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Download the MP3. Today's media executives plotting to charge for their content would do well to hear how Larry Kramer beat Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com by resisting pressure to put most content behind a pay wall while not relying entirely on advertising. To the average consumer, MarketWatch.com seemed to have come out of nowhere during the late 1990s to quickly establish itself as one of the leading sources of online financial information. For MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer, it represented the last chapter of his 15 year journey as a first-time entrepreneur. Larry started his career as a journalist, going from reporter to the top editor of the San Francisco Examiner in just 10 years with stops at the Washington Post and Trenton Times along the way. Larry founded DataSport Inc. (the company that would eventually morph into MarketWatch though a series of mergers and partnerships) with $500,000 from friends and family. He almost ran out of money early on. After a wild ride on the public market, Larry sold MarketWatch to Dow Jones for over $500 million in 2004 and went on to become the president of CBS Digital Media until 2006. Hear how Larry lived though two different careers and what he's planning next.

Download the MP3. Any shareholder in a startup can tell you there's a big difference between paper wealth and cash. Short of an IPO or outright acquisition, there are few options to cash out for the shareholders of even the most thriving private companies. Barry Silbert is determined to change that with his company SecondMarket -- an exchange like the NASDAQ for private stock and other illiquid assets. He founded the company in 2004 focused on restricted stock, and quickly reached profitability with only $350,000 in angel funding. The road to this point was not without challenges; Barry's business partner was diagnosed with cancer and passed away as they were establishing the company. In 2008, SecondMarket made $20 million in revenue. Barry's success has not tempered his ambition as he's spent 2009 aggressively moving into new asset classes such as private companies (Facebook stock is already being traded on his platform), limited partner interest in venture capital firms and even California IOUs. Hear how this former bankruptcy banker did it and why he believes "The sky's the limit" for his business.

Download the MP3. "Dial 1 for sales, dial 2 for support..." Ten years ago it cost over $10,000 to get a phone system with the advanced options we're used to hearing when we call big companies. Having a professional-sounding phone system was a surprisingly big challenge for small businesses short on cash. Enter Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser who launched GotVMail to offer that service at rates starting at only $10 per month in 2003 as they were graduating college. They launched their business with under $200,000 in capital and never raised any more money. They bootstrapped their way to profitability quickly, and are now driving over $10 million in annual revenue. Despite their success, Siamak and David don't believe what's gotten them this far will take them to the next level. So they've just rebranded their company Grasshopper and are getting ready to launch some new products. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. Craigslist seems unbeatable. It's often blamed (or celebrated) for destroying the classifieds business that helped keep American newspapers afloat. Now second-time Venture Voice guest Fabrice Grinda is seeking to dominate online classifieds with OLX, his latest venture. Unlike Craigslist, OLX is translated into many languages and has a global focus. OLX is completely ad supported so there are no fees for job or real estate listings as there are on Craigslist. Still, it sounds crazy to compete with Craigslist. If anyone can do it, it may be Fabrice. When we interviewed him in December, 2005, it was on his last day working as CEO at Zingy, a ring tone provider that he founded and sold for $80 million against all odds. OLX already has 125 employees and 60 million unique visitors per month, but with $28.5 million is venture capital it has a lot of growth ahead of it before it's a success. Hear how Fabrice plans on getting there. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. Graham Hill started the blog TreeHugger to cover green issues in 2003. After a steady climb in traffic and advertising, Graham sold the company to Discovery Communications in 2007 for $10 million. Since launch and even after the acquisition, Graham ran his business virtually. Graham lived in different cities from New York to Barcelona while working many hours to grow his company. His team of writers, ad sales people and developers chatted over Skype, got paid through PayPal and used Google documents to collaborate. Simultaneously, Graham launched a ceramic version of the iconic New York paper coffee cup (video below). Listen to how Graham built his businesses without an office or home town. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. It takes only a few seconds to customize a radio station on Pandora. Its founder Tim Westergren has been struggling for almost a decade to make it that way. Pandora was five years in the making before it streamed a single song to a user. For over two of those years the company was completely broke. While Tim convinced employees to defer over $1 million in salaries, Pandora underwent several changes in name, product and revenue models. Now Pandora is a leading online radio destination that’s starting to bring in sizable ad revenue. Tim is still battling with the record industry for its survival. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. The title financier conjures images of mahogany desks and million dollar checks for most. But for anyone pitching to David Cohen's TechStars, the outcome is getting accepted to what's essentially a summer camp for entrepreneurs in Colorado and being offered a check of $18,000 or less in exchange for 6% of the startup. This two year old program is part of a new trend in structured angel investing and mentoring that was started by Paul Graham's Y Combinator. Two companies founded at TechStars have already been acquired: socialthing! was sold to AOL and Intense Debate was sold to Automattic (the makers of WordPress). David tells his own stories of success and failure as an entrepreneur, and his transiton to becoming an angel investor. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. Not to be called a one trick pony, Sam Wyly's turned himself into a billionaire by starting and growing companies in technology, oil, retail and even in the restaurant industry. Coming from a modest upbringing, Sam worked in sales at IBM and Honeywell before founding University Computing in 1963 at age 29 with just "$1,000 and an idea" as he puts it in his book of that title. The company IPOed and grew to over 5,000 people. Sam hired CEOs and stayed an entrepreneur. He's founded and acquired numerous companies including Bonanza Steakhouse (grew to 600 restaurants), Earth Resources Company, Sterling Software (sold for $3.3 billion), Sterling Commerce (sold for $4 billion), arts-and-crafts chain Michaels (sold for $6 billion), Maverick Capital (a hedge fund with over $10 billion under management) and clean-energy producer Green Mountain Energy. Despite being soft-spoken, Sam's fought and won several high profile proxy fights. Sam's been undeterred as several of his ventures have had visible failures over the years and he's lost audacious bids to take over Western Union and Computer Associates. On the whole, Sam's created a huge amount of value that's put him on the Forbes list of the 400 richest people. Hear how he does it. Show sponsor: FreshBooks - an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

