so welcome back to hit module in the
first segment we looked at the companies
who were most successful dating from
1994 2001 of course with the Nasdaq
imploding in march of 2000 around 2002
was a pretty sort of nuclear winter kind
of era in the online landscape but
rising from the ashes was none other
than the company that we chose for
internet company of the year in 2002
which was google google so google we
won’t bore you with the history but i
mean in 2002 that was the last year that
the company’s revenues were below a
billion it was the last time it had less
than a thousand employees it was also
when Google shifted from being just a
basically cute search destination with
the i’m feeling lucky kind of button
there to a real business that’s when
adsense and adwords started to be either
the revenue they developed a revenue
model and it was the year after when
they actually went out and bought
applied semantics and that’s what gave
them the search technology for adsense
and adwords and that’s when they
basically started to buy springs to get
all that massive real estate on
different websites to start monetizing
and then in august two thousand four
when they filed and went public I think
that’s when analysts and critics and
fans realized oh my god what a huge
business is underneath this cute little
search engine and cute little site so
2002 rising from the ashes was Google in
2003 you picked a company that’s a
little bit less sexy in terms of media
pio a Cisco yeah so why purposely Cisco
is a company that basically built the
backbone of the web either directly
through investment or through
acquisition the reason why we chose
Cisco in 2003 it’s because in that 10
plus years span from 94 to 2007 it
deserved a spot and ironically in 2003
most of the online space was the nuclear
you know sort of winter but consumers
were spending more and more time online
and that benefited a company like Cisco
that’s the year of the stock double
right so even in a horrible landscape of
2003 the stock rules from $13 to 24 so
with all the consumers still marching
towards online the one company that
benefit most was Cisco so they went with
top company of the year in 2003-2004
your pic was a company that actually
made some headlines this year skype why
were they your main choice in 2004 well
frankly I think that’s the year where
they just really
exploded it was one of the great viral
stories it was founded by the
entrepreneurs behind cos ah Nicholas
Enstrom and jonna’s fris and 2002 is
when Draper invested in them in 2003 is
when the domains were registered in 2004
the company just blew up went viral and
in october two thousand five is when
ebay paid 4.1 billion dollars for the
company and the big footnote to that
story obviously is that they did not
even secure the underlying IP the IP
remained you know in the hands of the
two entrepreneurs was under a company
called jolted and that’s what led to a
whole other you know drama last year
when when basically you know new private
equity firms came in bought the
underlying IP and culminated it all on
the sale to Microsoft this year for
eight billion dollars so I mean skype
somewhere someone is writing the
screenplay to that Hollywood corporate
Silicon Valley European drama fair
enough 2005 a company that everyone
likes to make fun of and that is making
one last embarrassing attempt to be
relevant again but they were really
relevant that your myspace yeah so
myspace was founded in July of 2003 it
was incubated within intermix formerly
known as ye universe it overtook
friendster again we’re going to link to
a story by one of the friendster
insiders about how that company
initially was the sexy poster child for
social networking and it was overtaken
by myspace in in summary basically
friendster the board was you know trying
to take on google and take over the
world when its servers wouldn’t load up
the sites kind of thing so it’s a good
example of paying attention to the small
details so i actually think that in 2005
when myspace sorry when myspace was
acquired by news corp 46 hunt site for
580 million dollars News Corp bought
intermix that was one of the two deals
that News Corp’s Ross Levinsohn did the
other one was when he bought IGN which
was my old employer at the time I
thought the I Jen deal would be better
because professional content matters but
the myspace wanted was the sexy one and
i believe that word not for rupert
murdoch to basically just get so
distracted with the Dow Jones purchase I
think myspace could have been a lot more
it’s easy to criticize it and you can
make fun of me for this and you should
actually in 2006 I picked that deal as
the best internet deal of all time
because Google went out
and paid nine hundred million dollars
for the rights to run search ads and you
know search listings in display banners
so at the time it was a great deal the
fact that you know the founders walk got
distracted Rupert Murdoch got distracted
and all of the other things I mean
that’s after the think their focus
became a greven new revenue in general
rather than actual product development
and no money went into the technology
from the time you signed up to my space
and time you quit it they were always
telling you the live chat was coming but
it never did and I think that’s where
Facebook really so specific media this
year bought them for 35 million they put
up I think a small sum of that money
mostly came from their PE firm Francisco
partners I think that’s a great
marketing when they go out to do the
roadshow how much did I GM buy them for
fun 580 million but that’s unfair I mean
this is like accountants running wild
and basically saying how could we
maximize the tax loss game I mean you
have to be somewhat just use common
sense google paid newscorp nine hundred
million dollars News Corp bought
intermix for 580 million yes they poured
