Snapfish. The central theme revolves around the importance of skating to where the puck is going in entrepreneurship.Drawing from the advice of successful investor Bill Gurley, Kapoor emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to predict the future trajectory rather than focusing on the present. The episode delves deeper into the concept, connecting it with the evolving landscape of self-driving cars and highlighting the critical role of foreseeing opportunities in the entrepreneurial journey.For a full transcript of the episode, click here.

In the third episode of the "Startup Gold" series from Web Masters, Aaron explores the importance of timing in the ultimate success (or failure) of a business.The discussion about timing centers around his conversation with John Danner, CEO and founder of Net Gravity, the first Web marketing company in history.According to John, he was a "horrible CEO." And yet, his company was hugely successful. How does that happen? Hint: the answer has something to do with having great timing.For a full transcript of the episode, click here.

In the second episode of the "Startup Gold" series from Web Masters, Aaron revisits a conversation he had with Jason Olim.Jason Olim founded CDNow.com. It's a name most people don't remember these days, but it was the first major e-commerce retailer on the Web. In fact, it was Amazon before Amazon and had the dominant position over Jeff Bezos back when the Web was first taking shape.So why didn't CDNow become the world's most popular e-commerce platform? Why doesn't CDNow still exist? According to Jason's interview, the answer is the very thing that most entrepreneurs tout as one of the most important advantages in achieving entrepreneurial success.For a full transcript of the episode, click here.

After 100 interviews with 100 incredible entrepreneurs, Aaron and the Web Masters team are diving into the archives to extract some of the best advice about entrepreneurship and building profitable Internet businesses. We're calling it "Startup Gold."In the first episode of Startup Gold, we're catching back up with David Cummings, founder of Pardot, to explore his thoughts on what it takes to build a truly great product.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

In this episode of Web Masters, we delve into the fascinating journey of Taegan Goddard, the visionary behind Political Wire, one of the internet's longest-running political news websites.Host Aaron Dinin interviews Taegan to uncover the early days of blogging and internet media, how Political Wire became a go-to destination for political junkies, and the challenges and successes of building and maintaining a creator business model.Taegan shares insights into the evolution of Political Wire's monetization strategies, from early sponsorships to the current subscription and programmatic advertising model. Discover how Taegan's passion for politics and community-building transformed a side hustle into a full-time career, while also becoming a key part of the Political Wire brand.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

In this episode of the Web Masters podcast, we sit down with Daniel Ha, co-founder of Disqus, the popular online commenting platform. Daniel shares his insights and experiences in building a successful tech company, providing valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and webmasters alike. Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of online engagement and discover the story behind Disqus.Key Points: Introduction to Disqus (02:30 - 07:45): Daniel introduces Disqus, explaining its purpose as a commenting system for websites and blogs. He shares the inspiration behind creating Disqus and how it aimed to solve the challenges of user engagement on the internet. The evolution of Disqus from a simple project to a widely adopted platform. Navigating Challenges and Finding Success (07:45 - 16:15): Daniel discusses the initial challenges of building and scaling Disqus, including user acquisition and monetization strategies. The importance of building a strong community around the product and leveraging user feedback for continuous improvement. How Disqus differentiated itself from competitors and gained traction in the market. The significance of providing value to both publishers and commenters in fostering a thriving ecosystem. Lessons from Building a Tech Company (16:15 - 26:50): Daniel reflects on the lessons learned throughout his journey as an entrepreneur. The importance of staying focused on solving a specific problem and delivering a superior user experience. The value of building a team of talented individuals who share the same vision and passion. Overcoming the challenges of fundraising and securing investment for startup growth. The role of persistence, adaptability, and continuous learning in entrepreneurial success. The Future of Online Engagement (26:50 - 34:40): Daniel shares his insights on the evolving landscape of online engagement and the impact of social media. The challenges of combating spam and maintaining quality discussions in online comment sections. The rise of alternative forms of engagement, such as video and audio comments. The importance of privacy and data security in an era of increasing concerns. Closing Thoughts and Advice (34:40 - 38:15): Daniel offers final words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs and webmasters. The significance of staying true to your vision and persevering through challenges. Embracing continuous improvement and seeking feedback from users. The excitement and opportunities that lie ahead in the tech industry. Conclusion:In this engaging episode, Daniel Ha, the founder of Disqus, takes us on a journey through the challenges and triumphs of building a successful online commenting platform. His insights shed light on the world of online engagement, providing valuable lessons for entrepreneurs and webmasters. Whether you're interested in the tech industry or seeking inspiration for your own startup, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge and experience from a seasoned entrepreneur. Tune in and discover the power of online engagement with Daniel Ha.You can also find a complete transcript of the episode here.