Download the MP3. Jeff Stewart needed that done yesterday. Jeff became an entrepreneur when he founded the web consultancy Square Earth in 1995. Only three years later he became a serial entrepreneur by starting Mimeo, a service that lets you send a file directly from your computer to be printed, bound and shipped overnight. Mimeo struggled in the dot com crash of 2000-2001 just as it was getting off the ground. Jeff was able to pull Mimeo though the downturn despite almost running out of cash, which has allowed the company to flourish and make $55.4 million in 2007 revenues. Ironically, Jeff didn't have the same success in good economic times with ample cash after he raised $20 million for Monitor110. He discusses the company's shutdown and lessons learned. Now Jeff's focused on allowing businesses to hire good salespeople faster with Urgent Career. He announces on this show for the first time that he's just raised a six-figure angel round to speed up Urgent Career's success.

Download the MP3. Last time Derek Sivers was on Venture Voice three years ago he told us he had to "whack 'em [investors] off with a stick". Now we know why. Derek announces on our show for the first time the amount he sold his company for this past summer: $22 million. Derek owned 100% of the equity. Though he might have made more money than most of his fellow music entrepreneurs, Derek's no Gordon Gekko. In this interview, Derek tells us how he put all of his money from the sale into a charitable trust, that he didn't even visit CD Baby's office once during the last year he owned it, and what he's up to next. Want more Venture Voice? Become a Venture Voice member or contact us about sponsoring the show.

Download the MP3. Attention entrepreneurs dealing with the current economic downturn: This interview is for you. After working as a journalist for Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter, Rafat Ali ended up broke in a market with a dearth of employment opportunities. To try to find a new job, Rafat created paidContent.org as an "interactive resume." Luckily, no one hired him. From these humble beginnings, Rafat bootstrapped his blog holding company, ContentNext Media, for four years before taking a small investment from famed media investor Alan Patricof in June 2006. From its inception paidContent has doubled revenues each year and was recently acquired by UK-based Guardian Media Group for a rumored $30 million. Listen in as Rafat outlines the past, present, and future of online media, while sharing his war stories from another uncertain economic time.