in a lot of money but the fact that then
they sort of yeah and they wanted 100 or
200 million but the 35 million dollars
at specific media paid for them is
actually just a great marketing expense
when specific goes out and does its
roadshow to institutional investors
instead of being yet another ad network
they’re going to be the guys who had you
know the cojones to go out and buy
myspace and sort of with Justin Timbers
Justin Timberlake’s helping reposition
it so we’re going to talk more about
Justin in during the lightning round so
point being 2005 we went with myspace
2006 2006 it was actually the your mojo
is found it wasn’t it yes it was what
holder was found in two thousand and
your pic was YouTube which makes me
wonder is did you find watchmojo because
YouTube was one of your pics um okay so
in the fall winter of 2005 when I was
thinking of what am I going to do after
askmen got acquired and I was basically
you know wearing out my my tenure there
I did see youtube growing phenomenal
YouTube the URL was registered in May of
2005 and I got acquired less than 18
months later in October of 2006 I won’t
say YouTube in particular but the fact
that there were all these new
distribution platforms like YouTube like
dailymotion metacafe and whatnot was a
big opportunity to create content so
YouTube was founded by three paypal guys
joette Kareem Steve Chen and chad hurley
it was funded by one of their colleagues
at PayPal who was like the controller or
CFO
roll off both who went to Sequoia and
basically that company YouTube only only
got 11.5 million and it sold for 1.65
billion that I would say right now is
one of the better deals of all time
online because now Google has number one
in video number one in search it’s very
dominating which takes us to 2007 2007
still a huge media darling today you
chose facebook why did you choose them
so early in the game well again we had
to choose a company each year right and
it had to be a different company so we
went with Facebook in 2007 because even
though was founded in 2004 it’s in 2007
that the paper valuation really started
to grow so it went from like oh is this
worth you know it turned down an 800
million dollar deal from Viacom and turn
down a billion dollar deal at 1.6
billion dollar deal ultimately Microsoft
came in and invested in a one point six
percent stake at a 15 billion dollar
valuation and at the time that seem
crazy but you know the value has gone up
in the secondary markets the 70 billion
now Facebook has a lot to do to prove
that value but long story short 2007 is
when Facebook literally said we’re not
going to be some kind of small
acquisition in a company that might muck
us up we’re going to want to be the next
platform so I think now is a good time
to take a break because that’s when we
ended the list back in 2007 2008 2009
and 2010 we’ll discuss that next year
and set the stage for the 2011 company
of the year we’ll be right back
first segment we looked at the companies
who were most successful dating from
1994 2001 of course with the Nasdaq
imploding in march of 2000 around 2002
was a pretty sort of nuclear winter kind
of era in the online landscape but
rising from the ashes was none other
than the company that we chose for
internet company of the year in 2002
which was google google so google we
won’t bore you with the history but i
mean in 2002 that was the last year that
the company’s revenues were below a
billion it was the last time it had less
than a thousand employees it was also
when Google shifted from being just a
basically cute search destination with
the i’m feeling lucky kind of button
there to a real business that’s when
adsense and adwords started to be either
the revenue they developed a revenue
model and it was the year after when
they actually went out and bought
applied semantics and that’s what gave
them the search technology for adsense
and adwords and that’s when they
basically started to buy springs to get
all that massive real estate on
different websites to start monetizing
and then in august two thousand four
when they filed and went public I think
that’s when analysts and critics and
fans realized oh my god what a huge
business is underneath this cute little
search engine and cute little site so
2002 rising from the ashes was Google in
2003 you picked a company that’s a
little bit less sexy in terms of media
pio a Cisco yeah so why purposely Cisco
is a company that basically built the
backbone of the web either directly
through investment or through
acquisition the reason why we chose
Cisco in 2003 it’s because in that 10
plus years span from 94 to 2007 it
deserved a spot and ironically in 2003
most of the online space was the nuclear
you know sort of winter but consumers
were spending more and more time online
and that benefited a company like Cisco
that’s the year of the stock double
right so even in a horrible landscape of
2003 the stock rules from $13 to 24 so
with all the consumers still marching
towards online the one company that
benefit most was Cisco so they went with
top company of the year in 2003-2004
your pic was a company that actually
made some headlines this year skype why
were they your main choice in 2004 well
frankly I think that’s the year where
they just really
exploded it was one of the great viral
stories it was founded by the
entrepreneurs behind cos ah Nicholas
Enstrom and jonna’s fris and 2002 is
when Draper invested in them in 2003 is
when the domains were registered in 2004
the company just blew up went viral and
in october two thousand five is when
ebay paid 4.1 billion dollars for the
company and the big footnote to that
story obviously is that they did not
even secure the underlying IP the IP
remained you know in the hands of the
two entrepreneurs was under a company
called jolted and that’s what led to a
whole other you know drama last year
when when basically you know new private
