(Founder Stories) Meetup’s Heiferman To Founders: “Avoid Thinking You Have To Do It All”

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As Chris Dixon’s conversation with Meetup co-founder, Scott Heiferman wraps, Dixon asks Heiferman what advice he has for entrepreneurs?

Heiferman responds by saying that having passion for your project is key and adds “avoid thinking you have to do it all.” For example he mentions launching Meetup with a finance co-founder. He tells Dixon, “it’s been the greatest thing in the world” because each founder focuses on their strengths. He continues, as founders “your job is to make something awesome that people will thank you for and to divide and conquer and build a team that is going do everything needed to make it work.”

Dixon agrees and adds “self awareness of your weaknesses” is critical for success.

Heiferman concludes by stating the key role founders can play in shaping the future. “Reinventing and revitalizing this country and every country is really just going to be about how entrepreneurs and people are building companies that are built to be great companies, not built to sell and sell up to big ugly companies that will screw it up.”

Check out the video for additional insights and make sure to watch episodes I and II of this interview.

Past episodes of Founder Stories which include interviews with Christopher Poole, David Karp and Fred Wilson are here.

Meetup is a local community organizing network. Over 6.5 million people have created and joined long-lasting local Meetup Groups around shared interests and purposes. These groups and clubs have held over 1 million local meetups.

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Scott Heiferman is a Co-Founder and CEO of Meetup, the world’s largest network of local community groups. Over 50,000 Meetups (self-organized community events) happen each week. Millions of people in over more than 100 countries “use the internet to get off the internet” using Meetup, which is built on the idea that every town needs support groups, playgroups, bookclubs, business circles, running groups, community action groups, etc. Previously, Heiferman co-founded Fotolog, a photo sharing network where over 30...

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Chris Dixon currently works as the CEO and Co-founder of Hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee. Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode. In addition to his personal investments, Chris is also a...

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Video: Causes Founder Joe Green On The Impact Of f8

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). ? Learn More

As you may have heard, today Facebook held its fourth f8 developer conference, showcasing an array of new features that represent what Facebook says are the biggest changes to its Platform since it launched in 2007. The changes include a completely redesigned profile and a new Open Graph API that gives third-party applications and sites more flexibility (and eyeballs) than they’ve had before.

Shortly after the keynote ended, I did a brief interview with Causes founder Joe Green, who outlined which of the features are a big deal for developers, and why they’re so important. Green has extensive experience with Platform — Causes was one of the first developers on Facebook Platform when it first launched, and it was a launch partner for today’s features.

Green has also written a pair of guest posts this week that go into more detail about Facebook’s major changes — including one on Smart Lists and one on the new Open Graph.

Note that we did the video via Skype, and while the video feed was a little iffy at times, the audio remains strong throughout.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...

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Joe Green is a Co-Founder of Causes, a popular Facebook and MySpace application.

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(Founder Stories) Eric Ries: On “Vanity Metrics” And “Success Theater”

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Resuming their conversation from episode I, Chris Dixon asks Lean Startup author Eric Ries to offer evidence of uber successful “internet/software companies that have adopted or used the lean startup movement.”

Ries has worked with companies such as Dropbox, Groupon, and Intuit, but he doesn’t claim any credit for their success. He notes though that the larger point is this: “How do you know just because someone claims to have followed this model and that it made them rich and successful how do you know that is actually true? How do you know there is any causal link between the two?” He tells Dixon, “I want The Lean Startup to be a scientific theory that is itself falsifiable.”

Ries encourages leaders to test The Lean Startup’s concepts, at least on a small scale, and decide for themselves if it improves performance.

Below, the topic turns to “vanity metrics,” which Ries thinks are bogus. He says when companies roll out stats like number of users or hits they offer a “good strategic weapon” but really represent a whole lot of nothing. “The reason companies like to talk about vanity metrics is they both make your competitors feel bad about themselves and also reveal nothing about your business.”

Vanity metrics devolve into what Ries calls “success theater” which is the action of “making people think that you are being successful rather than energy you could put into serving customers.” Reis says “if you look at the accounting metrics, ROI, profitability, everything we get trained to do as a corporate CFO or VC, those metrics cannot tell the difference between the team that is on the brink of success or a team that spent that year goofing off.”

Hammering home the point he says “the current metrics paradigm literally can’t tell the difference between absolute success and total disaster.”

Prime example?  Twitter. Watch the video to find out why—and to find out what data Ries claims companies should focus on.