Download the MP3. Whether working with market trends or against them, Frank Addante has found entrepreneurial success. Before he was 29 years old, one of Frank's companies went public and two were acquired. At his worse, he returned capital to investors. Suffering from serial entrepreneurship, Frank left the Illinois Institute of Technology just four classes shy of his degree. His companies range from an early search engine to a Sequoia Capital-backed enterprise email solution. Now Frank aspires to be a web publisher’s best friend with his new ad network optimization service that he says is boosting their clients' revenues by 30-300%. Listen in as Frank details his ongoing entrepreneurial journey.

How can we improve our economy? Part 2 Part 1 is Hufschmid-27Jan2008.html   All of us started our lives as selfish jerks. We grabbed whatever we wanted, and we expected other people to pamper and entertain us. We had tantrums if we didn't get what we wanted. As we grew older, we learned to control our animal-like cravings, but some people don't mature properly. Many adults continue to steal whatever they want, expect other people to pamper them, or have tantrums. We are told to let the authorities handle crime, but the FBI doesn't stop crime. Neither does the British Crown Prosecution Service; it threatens citizens with murder charges for fighting back at criminals! More here.

Why is there so much abuse in our economy? And what can we do to correct it?   J

Vote Fraud with Electronic Voting Machines! What should we do about it?   Christopher Bollyn exposes the Israeli manipulation of US elections in 5 articles: Bollyn-after-kidnapping.html#elections Considering that he behaves like a kidnap victim, why would his kidnappers allow him to expose Israel? Because it's a clever trick. But you won't be able to understand it unless you can control your arrogance, and look critically at yourself and your nation.

Natalie Holloway and sex slaves  The recent confession regarding Natalie Holloway is more evidence that she was sold as a sex slave. This is a large business, even in Israel: ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3062297,00.html  Barak Obama and Ron Paul  Ron Paul is still supporting the official story on 9/11, but Obama is growing in popularity, and the Jews seem to be panicking because of it. Did they assume he would lose?

Benazir Bhutto was killed on December 27, and immediately the Zionists began trying to convince us that Pakistan was on the verge of self-destruction, and that Al Qaeda will steal nuclear weapons.   The Zionist propaganda increased on December 29:

Download the MP3. The name Tom Perkins is now almost synonymous with venture capital, but it's clear that he cut his teeth as an entrepreneur. Educated at MIT and Harvard, Perkins first made his mark by managing the initial growth of Hewlett-Packard’s computer business while simultaneously inventing the first cheap and reliable laser. The company he built around the laser, University Laboratories, made him independently wealthy and allowed for the creation of Kleiner Perkins, one of the most successful venture capital firms in existence. Kleiner Perkins (now Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) has funded a wide range of well known and wildly successful companies including Google, AOL, Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and Tandem Computers. Though Tom's wowed the business press for much of his career, later in life he's gained national attention for having a key role in 2006 Hewlett-Packard board controversy, briefly marrying Danielle Steel, and building the world's largest privately owned sailing yacht. Tom has recently stepped back into the media spotlight by publishing a memoir called Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins. Listen in as he discusses his journey from New York to Boston to Silicon Valley, the creation of Kleiner Perkins, and his advice for the entrepreneurs of the future.

The FBI destroys the Liberty Dollar! Is the FBI protecting the Federal Reserve? On November 14, 2007, the FBI confiscated the silver, gold, and other assets of NORFED, the organization that was producing an alternative type of money known as the Liberty Dollar. (Here is a news article) The Liberty Dollar organization supports Ron Paul for president, and they had just started to ship coins with his image on it (here is a news article about it): Is Ron Paul a hero for America? Is the Liberty Dollar the solution to the Federal Reserve problem? Is the FBI trying to stop Ron Paul because he will end the war in Iraq, eliminate the Federal Reserve, and repeal the income tax?

The Zionists are a very large and well funded crime network, but we are scattered individuals with almost no money. Smith's bizarre phone call to me shows how we can easily expose these suspicious people with inexpensive technology. However, most of you will not want to make your recordings public, so pass the information around quietly.   Let's make The Zionist Emperor's New Clothes become reality by secretly recording and quietly exposing the Zionists. They will assume that they are fooling us, but we will be gathering evidence to expose and eliminate this crime network.

Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million Armenians were victims of a genocide between 1915 and 1917. The Turks claim they were "ordinary" deaths from World War 1. Some of the "intellectual leaders" of the Armenians were killed in public by hanging. So what? Why should we care if they died from a genocide or from a war? Because.... if we classify their deaths as a genocide, that leads us to the question, "Who within the Turkish government devised and supervised this genocide?" And that could lead us to an answer!    Eric Hufschmid, 23 Oct 2007

11 Oct 2007 What is happening to Christopher Bollyn? Why are so many people concerned about Ed and Elaine Brown, but not the Bollyns? How can the military accidently mishandle 6 nuclear bombs? Was it a failed attempt at a "nuclear 9/11"?1 updated with this transcript of the audio  

7 Oct 2007 Does Israel have a right to exist? What's going on with Christopher Bollyn? Why is the mainstream media allowing Bryce Lockwood to expose Israel's deliberate attack on the USS Liberty? updated with this transcript of the audio  

Download the MP3. Jeremy Stoppelman is the co-founder and CEO of Yelp, a site where users can write and share reviews of local businesses. Everyone's now a restaurant critic. However, local reviews were not the original focus, but just one of several features in the earlier versions of the site. Noticing the growth of this buried feature, Yelp re-tooled the site around reviews and hasn't looked back since. Does this story sound familiar? Jeremy's the former VP of Engineering at PayPal, which also had to drastically alter its business early in its life. Listen in to hear Jeremy's thoughts on growing a local enterprise, giving users and identity, and how to recognize and act upon the need for change.

Download the MP3. Not many entrepreneurs have a motor like Kevin Ryan's. Kevin is best known for his work as CEO at the on-line advertising firm DoubleClick, which he grew from a 20 person start-up to the largest Internet company in New York at the height of the dot-com boom. After escaping the ensuing bust in an arguably improved strategic position, the company has since changed hands twice. In June 2005, the company was sold to the private equity firm of Hellman and Friedman for $1.1 billion and has made headlines yet again with its recent acquisition by Google for an astonishing $3.1 billion. Yet, this success has not slowed Kevin one bit. Since departing DoubleClick, he has already launched three start-ups, with plans for a fourth this summer. Listen in, as Kevin describes his DoubleClick experiences in both boom and bust, outlines his new start-ups, and explains why now is as good a time as ever to start a company, especially in the Big Apple.

Download the MP3. Marketing a startup is tricky business. Every entrepreneur faces the dilemma between allocating time to improving the product and marketing the product. If the two can be mixed just right, then perhaps sterile marketing can go viral. We tackle that issue in part 2 of 3 of our very own Venture Voice Startup Workshop coverage in New York City. David Hornik of August Capital leads the session, but he doesn’t finish uninterrupted as the entrepreneurs on the panel jump in.

Download the MP3. Real business networking takes place in the country club, at the chamber of commerce and on the golf course. After all, the Internet is just for friending strangers on MySpace and poking friends on Facebook. If you said all that to Reid Hoffman, he might think twice about adding you as a contact in LinkedIn, the business networking site he started that connects over seven million professionals. Although his Palo Alto-based company is now profitable and growing rapidly, Reid still thinks he has yet to hit the tipping point. Reid’s goal wasn’t always to be an entrepreneur: He just wanted to change the world. His original career choice was “public intellectual”. Hear if his career switch is paying off.

Download the MP3. What do you do after building and selling a business for $1.5 billion in the course of only a few years? That’s the question David O. Sacks, one of the co-founders of PayPal, faced after eBay bought his company. It didn’t take him long to find the answer: Go to Hollywood and make movies. David didn’t waste much time. He recently produced Thank You For Smoking which won critical and audience acclaim. Now you can hear about his journey and get his unique perspective on the convergence of media and technology.