equity firms came in bought the
underlying IP and culminated it all on
the sale to Microsoft this year for
eight billion dollars so I mean skype
somewhere someone is writing the
screenplay to that Hollywood corporate
Silicon Valley European drama fair
enough 2005 a company that everyone
likes to make fun of and that is making
one last embarrassing attempt to be
relevant again but they were really
relevant that your myspace yeah so
myspace was founded in July of 2003 it
was incubated within intermix formerly
known as ye universe it overtook
friendster again we’re going to link to
a story by one of the friendster
insiders about how that company
initially was the sexy poster child for
social networking and it was overtaken
by myspace in in summary basically
friendster the board was you know trying
to take on google and take over the
world when its servers wouldn’t load up
the sites kind of thing so it’s a good
example of paying attention to the small
details so i actually think that in 2005
when myspace sorry when myspace was
acquired by news corp 46 hunt site for
580 million dollars News Corp bought
intermix that was one of the two deals
that News Corp’s Ross Levinsohn did the
other one was when he bought IGN which
was my old employer at the time I
thought the I Jen deal would be better
because professional content matters but
the myspace wanted was the sexy one and
i believe that word not for rupert
murdoch to basically just get so
distracted with the Dow Jones purchase I
think myspace could have been a lot more
it’s easy to criticize it and you can
make fun of me for this and you should
actually in 2006 I picked that deal as
the best internet deal of all time
because Google went out
and paid nine hundred million dollars
for the rights to run search ads and you
know search listings in display banners
so at the time it was a great deal the
fact that you know the founders walk got
distracted Rupert Murdoch got distracted
and all of the other things I mean
that’s after the think their focus
became a greven new revenue in general
rather than actual product development
and no money went into the technology
from the time you signed up to my space
and time you quit it they were always
telling you the live chat was coming but
it never did and I think that’s where
Facebook really so specific media this
year bought them for 35 million they put
up I think a small sum of that money
mostly came from their PE firm Francisco
partners I think that’s a great
marketing when they go out to do the
roadshow how much did I GM buy them for
fun 580 million but that’s unfair I mean
this is like accountants running wild
and basically saying how could we
maximize the tax loss game I mean you
have to be somewhat just use common
sense google paid newscorp nine hundred
million dollars News Corp bought
intermix for 580 million yes they poured
in a lot of money but the fact that then
they sort of yeah and they wanted 100 or
200 million but the 35 million dollars
at specific media paid for them is
actually just a great marketing expense
when specific goes out and does its
roadshow to institutional investors
instead of being yet another ad network
they’re going to be the guys who had you
know the cojones to go out and buy
myspace and sort of with Justin Timbers
Justin Timberlake’s helping reposition
it so we’re going to talk more about
Justin in during the lightning round so
point being 2005 we went with myspace
2006 2006 it was actually the your mojo
is found it wasn’t it yes it was what
holder was found in two thousand and
your pic was YouTube which makes me
wonder is did you find watchmojo because
YouTube was one of your pics um okay so
in the fall winter of 2005 when I was
thinking of what am I going to do after
askmen got acquired and I was basically
you know wearing out my my tenure there
I did see youtube growing phenomenal
YouTube the URL was registered in May of
2005 and I got acquired less than 18
months later in October of 2006 I won’t
say YouTube in particular but the fact
that there were all these new
distribution platforms like YouTube like
dailymotion metacafe and whatnot was a
big opportunity to create content so
YouTube was founded by three paypal guys
joette Kareem Steve Chen and chad hurley
it was funded by one of their colleagues
at PayPal who was like the controller or
CFO
roll off both who went to Sequoia and
basically that company YouTube only only
got 11.5 million and it sold for 1.65
billion that I would say right now is
one of the better deals of all time
online because now Google has number one
in video number one in search it’s very
dominating which takes us to 2007 2007
still a huge media darling today you
chose facebook why did you choose them
so early in the game well again we had
to choose a company each year right and
it had to be a different company so we
went with Facebook in 2007 because even
though was founded in 2004 it’s in 2007
that the paper valuation really started
to grow so it went from like oh is this
worth you know it turned down an 800
million dollar deal from Viacom and turn
down a billion dollar deal at 1.6
billion dollar deal ultimately Microsoft
came in and invested in a one point six
percent stake at a 15 billion dollar
valuation and at the time that seem
crazy but you know the value has gone up
in the secondary markets the 70 billion
now Facebook has a lot to do to prove
that value but long story short 2007 is
when Facebook literally said we’re not
going to be some kind of small
acquisition in a company that might muck
us up we’re going to want to be the next
platform so I think now is a good time
to take a break because that’s when we
ended the list back in 2007 2008 2009
and 2010 we’ll discuss that next year
and set the stage for the 2011 company
of the year we’ll be right back
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