On this episode of Web Masters, we sit down with Jed Carlson, co-founder of ReverbNation, the premier online platform for independent musicians and bands to showcase their talent and connect with fans. From his early days at IBM and Cisco to his journey as an entrepreneur, Jed shares his insights on building a successful tech startup, the challenges of scaling a platform, and the importance of creating value for both artists and fans.We delve into the origins of ReverbNation and how the company has grown to become a global leader in the music industry, with over 4 million artists, bands, and labels using the platform to share their music with fans around the world. Jed also shares his thoughts on the changing landscape of digital media, the impact of social media on music promotion, and the future of the music industry.Whether you're a music enthusiast, a tech entrepreneur, or simply curious about the intersection of music and technology, this episode offers a fascinating look into the world of ReverbNation and the innovative strategies that have made it a success.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

If you've ever had to buy textbooks for school, you know how shockingly expensive they are. You also probably know about Chegg, the company that first made online textbook rentals easy and cheap.At first glance, textbook rentals might not seem like big business, but lots of people need textbooks. Plus, some legal hurdles for Amazon -- the obvious competitor -- left an opening that Osman Rashid, founder of Chegg, was able to squeeze through. The result was a company that's been helping college kids everywhere save money on textbooks and lots of other things.On this episode of Web Masters, Osman shares the story of how he and his cofounders built Chegg into one of the most valuable education service providers on the Web.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

If you want to fly across the world tomorrow, you can make your plans within minutes while sitting on your couch. But booking travel used to be much more complicated. It required calling (or visiting) travel agents who would manage all of your reservations for you, and then you'd have to wait from them to send your tickets and itineraries. The process could take hours, and ensuring you'd found the best prices was near impossible.That all changed when American Airlines began making their travel booking software available online. The man who led those efforts was Terry Jones. Terry Jones was a former travel agent turned tech ops manager who oversaw American's initiative to launch the website that ultimately became Travelocity, and it forever changed how people traveled.If that weren't enough, Terry also went on to help found Kayak, the travel comparison engine that made finding the best and cheapest flights as easy as booking online.In this episode of Web Masters, Terry talks about how he helped build both revolutionary pieces of travel software. For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Chances are, before you take a vacation, you do lots of research figuring out where to go and what to do when you get there. Today, that's as easy as a Google search, but that wasn't always the case. In the early days of the Web, vacation research required hours of tedious detective work as you pieced together little bits of information about the places you wanted to visit from questionable sources.That all began to change when Steve Kaufer launched TripAdvisor. His travel review website completely revolutionized the travel industry and changed the way people took vacations.On this episode of Web Masters, Steve shares the story of not just building TripAdvisor, but running it for two decades through both an acquisition and going public.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What would the Internet be without pictures and videos of cats doing ridiculous things? Luckily, we'll never have to find out, and it's thanks, in part, to Ben Huh.In the early 2000s, Ben bought a popular cat meme website called I Can Haz Cheezburger and he turned it into the Cheezburger Network, one of the Internet's most popular user-submitted content websites. In its heyday, the site was so popular it produced everything from coffee table books to reality television shows.As social media matured, user-submitted content websites waned in popularity, and along with it, so did Cheezburger Network, but not before Ben's sites forever flooded the Internet with thousands of memes that we might never escape.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

For almost as long as people have been communicating on the Web they've been using it to talk about stocks. At the heart of those conversations since the very beginning were the Gardner brothers, David and Tom. Together they launched The Motley Fool.The Motley Fool began as a small financial newsletter for friends and family, it evolved into one of the most popular forums on AOL, and it's since become one of the most reputable sites for financial advice anywhere on the Web. During the journey it's survived three enormous market crashes and a host of other problems that would kill most startups. But somehow, those problems have only made The Fool stronger and even more popular.On this episode of Web Masters, join one of the Fool brothers -- David Gardner -- as he shares the story of how he and his sibling have made themselves prominent leaders of financial conversations for three decades.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Is it possible to start a wildly successful company by luck? It is according to Craig Newmark.As you can probably guess by the name, Craig is the founder of Craigslist, the ultra-popular classifieds website that millions of people have been using for decades to help solve just about any kind of need you could possibly imagine.But that wasn't the goal behind launching Craigslist. Instead, Craigslist was started as a simple email list to share what was happening in the Bay Area. How did it become a household name and a site for anyone and everyone to buy/sell/trade whatever they wanted? Find out on this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

For millions of people, their first experience with the World Wide Web was made possible by America Online -- AOL. In fact, most people directly associate AOL with the Web. But did you know AOL predates the World Wide Web by nearly a decade?That's because, when AOL launched, the it was still illegal to use the Internet for commercialize activities. Instead, AOL was one of a handful of companies attempting to create their own global network. And, thanks to a bunch of CD-Roms you probably remember, AOL was the most successful company doing it.On this episode of Web Masters, you'll hear the story of how AOL got started and how it grew to be one of the biggest companies on the early Web as we hear from AOL co-founder Marc Seriff.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Today, Jason Calacanis is one of the most prominent names in the Silicon Valley tech and entrepreneurship community. But, before he was a well-known West Coast investor, he was at the center of the smaller bust fast-growing East Coast tech scene in New York known as "Silicon Alley."Jason ran Silicon Alley Reporter, a magazine dedicated to the tech innovation happening in New York City. It grew from a 16 page, homemade, photocopied booklet into a 300+ page glossy generating millions in ad revenue.On this episode of Web Masters, Jason shares the story of how he created the magazine as well as what entrepreneurial life was like in the early days of New York tech.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

The Kickstarter name is synonymous with crowdfunding. It's like the Kleenex of the crowdfunding industry. But, strangely enough, Kickstarter didn't invent crowdfunding. The technique dates back centuries. Heck, Kickstarter wasn't even the first crowdfunding website. So how did it become the world's de facto crowdfunding platform?In this episode of Web Masters, we find out by speaking with one of Kickstarter's co-founders, Charles Adler. He shares the story of building the platform and how he and his co-founders turned a goal of helping artists fund their work into a global brand that's become synonymous with launching innovative new projects.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Most of us do a significant chunk of our purchasing at Amazon.com. Or, at the very least, a site like it. Amazon may or may not be the cheapest, but we're pretty sure it'll have what we want, we know delivery will be quick, and the price will be competitive.Even though we don't give online purchasing a second thought these days, it actually took a lot of years for early web users to get comfortable buying stuff from the internet. That's because E-commerce didn't begin as a better option for most retail purchases. In fact, in the beginning, E-commerce was pretty crummy. It was hard to navigate, shipping times were slow, and there was lots of fraud.E-commerce had to evolve over time into becoming something that was clearly a better option than traditional, in-person commerce, and one of the people who had a big impact on that evolution was Amir Ashkenazi. He did it by helping people bargain hunt and comparison shop online, first through his DealTime platform, and then the company it became, which was Shopping.com.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Most digital music pioneers encountered lots of resistance from the large music record labels. In fact, many of their companies were sued out of existence. But not eMusic.eMusic's founder, Mark Chasan, was one of the few digital music pioneers who actually managed to successfully navigate the early digital music waters, ultimately building an online music business that couldn't be stopped by the music industry and their endless string of lawsuits.On this episode of Web Masters, we'll hear how Mark did it, as well as the pioneering work he's doing now in a different and, arguably, much more important industry.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

When Alon Carmel launched JDate in 1997, he wasn't a pioneer in the online dating industry. He wasn't even a pioneer in the online Jewish dating industry. In fact, by the time he had the idea for Jdate, the Web already contained over a hundred Jewish themed dating websites. But rather than seeing all that competition and thinking the market was saturated, Alon saw the competition and figured: "It must be a good business."Recognizing the opportunity, Alon and his friend, Joe Shapira, focused on creating a popular brand. And it worked.From lavish parties to billboards across Times Square, Alon wanted to make sure everyone in the world knew about Jdate, even if not everyone was his customer. The result was the world's most popular dating website for Jewish people and a strategy for online dating focused on niche communities that Alon and his team expanded well beyond Jewish dating. It ultimately led to Spark Networks, one of the largest and most profitable networks of dating websites in the world.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What do archaeology and cookie recipes have in common? In truth, not much. But that didn't stop a group of archaeology graduate students from the University of Washington from joining together to create CookieRecipe.com. CookieRecipe grew so popular that the grad students started building other similar sites, like PieRecipe.com, CakeRepice.com, ChickenRecipe.com, and ThanksgivingRecipe.com.Eventually, their network of recipe sites got so popular that they decided to combine it into one site for all their recipes. They called that site Allrecipes.com, and it's still still one of the most popular recipe websites in the world.On this episode of Web Masters, one of those archeology grad students shares the story of how he and his friends built Allrecipes. His name is Carl Lipo, and, despite helping build an enormously popular website, he decided to stick with archaeology, and he's now an archeology professor.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Everyone is familiar with the 1 to 10 numeric grading scale used to describe people's attractiveness. A supermodel might be described as “a perfect 10,” while “a 1” is basically the ugliest person you could ever imagine.In the early 2000s, a couple of college buddies in Silicon Valley decided to turn that concept into a website. It was called HOTorNOT.com. On HOTorNOT, brave people who wanted an honest measure of their attractiveness would upload pictures of themselves, and other users of the website would grade their hotness on a ubiquitous 1 to 10 numeric “hotness” scale.Within days of launching, HOTorNOT became a massive, viral hit. Millions of people from around the world were logging onto HOTorNOT.com to judge the attractiveness of others, and the site soon became one of the most popular and heavily trafficked websites on the Internet.On this episode of Web Masters, you'll hear the story of how -- and why -- James built it, as well as how people responded to what was perhaps the most superficial site on the Internet.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

As the ShareFile name implies, it's a software for sharing, storing, and otherwise managing files in the cloud. It's not a particularly unique service. In this episode, you'll hear ShareFile's founder, Jesse Lipson, mention some familiar competitors -- companies like Dropbox and Box and YouSendIt. Though, to be fair, in 2005, when the company launched. these types of services weren't so common. Still, cloud file management isn't exactly an obscure niche, meaning, there are a decent number of companies playing in the space, which makes for a challenging, competitive environment.However, despite that challenging environment, Jesse managed to bootstrap his company to an impressive exit over the course of six years.Bootstrapping enterprise SaaS apps isn't common. And it isn't easy, either. On this episode of Web Masters, we're going to hear how Jesse did it.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Most founders are lucky if they build one organization that changes the world. Mitch Kapor has done it multiple times. And he's supported dozens more through venture backing and philanthropy.On this episode of Web Masters, Mitch talks about his experiences building Lotus Software, the digital world's first massively scaling software company. He followed that by launching the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help protect innovators and entrepreneurs experimenting in the digital space. And he's gone on to support dozens of other world-changing organizations including the Mozilla Foundation, creators of the Firefox Web browser.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Before social media websites became our feeds of information from around the Internet, people relied on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to build their own feeds of content from different websites. While this was a great way for consumers to keep updated on what their favorite sites were producing, it wasn't so great for the sites themselves. Lots of their readers were viewing content through RSS feeds, which meant less site visitors and less money from advertisers.The FeedBurner team helped solve that problem. FeedBurner allowed websites with continuously updating content (i.e. blogs, news sites, etc.) to monetize on people who subscribed to their sites using RSS.In this episode of Web Masters, one of FeedBurner's co-founders, Matt Shobe, shares the story of helping build FeedBurner while helping us understand what the Internet was like back when you could "reach the end" of it thanks to your RSS feed.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Scott Heiferman was the featured guest on Web Masters Episode #80. In that episode, we heard about how Scott built Meetup, the pioneering website for helping people find their local communities. But that wasn't the only popular website Scott built. He also built Fotolog.Fotolog was a social media website where people posted and shared their photos online for their friends to view in their feeds. In other words, it was basically Instagram. But it appeared nearly a decade before Instagram.Fotolog never quite achieved the same global status as Instagram, but it was one of the most popular websites in lots of countries around the world. On this episode of Web Masters, Scott talks about what it was like building Fotolog alongside Meetup and how it grew into a popular cultural phenomenon of its own.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

We all know the Internet is a great place for connecting with people anywhere in the world who share the same interests and passions, but can it also be a great place for getting connected with people in your local comunity? The guest in this episode of Web Masters thought it could be. It's Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup.What began as a project to help Scott better connect with his New York City neighbors in the wake of the September 11th tragedy quickly grew into the world's biggest online community for finding people in your local area interested in the same things. In this episode of Web Masters, Scott explains how (and why) he started Meetup, how he grew it, and, ultimately, where he sees it going as the world continues moving away from IRL communities and toward a metaverse.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Hard as it may be to remember now, there was a time when every song we wanted to listen to wasn't available to stream instantly. Instead, we had to own physical copies. First came the record, then the tape, then the CD.However, in the late 90s, a new encoding technology was developed that allowed near-CD-quality music to exist in a relatively small file format. The format was called MP3. You've surely heard of it.As MP3s grew in popularity, Michael Robertson decided to buy the domain name “MP3.com.” He wasn't buying the domain because he was interested in the music industry. He was buying it because he owned a file search engine called Filez.com, and he thought he could use the surging popularity of MP3s to direct traffic to his startup. However, when he launched a website on MP3.com, thousands of people started showing up, and he knew he needed to capitalize on the opportunity.Ultimately, Michael built a service people could use to stream their music collections online. That doesn't sound unique today, but Michael launched MP3.com in the late 1990s, and, at the time, no other streaming service existed. The uniqueness of MP3.com made it wildly popular with consumers. It also made MP3.com the target of a lot of animosity from the powerful recording industry.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Not every online dating website needs to be for everyone. At least, that's what Andrew Conru believed. Rather than creating a single dating website and expecting everyone to join it -- which was the strategy of dating mega-site Match.com -- Andrew took a different approach to online dating. He launched a network of dating websites, each with their own theme designed to serve a specific niche of users.Most well-known among those dating websites was Adult FriendFinder, the Internet's original "hookup" website. But Adult FriendFinder was just one site in a much larger network that Andrew grew into an enormous business. Unfortunately for Andrew, running the company took a huge mental toll, and he eventually had to sell it.But the new owners mismanaged FriendFinder, plunging the company into debt and almost ruining it.On this episode of Web Masters, not only will you hear how Andrew created FriendFinder, you'll learn about the unique way Andrew responded to another company nearly ruining the thing he built.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Most people can't imagine a form of the Internet that doesn't involve the World Wide Web. In fact, the World Wide Web and the Internet are so deeply entwined that the majority of users don't even realize there's a difference. But that's only because the World Wide Web was the winning technology. In the early days of the Web – i.e. the early 1990s – it was competing with other, similar technologies. In fact, some of those other technologies were significantly more popular.The most popular of those competitive technologies was called Usenet. And, just like the Web, Usenet users needed a way to search. That's why Steve Madere built Deja. Deja was the search engine for Usenet, and had things gone a little different in Internet history, we might have been talking about "deja-ing" to find what we need instead of "googling."In this episode of Web Masters, you'll hear the story of how Steve built Deja and how it could have been as impactful as Google.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

You're probably used to getting your news via social media. But there was a time, early in the age of social media, when news and social media weren't so deeply integrated. Instead, Internet users flocked to social news websites.One of those websites was Newsvine. It was a creator platform for citizen journalists, and it paid people anywhere in the world for writing and sharing the news they witnessed.Since the peak of Newsvine's popularity, social media platforms have merged with news platforms, and, for better and for worse, lots of people get their news from social media websites. But, in this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn about Newsvine's different approach to social news alongside Newsvine co-founder Mike Davidson.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Rotten Tomatoes began as a hobby project. Senh Duong, the original creator, started posted reviews for movies he enjoyed on a small, personal website. Pretty soon after he began, lots of people started relying on those reviews in order to choose the movies they wanted to watch, and the site's traffic began growing exponentially.Unable to handle the growth by himself, Senh turned to two friends he used to enjoy watching movies with back in college -- Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang -- and, together, the three college buddies decided to turn the little move review website into a business.That business became RottenTomatoes.com, which is still one of the most popular and trusted online resources for movie reviews. You can hear the story of how all three original founders built it on this special, 75th episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

The Internet has always been a place to learn about new things. But, in the early days of the Web, one writer took that opportunity for learning to an extreme by creating an entire website devoted to explaining how stuff works. His name is Marshall Brain, and he named his website -- quite appropriately -- HowStuffWorks.com.HowStuffWorks became a popular online destination for people to learn about the inner works behind everything from internal combustion engines to water towers. It eventually expanded from the Web into books, magazines, TV shows, and even podcasts. In fact, even now it remains a popular infotainment websites.On this Web Masters episode, Marshall shares the story of building and growing HowStuffWorks, from writing his first article to leading the company to a successful acquisition.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Flight tracking might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about how the Internet has changed the world, but, as with so many other industries, the Web changed commercial aviation forever. However, it didn't change it the way you might think.FlightAware made the data for all flights publicly available. By doing that, it gave people access to valuable information they were able to use to make airline travel more efficient and more comfortable. The team at FlightAware took advantage, selling their data for all sorts of purposes they never imagined.In this episode of Web Masters, Nugget McNett, one of FlightAware's founders, shares the story of how he and his co-founders built FlightAware and how it helped revolutionize the commercial aviation industry.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Shutterstock probably isn't the first company that comes to mind when most people think of successful, billion dollar New York tech companies. Instead, the list includes names like BuzzFeed, Rent the Runway, and WeWork. But that's only because most people don't spend much time trying to find stock photography.However, if you're one of the few people in the world who regularly needs high quality photos, you know how important they are. You also understand and appreciate the challenge of getting good images.Getting good images used to be a lot harder and more expensive until Jon Oringer, founder of Shutterstock, introduced the first subscription marketplace for stock photography. Even if you've never personally needed stock photography, the story of Shutterstock is important because it introduced a new concept of online, creator marketplaces. That concept has permeated dozens of other industries, from web design to music, meaning if you've ever downloaded so much as a song from your favorite band, you're benefitting from the model Shutterstock pioneered.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

In the early 1990s, emerging digital and Internet culture weren't mainstream, but it was clear they were going to change the world. People wanted to understand how these new technologies were going to impact them, so they turned to a technology they were already familiar with: magazines. Leading the charge was the most popular publication about the digital age: WIRED Magazine.Launched just as the World Wide Web was first gaining traction, WIRED Magazine quickly became the mouthpiece of the digital age. It was the resource people relied on when they wanted to understand not just what was happening with digital technology, but also the people behind it.On this episode of Web Masters, we hear the story of how -- and why -- WIRED got started from its co-creators, Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

If you need to find something on the Web, it's as simple as going to Google and typing whatever you're looking for. You don't even think twice about whether or not you'll get useful results. Heck, you don't even think twice about whether or not the Google webpage will actually load. But early search engines weren't nearly as reliable.Before Google perfected web search, lots of search engines were trying to figure out the best way to help people find what they needed online, and they weren't always reliable. To help solve that problem, a graduate student at the University of Washington named Erik Selberg developed a different type of search engine. It was a search engine that searched other search engines -- a "metasearch engine" -- aggregating results across the different platforms and pulling them together in one place. For users, this meant if one search engine wasn't working or giving good results, they could still find what they needed.Sure, the idea of a metasearch engine seems strange today, but MetaCrawler solved a critical problem in the early days of the Web. On this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn how -- and why -- Erik built it.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

How do you get your website listed at the top of Google? It's a simple question with an answer so difficult and complex that Rand Fishkin built an enormous company around it. It's called MOZ, and it's the world's premier search engine optimization (SEO) company.On this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn about how Rand built MOZ as he describes his entrepreneurial journey from optimizing client websites for early search engines all the way up through building a venture backed company around a sophisticated software capable of helping improve SEO for thousands of customers.Along the way, Rand shares some of the difficult lessons he learned about being an entrepreneur, building companies, and taking care of yourself and your own mental wellness.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