Download the MP3. Starting a service aimed at the blogging community is like jumping into a pressure cooker – all of the users are critics and have bullhorns. Good thing David Sifry, the founder of Technorati, has a thick skin he’s built after founding four businesses. He’s not one to go on the defensive. Dave, a first time CEO after serving as CTO at his prior ventures, simply wants to “be of service.” Technorati is now of service to many people. It tracks 2.3 billion links and is, in its own words, “the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs.” Show notes:

Download the MP3. Being robbed at gun point and being threatened by the mob are not problems the average entrepreneur encounters. Steve Hindy faced these problems and more, but what concerned him most was the fate of his brewery. Steve started the Brooklyn Brewery with Tom Potter. Steve was a journalist and foreign correspondent. Tom was a banker. Neither knew a thing about starting, much less running, a brewery. With grit and determination, they stared down bankruptcy and made it work. In 2003, they sold their beer distributorship for about $10 million. Now Steve’s focused on the brewery (which is doing about $12 million in revenue and has become a global brand) and on the community. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Scott Johnson is a long-time entrepreneur on the bleeding edge of technology. He started his first business in 1987 and successfully sold it. Then he rode the dot com wave up and down with Mascot Network, a company that was trying to do what Facebook does now by providing online communities for college students. Most recently, he started Feedster, which after a lot of early traction ousted Scott Johnson and the CEO he recruited. Now he gives us the exclusive on the mission of Ookles, his new company. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Shoba Purushothaman’s career has shifted dramatically since she started her first job as a business journalist in Malaysia. After spending several years working for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, she grew restless just covering how the world was changing. She wanted to influence it. Shoba co-founded a public relations consultancy that helped corporations ride the wave of change brought on by the rapid expansion of television news. She saw first hand how inefficient video distribution was, so in 2000 she sold her first business and started The NewsMarket to make video distribution simpler. Though she weathered some tough times in 2001, she’s managed to build the company to millions in revenue and recently closed on a $12 million venture round. Show notes:

Download the MP3. If you’re making lots of money in a fat industry for doing relatively little, then the last thing you want is a competitor like John C. Bogle. He founded The Vanguard Group in 1975 and revolutionized the mutual fund industry by slashing management fees. By creating the world’s first index fund, John showed investors they could invest in the market without giving a large portion of their earnings to fund managers. While it sounds easy in hindsight, it was a difficult path. John was fired along the way and made many enemies in the industry. But John, like any good entrepreneur, is a fighter. And at age 75, he’s still ready for a challenge. Show notes:

Download the MP3. When a startup launches its first product, should it expect a lot of fanfare? It should if it launches at DEMO before an audience of hundreds that includes some of the nation’s top journalists and venture capitalists (not to mention Venture Voice). DEMO is a two-day conference, held in Phoenix this time around, that features about 70 never-before-seen technology products. Most of the products come from scrappy startups. We follow two of those startups through the process, Sproutit and Sharpcast. Along the way we’ll talk to countless other entrepreneurs on the floor and some people who came to pick companies to cover or invest in. We covered this event last year (part 1, part 2) and followed VideoEgg, which was recently funded by the venture capitalist we introduced them to on that show. Let’s see what happens to Sproutit and Sharpcast. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Kelly Perdew may have won The Apprentice 2, but the listeners of Venture Voice have given him a new recognition for his entrepreneurial work since then. Kelly got the most votes for the Venture Voice 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Since we last had Kelly on the show, he’s started a number of new ventures. He announces on the show that he’s launching a new venture capital shop called Angel-Led Venture Partners. We also play your audio votes and get Kelly’s reaction.

Download the MP3. The listeners have spoken. Jason Fried of 37signals and Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software have won Venture Voice Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards. They came in second and third place out of a pack of over 20 world-class entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed on the show (we’ll announce the Venture Voice Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner next week). It was a close race and you gave us some really impassioned votes. In this show, Jason and Joel give us some hints about what their companies are launching this year. They don’t get to have all the fun -- we play some of your comments too.