Past episodes of Founder Stories are here.

Eric Ries is the author of the forthcoming book, [The Lean Startup] (http://theleanstartup.com). Previously, he co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and...

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Bitsmedia Founder Puts Frenzapp Apps Up For Sale

Erwan Macé, the founder of Bitsmedia, a Singapore-based mobile apps development shop, is putting his mobile apps up for sale as he heads off to Google. You may remember these apps, branded under the name “Frenzapp,” which refers to their use of social recommendations.

The original Frenzapp is an app that helps you find new apps for your iPhone through your friends. It works well, but competes with several others (e.g., Chomp, Appsfire, Discovr, Zwapp, Y! App Spot, Kinetik) in the overly crowded app discovery space.

This summer, Bitsmedia diversified by launching Frenzapp Music to take on Apple’s Genius with better music suggestions. Frenzapp Music was a fairly solid effort, which we said a the time might become “a viable third-party competitor to Ping.”

Now, it and the original Frenzapp are up for sale. Says Macé, these two apps are looking for new “adoptive parents.” (He will continue supporting his third app, Muslim Pro, in his spare time.)

The sale is an IP-only deal, including platform, apps, trademarks and the affiliation deal with Apple. Asking price is $250,000 to $500,000.

Meanwhile, Macé is joining the Google Developer Relations team in Southeast Asia, a decision he explains in detail on his blog. (TL;DR: he loves Google.) 

Launch Date: September 22, 2011

With a strong focus on digital entertainment and social media applications for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, Bitsmedia address the Internet, Telecom and Media industries and provides clients with state-of-the-art consulting and technology services. Its services range from the initial conceptualization and product design, the functional and technical specifications to the actual development, testing and distribution of custom applications for mobile devices.

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TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington Launches A New Blog, Uncrunched

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). ? Learn More

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who recently left the company he founded over six years ago, is back in action. Or at least, he has proven that he still knows how to set up a WordPress blog.

Arrington just tweeted a link to Uncrunched, which will be his personal blog from here on out. There isn’t really much there yet, save for his first post titled, ‘Here I Am’. That’s it — the post consists of just the title — but presumably his later posts will be a little more content-heavy (fingers crossed that this new role as General Partner at CrunchFund is just a ploy to unearth all of Silicon Valley’s dark secrets).

Which brings us to the comments.

Arrington has apparently decided to use the basic WordPress commenting system. It’s a brave move (you may remember the TechCrunch comments of yore), but the trolls haven’t overwhelmed the blog just yet.

In keeping with time-honored Internet tradition, the first comment on the blog is “omg. first.” — congratulations to former TC developer and Cake Health cofounder Andy Brett for claiming the top spot. And an ‘A’ for effort to Philip Kaplan, who wrote “first” despite being the blog’s twelfth comment. The remainder of the comments are generally positive, though there are a few outliers, like the one embedded below.

Disclosure: Arrington was my boss for a long time and I ate a lot of his cereal when TC was still based out of his house.

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He...

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(Founder Stories) Eric Ries: Missing The Bullseye Made The Lean Startup

Josh Zelman works for TechCrunch as a producer, writer, editor and contributor. ? Learn More

In this episode of Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon, Dixon sits down with The Lean Startup author, Eric Ries.

Ries tells Dixon he jumped into the startup game in the late 90's and like almost everybody else at the time, “when the bubble crashed we were completely toast.” Leaving the carnage behind Ries headed to Silicon Valley with the mission of learning “professional entrepreneurship.”

In the Valley Ries joined There, which he describes as a “Second Life competitor.” There had tens of millions of dollars in funding and top-tier talent. After five years in stealth development, it also had a high profile, unspectacular rollout which Ries remembers as “embarrassing and humiliating.”

Lesson learned, or so he thought. Ries launched IMVU, where “instead of spending years and millions of dollars in stealth mode we put a product in customers hands in full open public beta in six months.” Unfortunately IMVU also had a less than stellar initial release, but Ries tells Dixon the experience ultimately helped IMVU get the model right and led to him forming what would become the Lean Startup methodology.

In the video below, Ries and Dixon discuss what being lean means. Key concepts include iterating quickly, rapidly putting product in customers hands and getting feedback from customers. Ries agrees that lean “has nothing to do with the amount of money you raise.”

Watch the full episode for additional insights and be sure to catch past episodes of Founder Stories, which feature leaders including Dustin Moskovitz and Kevin Ryan.

Part II of Dixon’s conversation with Ries is coming up.

Eric Ries is the author of the forthcoming book, [The Lean Startup] (http://theleanstartup.com). Previously, he co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and...

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Chris Dixon currently works as the CEO and Co-founder of Hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee. Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that are still in stealth mode. In addition to his personal investments, Chris is also a...

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Founder Office Hours With Chris Dixon and Josh Kopelman: Madbrook Publishing

Josh Zelman works for TechCrunch as a producer, writer, editor and contributor. ? Learn More

Brian Snyder is the Founder and CEO of Madbrook Publishing, an educational/entertainment company that publishes Everything Butt Art. Snyder says Everything Butt Art’s mission is to “teach kids to draw, always starting with the butt shape” which is a format that “really engages kids.”

After presenting on-stage during TechCrunch Disrupt, New York Snyder came into our studio for an Office Hours session with Hunch’s Chris Dixon and First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman.

Snyder initially asked the two founders for advice on making his educational content “device-agnostic.” After sharing insights, Kopelman asked Snyder what kind of company he wanted build; “a venture backed company” or a “cash generation business?” Offering his two-cents on the venture world, Kopelman told Snyder “the more you are viewed as a platform, versus specific content I think improves your positioning.” While recognizing that there are successful content based businesses, Dixon agreed with Kopelman and told Snyder “venture style investors are weary of [content based businesses]. [Content] is sort of a bad word in the business because it is sort of hit driven.“

Kopelman concludes by telling Snyder “the challenge is, if someone is investing now they need to decide are we investing in this hit, are we investing in the Butt Art concept and if Butt Art works great, and if Butt Art fails does that mean the investment fails?” In essence, “am I investing in a title or am I investing in a company?”

Make sure to check out previous episodes of Founder Office Hours which feature entrepreneurs from SchedIt, Profitably, Dispatch.io, and Napkin Labs.

Madbrook Publishing, a 2011 NYC Disrupt Battlefield company, is building an immersive art, education, and entertainment platform that launched with their lead brand, Everything Butt Art. Everything Butt Art uses...

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Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at First Round Capital . Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000. He remained with eBay for...

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Chris Dixon currently works as the CEO and Co-founder of Hunch. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which...

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(Founder Stories) Buddy Media’s Mike Lazerow: “We Are Doubling Every Six Months”

Josh Zelman works for TechCrunch as a producer, writer, editor and contributor. ? Learn More

Mike Lazerow is a serial entrepreneur who is the CEO of Buddy Media and previously founded GOLF.com, which was bought by Time Warner and University Wire and is now a property of CBS.

With a couple of successful startups under his belt, we decided to bring Lazerow into the studio for an episode of Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon. Right off the bat the two discussed Lazerow’s latest venture, Buddy Media, which just raised $54 million. Buddy Media helps brands cohesively manage their social media presence and marketing campaigns on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Once consumers are connected to the social media sites “it is all about giving them relevant content and that is what our platform does” explains Lazerow who describes how Starwood Hotels and Resorts uses the service. Every brand, he says, is now expected to have a Facebook page to connect with consumers, but once they do connect then they become publishers of sorts, pushing what they hope is relevant content to those consumers.

Continuing the conversation in the video below, Lazerow talks about the strategy behind building the company and offers some numbers. He tells Dixon, “It all starts with the product. Whatever you do if you are not the best on the product side the business doesn’t work, there is a reason we have 9 out of the top 10 global marketers using our platform.”

However, Lazerow notes having a great product is just one part of the equation. You have to build a great business. He credits his wife and co-founder with scaling the business.

He says “it is not just about a great product it’s about how you sell it and how you support it and so we invested in that early and what has happened is our early success with clients kind of spread … and we became the go-to player.”

The strategy paid off. Lazerow notes that Buddy Media has raised a total of $90 million, of which $70 million is still in the bank. The company is generating “millions of dollars a month” in revenues, which are doubling every 6 months, and the company has jumped from 40 employees a year ago to 200 today. He goes on to tell Dixon “once you find a business model, that is the time to scale.” It took 20 months to get to the first $1 million of monthly recurring revenues, the second million dollars took only 5 months, and now the business is adding another million dollars in monthly recurring revenues every 3 months.

Check out the video for additional insights and make sure to watch past episodes of Founder Stories, located here.

The Buddy Media Platform is the social media management software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers. With its scalable, secure architecture and straightforward administrative...

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Michael is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful internet-based media companies. He has a passion for creating, managing and growing companies from the ground up. Michael’s first foray...

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