You might think "Zoom Classrooms" and #EdTech are new things. They're a byproduct of ubiquitous computers and faster Internet connections. But that's not actually the case.Even before the World Wide Web existed, creative teachers were figuring out how to use the Internet to engage students and enhance the types of learning possible in the emerging digital world. Leading the charge was Dr. Yvonne Marie Andres. In the early 1980s, Yvonne found herself with a computer in her classroom and no clue what to do with it. So she decided to figure something out.Her efforts soon grew into a global communications network, video classrooms, and students collaborating around the world. All of this happened before most people even had Internet accounts. She's a pioneering voice in the e-learning industry, founder of Global SchoolNet, an inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame, and you'll hear her story on this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

You may or may not know what Drupal is. However, when you're using a website, there's a decent chance you're using it. It's one of the Web's most used open source content management platforms, and it's currently being used to operate millions of sites.But Drupal didn't start as a content management system. It began as a way for Drupal's creator to tell his friends the status of their shared, high-speed Internet access. As more and more people suggested ways of expanding the software, Dries decided to open source code, and a huge community grew around it.Today, Drupal is one of the largest and most popular open source software platforms in the world. Find out how that happened on this episode of Web Masters where Dries Buytaert, Drupal's founder, tells the story of building Drupal.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

In the early days of computers, software was sold as a one-off license. But why let someone pay you once when you can get that person to pay you for the same product multiple times? At least, that's the mantra of the Software As A Service industry, otherwise known as SaaS.Helping lead the charge on a new business model of recurring, subscription software was Phil Fernandez and his marketing automation company, Marketo. Phil and Marketo wanted to democratize the marketing software industry by selling six and seven-figure pieces of software for a low, monthly subscription. And it worked!In this episode of Web Masters, you'll hear about how Marketo would help revolutionize the way businesses -- both large and small -- managed (and paid for) their online marketing.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Video streaming is a relatively recent addition to the Web. That shouldn't surprise anyone with even a cursory knowledge of how the Internet works. Compared with things like text and images, the storage and bandwidth required for online video is obviously significantly higher, and it took a while for the Internet's infrastructure to be able to handle the larger data loads.But storage and bandwidth limitations weren't the only issues. Digital video recording devices are also relatively new. Sure, just about everyone reading this article can easily pull out a phone and start filming high definition video within seconds, but, less than 20 years ago, that wasn't the case for all but a relatively few video enthusiasts.One of those enthusiasts was Jacob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo. He'd just graduated college on the East Coast and was heading to San Diego to work on a different startup, and one of his close friends asked him to share updates about life on the West Coast. He decided to share those updates using video, inadvertently helping create the online video sharing industry.In this Web Masters episode, you'll learn about the origins of online video sharing, the relationship between Vimeo and YouTube, as well as how the platforms grew into having different audiences and purposes.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Every major social media platform has a "like" button. It's a core part of Internet culture and a simple measuring stick to determine how popular a piece of content is. But even though it seems obvious today, it wasn't such an obvious way of judging content in the early days of social media.In this special holiday mini-episode of Web Masters, Aaron shares the story he learned from Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo, about where the "like" button came from and why it worked so well.

If you're reading this, chances are you'e connected to the Internet all the time. But that wasn't always the case. In the early days of the Web, people would dial into the Internet using their phone lines, do what they needed to online, and then turn off their connections.That began to change when internet service providers began offering faster, always-on broadband connections separate from people's phone lines. But those faster connections wouldn't have been able to go much faster until one man figured out how to bring the Internet closer to end users. His name is Milo Medin, and he helped found a company called @Home, which introduced cable Internet to the consumer market.@Home didn't last long, but the infrastructure Milo developed is still the infrastructure we all rely on today for high speed Internet. Find out how -- and why -- he did it on this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Publishing about niche topics used to be too expensive. But then the Web happened, and the costs for publishing and distribution dropped to almost nothing. That change opened the door to an entirely new generation of publications targeting small, focused audiences.Peter Rojas took advantage of this shift by launching Gizmodo, the Internet's first popular gadget blog. And, it turns out, gadget lovers weren't as small of an audience as he thought. In fact, there was so much demand for gadget-related content that, a couple years later, Peter left Gizmodo to launch Engadget, which became an even bigger gadget blog.He may have ruffled some feathers along the way, but, it's hard to argue with his results: Peter forever changed the journalism landscape. On this episode of Web Masters, you'll find out how he did it.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

There was a lot of hype and excitement surrounding the early Web. Problem was, it wasn't nearly as refined as it is now. In fact, the early Web was pretty terrible.While most publications -- publications like Wired Magazine -- were evangelizing and praising the tech revolution, Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman were sharing a different and more realistic perspective on their website, Suck.com. Other people noticed, and Suck became one of the most popular content sites on the early Internet.In this episode of Web Masters, Joey tells the story of building Suck.com and gives his thoughts on whether the Web still sucks.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

When you think of Foursquare, the popular, location-based social media app, you surely think of things like check-ins and badges and becoming "mayor." That was fine with Dennis Crowley, Foursquare's founder, so long as it meant you were using Foursquare. But it's not what he cared about.Dennis wasn't building an app for people to show their friends where they were going. Dennis just needed to know where you were going so he could tell other people the best places to go, too. The game layer was just the strategy that convinced people to tell him, but the data was what he really wanted and, ultimately, what he got.In fact, all that data Foursquare collected is what allowed Dennis to build what he likes to call the Internet's "location layer." And while you may have thought you stopped using Foursquare a while ago, or you might have thought you never used it, chances are you're using it more than ever. Heck... you're probably using it right now. You'll find out why on this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

If you used the Web in the late 90s or early 2000s, there's a good chance you had a Hotmail email account. At the very least, you knew plenty of people with one. After all, at its peak, 25% of Internet users had Hotmail accounts. As a result, lots of people associate the creation of email with Hotmail.But Hotmail didn't invent email. Not even close. The first digital messaging systems current users would recognize as “electronic mail” were being used all the way back in the 1960s, and Hotmail didn't launch until 1996.For what it's worth, Hotmail didn't even invent Web-based email (a.k.a. “webmail”). Webmail first appeared in 1994. Instead, Hotmail's innovation was to make email broadly accessible to anyone -- for free -- via a browser.Of course most people today do -- or at least can -- access their email through browsers. But, in the mid-1990s, that wasn't the case. Instead, reading emails required an email client. That was fine if you were on your own computer. But what if you weren't near your computer? Or what if you didn't even own your own computer? How were you going to read your emails? That's the problem Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail's founding CEO, helped solve. You'll learn how in this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

The process for selling a product to consumers used to be very different than the process for selling products to other businesses. However, like so many things, the Internet changed that. A big reason was Pardot.Pardot helped introduce B2B companies to a different type of sales process. It was a systematized and operationalized sales process that helped make B2B sales more scalable. That scalability, in turn, made it possible to sell less expensive products to more companies, which opened enormous amounts of new markets that previously weren't profitable because the costs were too high.In this episode of Web Masters, Pardot's founder, David Cummings, explains how he came up with the idea for Pardot and bootstrapped it to a nearly $100 million exit, first to ExactTarget before it ultimately became an integral part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Considering one of the most valuable companies in the world -- Google --- makes a majority of its money from web search, it's hard to imagine a world in which startups struggled to make money from search engines. But that's actually how the world was in the early days of the Web. Back in the mid-1990s, most search engines were being run as experiments out of either universities (e.g. Lycos at Carnegie Mellon) or companies (e.g. AltaVista at Digital Equipment Corporation). As a result, search engines didn't need to be profitable, and that was a good thing because they were expensive to operate and nobody could figure out a viable business model.The biggest exception to this was Steve Kirsch's Infoseek. Infoseek wasn't an experiment. Instead, Infoseek was the search engine that was launched as a business from Day 1. And, like any business, someone needed to pay.In the minds of Steve and his co-founders, the most obvious people to charge were the people they were directly giving value to: the ones using Infoseek to perform searches. As a result, in the earliest days of Infoseek, the company charged users for each search they performed.Can you imagine that? How different would the world be if every search we performed online cost us money? We'll explore that, and more, on this episode of Web Masters in a conversation with Infoseek founder and well-known serial entrepreneur Steve Kirsch.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Flickr, the Internet's original photo sharing website, actually began as a feature in a game. But the feature quickly got more popular than the game itself. Soon, it became a massive company leading the Web 2.0 revolution and changing how people shared content online. But, as interesting as the story of Flickr is, it can't match the story and opinions of its founder, Caterina Fake.On this episode of Web Masters, Caterina joins Aaron to talk a little about Flickr and a lot about her thoughts on the Internet, digital culture, and how the Web has impacted the way people interact with each other.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.