Download the MP3. “Stock lockup” is a term remembered with horror by many entrepreneurs who weren’t allowed to sell their dot com shares before the bubble burst. Bo Peabody founded Tripod, which was sold to Lycos for $58 million in stock. The terms of the sale forced him to hold onto his stock for two years -- while its value happened to increase ten-fold. He also happened to sell his shares just two months before the bubble burst. This lesson in luck was not lost on Bo, who wrote a book titled Lucky or Smart? However, his luck didn’t come out of nowhere. In our interview, he describes the years he spent developing his business even before the Internet was commercially available. He’s now helping entrepreneurs build businesses in parts of the country where venture capitalists typically don’t tread through his venture firm named Village Ventures. Show notes:

Download the MP3. It’s not easy to stand out at Kleiner Perkins, one of the most prestigious venture capital shops in Silicon Valley that counts Google in its portfolio. Though Randy Komisar joined the firm just this year, it’s clear he’s not a typical venture capitalist. He once was a lawyer, but openly admits to hating being a lawyer and has been running from the law (well, from the practice of law) for most of his career. He’s played top roles at Claris Corporation, LucasArts Entertainment and TiVo. Now he’s ready to build a legacy at Kleiner Perkins. Show notes:

Download the MP3. If you think the ringtone business is for kids, then Fabrice Grinda has a $130 million lesson to teach you. After starting the eBays of Europe and Latin America, Fabrice brought the ringtone business concept to America by starting Zingy. We caught up with Fabrice, now 31 and a millionaire several times over, just a couple of hours before he finished his last day at the helm of Zingy. While his possessions were in boxes, he put all of his cards on the table by telling us his net worth at every stage of the game. He’s risked all of his resources in the past for his ventures, but will he do it again? Listen to hear his plans. Update (4/16/08): Fabrice announced on the Venture Voice blog that he's launched a new online classified business called OLX that's been dubbed a Facebook killer. OLX recently raised $13.5 million in venture funding. Show notes:

Download the MP3. While some entrepreneurs fret over new business ideas, Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software focuses on hiring the best and brightest for his New York City-based software company, and then figures out how to make a profit with the products they create. He bootstrapped his company to profitability and built a loyal following of fans along the way. While Joel developed Fog Creek's first product called FogBugz that tracks bugs, he let his 2005 summer interns develop their own product called Copilot that has already hit the market. Joel's out to prove he can put capital to work, scale his business, and maybe even revolutionize venture capital along the way. Update: Joel returned for a second interview on Venture Voiceover three years later in 2009.

Download the MP3. Many would-be tech titans dream day and night about how their hot new idea will change the world. Derek Sivers just wanted to have his independent band's CDs sold over the Web. No one would do it, so he built his own music store. CD Baby now generates $25 million a year in revenue and is the single largest digital distributor of music in the world according to Napster. And he did it without a dime in venture capital. Derek holds true to some very basic beliefs in business and a desire to keep revolutionizing the music industry. Show notes:

Download the MP3. At age 28, Mena Trott is a veteran blogger and an accomplished company founder. Six Apart, the business she started four years ago with her husband Ben, now has over 100 employees. Its stable of popular blogging products (including Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal) are used by writers of all types -- from the most influential bloggers to children who communicate after school. She's still pushing her company forward as president and developing some very ambitious new technologies. Towards the end of the interview, VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek jumps into the conversation to announce a partnership with Six Apart. Venture Voice covered the launch of VideoEgg during our DEMO coverage (show #14 and show #15). Starting today, VideoEgg and Six Apart will add video capabilities to TypePad. Show notes:

Download the MP3. The business world seems to keep getting more complicated, but Jason Fried is all about keeping things simple. When founding 37signals, Jason and his two partners staked their careers on simplicity. They wrote a manifesto to convince others of their philosophy of keeping design on the Web simple. Their project management software, Basecamp, has become a hit for its ease of use. Their blog is intently followed by thousands of (mostly) admiring readers, and has led to a book. Jason tells how he's grown his business simply, too, without taking on any venture capital or debt despite many offers. He also drops a couple hints about the next few products his company will launch. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Dropping out of college to start a technology company is almost a cliché. But is technology the only industry that can seduce an ambitious student into entrepreneurship? Tom Szaky dropped out of Princeton because he saw an opportunity in trash. At 19, he started developing an alternative to Miracle-Gro by using the excrement of worms that eat compost. To keep costs down, he reused soda bottles to package his product and located his business in Trenton, New Jersey. He's now got seven-figure funding and is pushing six-figure revenues by selling TerraCycle in select locations of Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and Home Depot. TerraCycle is planning on a full national rollout over the next three months. For this show we ventured into the heart of New Jersey to bring you on a tour of the TerraCycle factory. We talk with several TerraCycle employees and have an in-depth discussion with Tom about trash and cash. Show notes:

Download the MP3. You might expect that if you launched your pride and joy -- your startup company -- at a conference, it would automatically be the center of attention. At DEMO, the leading technology product launch conference, you're hatching your business alongside 64 other companies with cool new technologies. You've got to deliver an awe-inspiring six-minute presentation, schmooze for many hours on end at a packed product pavilion, and be charming during the cocktail hours to make your mark. We continue our coverage of the DEMO conference by following VideoEgg's experience while grabbing audio clips from all over. Hear from Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg, August Capital partner David Hornik, Six Apart co-founder and president Mena Trott, U3 CEO and founding team member of Palm Kate Purmal, Jingle Network senior vice president Tom Latinovich and DEMO executive producer Chris Shipley. Show notes:

Download the MP3. New businesses usually start small and work slowly and steadily to build their reputation. But that's not true of startups that choose to launch their product at DEMO, the most prestigious conference dedicated to launching new technologies. Presenters have to agree to be radio silent about the cool technology they've been working on night and day for the past several months, if not years, of their lives. Then they have six minutes on stage to show it off to everyone, and a couple of days at a beach resort in Huntington Beach to network like crazy and deploy their freshly printed business cards. VideoEgg, a new company founded by three Yale graduates from the class of '04, chose to hatch itself at DEMO after months of quiet incubation. In today's show, we're chronicling what it's like to present at DEMO by telling the story of VideoEgg. We'll interview VideoEgg's founding team, DEMO executive producer Chris Shipley and DEMO groupie David Hornik of August Capital. We'll post a show after the conference with VideoEgg's presentation and the crowd's reaction. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Entrepreneurs who were doing business in the eighties might still remember IBM for its suits and corporate ways. Now Drew Clark, the co-founder of the IBM Venture Capital Group, has shed his tie and is changing that image. His group is opening up IBM's vast resources to startups. Unlike some of its competitors, IBM has embraced open source software which makes it easer and cheaper to deploy technology. While IBM offers all types of help to entrepreneurs, Drew stresses the IB more than the M: being international and helping with business development over just assisting with the machines. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Statistically speaking, Starvest Partners shouldn't be in business: Few venture capital funds raised in 1998 survived the dot com bust, first-time partners are a huge bet, and no other venture capital firms are run by women. But don't tell that to Deborah Farrington, the founder and co-chairman of Starvest. Her firm's performance has excelled in the past several years and is headed into the top quartile of its field. Debby's got a number of big hits under her belt now, but she's not about to stop taking risks. Show notes:

Download the MP3. If you thought you're an entrepreneur just because you started a software company in Silicon Valley, you're dead wrong, according to Scott Rafer. It's just too easy. Scott's the CEO of San Francisco-based Feedster, an RSS search engine and ad network that allows people to find blogs, jobs and more. Scott is no stranger to the startup world, having been an entrepreneur in several parts of the world. He's not afraid to speak his mind, either, as a blunt blogger and speaker. Update (4/5/08): Since this interview Scott left Feedster, which is now out of operation. He joined MyBlogLog as CEO and sold it to Yahoo! within a year for a reported $10 million. He's now the CEO of Lookery. Site notes:

Download the MP3. Some venture capitalists keep a low profile, preciously guard their e-mail addresses from needy entrepreneurs and put on a jacket for publicity photos. Not Brad Feld. Brad started his career building his own technology consulting company with nothing but $10 and a 19-year-old's ambition. He grew his business to the level that it was an appetizing acquisition target, worked a bit for the company that acquired his firm doing acquisitions for them, did some angel investing, and is now a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital. All along, he's been vigorously growing businesses -- and sharing his know-how through his popular blog -- and now on this show. Show notes:

Download the MP3. While some people still wonder if the fax machine has been rendered obsolete, Jeremy Hague is ready to write e-mail's obituary. Jeremy's brand new company, Netralia, recently released a product to rave reviews called Skylook. Many people use Microsoft Outlook to manage their contacts and send e-mail. Skype is used by 47 million people to make phone calls over the Internet. Jeremy's Skylook program allows users to integrate Outlook with Skype so they can quickly place calls to contacts, merge contact lists and optionally record phone calls. Based in Australia, Jeremy uses his own program do business around the world. Show notes:

Download the MP3. If someone told us to listen to business insights from a former game show contestant back in the day when The Price is Right was the closest thing to a televised business competition, we would have laughed in their face. Since then The Apprentice has attracted many ambitious young professionals to do battle for a spot in the Trump Organization. The winners have all been entrepreneurs, and Kelly's resume has the word 'founder' repeated more than enough times to qualify him as a serial entrepreneur. Kelly is the winner of The Apprentice 2 and is seven weeks into his apprenticeship with the Trump Organization. Show notes:

Download the MP3. A quick glance at Evan's bio might make it seem as though he just stumbles into all the newest, hottest trends. However, the only thing Ev stumbled into was traffic (the kind you get on the non-information highway -- where he discovered the value of listening to podcasts) on his commute. After trying his hand in Nebraska's tech entrepreneurial circuit (well, he was the circuit), Ev made the voyage out west to California. He founded Blogger, one of the most popular blogging services, sustained it throughout the dot com bust with few resources, and sold it to Google. After spending some time at Google growing Blogger, he's back on the trail again building his new podcast business, Odeo. Odeo is a young startup with fuel. Ev announces in this show that Odeo has just received its first round of venture funding. Update (4/21/08): Ev returned Odeo's funds to the investors and sold the company. He co-founded Twitter, which just raised its own funding and is on a fast growth curve. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Entrepreneurs need community. This entrepreneur makes communities. An Illinois native, Scott Heiferman came to New York while working for Sony in 1994. He quickly joined the avant-garde of the Silicon Alley community while growing his new media ad agency, i-traffic. After selling i-traffic to Agency.com (capitalized companies apparently acquire non-capitalized ones), Scott worked the counter at McDonald's. Scott left both the food services industry and the advertising business to create something unheard of: an on-line service that gets people to leave the computer. Show notes:

Download the MP3. We covered the past with Joe in our previous show, but it's clear he spends a lot of time thinking about the future. Many people muse about how they would do things differently if they had only the chance to do it all over again. Joe is doing it all over again by building his new business, JotSpot, from scratch. He shares his development strategy and vision for the company. Show notes:

Download the MP3. Conventional wisdom tells us to go get a job out of college to learn the ropes, not to take on friends as business partners, and to accept defeat gracefully. Joe Kraus's business war stories are anything but conventional. Before graduating college, he convinced five of his friends to pass on blue chip job offers to start a business of their own. What would that business be? They didn't know yet, but met at a burrito shop to come up with something. The rest is Internet history. Joe was the founding president of Excite, one of the first well-known Internet search and content sites. After a merger, Joe left Excite@Home in 2000 and tried his hand at world travel, angel investing and politics. Unable to break the entrepreneurship addiction, Joe is now starting JotSpot, the first application-wiki company. More on his newest venture in the next show. Show notes:

Download the MP3. This Internet bad boy doesn't think he's so bad, and one of the top venture capital firms agrees to the tune of $4 million. Don't know who Philip Kaplan of AdBrite is? Well if you were doing anything remotely dot com related in the late 90's you probably know who Philip Kaplan of F___edCompany.com (FC for short) is. His site grew famous, if not infamous, for posting the latest additions to the 'dot com dead pool.' Now with his current prize business, AdBrite, he intends never to join the businesses that FC featured. Philip was not nearly covered as much for AdBrite as he was for FC, so we decided to catch up with him on the phone. He didn't sound as eccentric you might expect of someone with his resume, but he still has the attitude and smarts needed to be a dot com muckraker. Watch that language: We try to keep our podcast pretty clean, but there's no getting around the F-word when talking about Philip's past (and Philip doesn't say 'the F-word'), so don't blast this podcast in your office if it's bring your child to work day. Show notes: