Keynote with Garrett Camp @ mesh08
- Garrett Camp is a co-founder of StumbleUpon, which was acquired by eBay in 2007 for $75-million. He is responsible for StumbleUpon’s product design and strategy, and has guided the company’s design and development since 2001, from inception to over 3.5M members. Garrett completed his Masters in Software Engineering at the University of Calgary, where he researched collaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and information retrieval.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:40:27 PM
- Getting started...by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:44:51 PM
- Moderator: What is StumbleUpon?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:45:44 PM
- Garrett: Display you interesting pages, you tag what you like/dislike.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:46:06 PM
- Moderator: Who is using it?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:46:12 PM
- Garrett: Biggest set of users 18-35 guys using Firefox. 5M registered users.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:46:34 PM
- Moderator: What's the benefit for ppl?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:47:02 PM
- Garrett: Search engines optimized for finding stuff you want to find, StumbleUpon is more visual.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:47:25 PM
- Garrett: Started with a few cofounders. A few months before 1st version got out the door. He was doing it 1/2 time during school. One founder had previous startup experience. 1st year = very project based. Then started getting some traction. Eventually became a top 10 Firefox extension.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:47:43 PM
- Moderator: What was it like working on this on Calgary?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:48:49 PM
- Garrett: A user reached out, msged him (Brad Neil). At the time, were not formally looking for funding.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:48:55 PM
- Moderator: What did you use capital to do?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:49:35 PM
- Garrett: We were limited in our growth, no ad network. We wanted faster servers, more ppl.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:49:49 PM
- Moderator: Went to The Valley (pulled by Angel)by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:50:23 PM
- Garrett: He just wanted to do something else. Wasn't a formal move (just had a dufflebag).by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:50:39 PM
by MDM at 5/22/2008 2:50:46 PM- Moderator: What kind of community for building a business was there?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:50:54 PM
- Garrett: Much more networking in the Valley. VCs show up at parties. Was interesting to go to a bunch of diff parties. Great for hiring ppl.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:51:13 PM
- Moderator: Standford seems to be doing a lot of interesting things.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:51:52 PM
- Garrett: A lot of the time, Standford research turns into companies but ppl retain some of the right. Lots of cross-over between academia and market/VCsby Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:52:34 PM
- Moderator: How do you guys make money?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:52:42 PM
- Garrett: 10-12M stumbles a day. Occasionally users get a sponsor site as an interstitial.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:53:17 PM
- Moderator: Example: He got a load of traffic, but they weren't focussed users like off of Google. Not many conversions, questions value of that traffic.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:53:58 PM
- Garrett: Brand new things have best results. Better for videos, photos to get "initial surge". If you are looking to convert, it's not as good. Better for things without a keyword attached to it.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:54:30 PM
- Garrett: Installing toolbar is a little bit of a barrier, but once you do, it's really easy. One click to say "i like a new site" so they get lots of new sites each day.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:56:06 PM
- Moderator: What data do you track?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:56:34 PM
- by MDM at 5/22/2008 2:56:42 PM
- Garrett: With ad network, you get more precise stats on whose rating your page. Graph: how many ppl see your site and how many gave it thumbs up/down. They record who liked it, but haven't added demographic yet. Just a graph now. They can provide feedback to sites: what they should target.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:57:06 PM
- Moderator: Now you're with eBay. How does that fit for you?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:58:38 PM
- Garrett: Best part = don't have to worry about budget as much. Want to remain an independent brand. "kinda like a startup within a big company"by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:58:58 PM
- Moderator: Don't they want to get their fingers on it?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:59:27 PM
- Garrett: They have supporters/champions.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 2:59:56 PM
- Moderator: It's not clear why eBay would choose youby Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:00:26 PM
- Garrett: Maybe thought of it a little bit like an experience. Will later figure out how to integrate them.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:00:37 PM
- Garrett: Biggest social feature: when you add a friend, you start subscribing to their content. Want to get into recommending products.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:01:15 PM
- Moderator: Are you worried about quality of content?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:01:36 PM
- Garrett: It would be its own mode, wouldn't mix with regular content.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:01:50 PM
- Question: Did eBay come to you cold? Did you think about it?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:02:39 PM
- Garrett: We were more focussed on VC at the start. Realized they were running out. Started talking to VCs at events. Were talking to all the top companies over the year. Had to decide if they wanted to take a risk (with their own VC) or be safe without a big company. Didn't want to be pigeonholed in a bigger company.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:02:47 PM
by MDM at 5/22/2008 3:04:29 PM- Moderator: Roll of advisors when building a company? Where/when did you meet ppl?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:04:42 PM
- Garrett: 1st Angel was Brad, then met Steve Russell. When met Arial C. Had a few informal ones over 1st few months, then got more involvement later. Advice helped a lot; weren't thinking about marketing, PR.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:04:57 PM
- Moderator: For ppl starting companies that are more technical, what should they be thinking about?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:06:04 PM
- Garrett: Continually experimenting, testing. Everytime he needed guidance, he called these guys up.by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:06:13 PM
- Moderator: What mistakes did you make along the way?by Jonathan Keebler (Live) at 5/22/2008 3:07:02 PM
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