“Boxing great, ordained minister and grilling guru George Foreman has added another job to his resume: reality TV judge.” AP reported that Foreman will be one of the judges on ABC’s “American Inventor” television series next season.
In 1995, at the age of 22, Mike Seckler co-founded Employease, the first company to offer software-as-a-service over the internet. With only $26,000 between them, Mike and his partner quit their jobs and began building what has become the leading HR outsourcing platform that serves over one million users daily. In October of last year, after 35 consecutive quarters of revenue growth, 50% year over year growth, and estimated annual revenues of $60 million, the company was acquired by ADP. Tune in to hear how Mike and his partner did it.
There have been a lot of exciting developments recently in the life of Startup Studio and in the lives of our past guests. I wanted to start a blog so I’d have a place to share what’s happening. I hope you enjoy the new blog. And, if you hear any news that is relevant to Startup Studio or entrepreneurs in general, please send it along so we can post it.
So, over the past week three great things have happened:
In the US, more money is spent each year on cats and dogs than on babies. My guest is Laura Bennett, the co-founder of Embrace Pet Insurance, a company that is partnering with Lloyds of London to offer health insurance for pets. The market is enormous. In the US alone, there are 73 million dogs and 90 million cats and projected annual growth of insurance premiums is 45%. Embrace Pet Insurance was launched in 2003 after Laura and her partner won the annual Wharton Business Plan Competition, beating out dozens of Internet and technology ventures. Despite this strong start, it took over three years before the company could sell their first policy. Tune in to hear how Laura persevered and made her dream a reality.
Matt Shobe is one of the co-founders of FeedBurner. Founded in 2003, FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution services for blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts, among other things, it enables online publishers to notify subscribers whenever new content is posted. According to Neilson/Net Ratings, FeedBurner is growing faster than MySpace and Digg with 385% traffic growth year over year. They deliver 50 million daily subscriptions to 190 countries and serve 600,000 different feeds for 350,000 publishers including Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek. This is the fourth company the four co-founders have started together. Tune in to hear how they met, and how they got to where they are today.
The New York Times dubbed Chris Wiesinger The Bulb Hunter for his dogged commitment to uncovering lost treasures. His mission is to bring the magic of flower bulbs to the masses by searching out, rescuing and reintroducing rare and heirloom varietals long out of fashion that are resilient and easier to care for than conventional flowers. Chris is the founder and president of The Southern Bulb Company. He took his love and passion for flower bulbs and turned it into a flourishing online business. Tune in to hear he did it.
The Bulb Hunter aka Chris Wiesinger of The Southern Bulb Company [18:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2857)
Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz is the quintessential serial entrepreneur. His most recent venture is a company that has created an online platform where users can sell tickets to events like reunions, fundraisers and classes. The small event ticket market is estimated to be in the billions with only 2% currently collected online. Other companies kevin previously founded include Connect Group which in the mid 90’s wired hotel rooms for internet access and Xoom an international online money remittance service funded by Sequoia Capital. Kevin had the insight to be an early investor in PayPal and saw firsthand how PayPal beat out dozens of competitors to emerge as the clear market leader. He is now applying the lessons learned from PayPal and his previous successful ventures to Eventbrite. Listen in to hear how Kevin and the Eventbrite team are tackling this enormous opportunity.
Ravenswood Winery founder Joel Peterson began wine tasting at the age of 11 and had a dream to create wines in California that would rival the greatest of Europe. He turned his dream into reality in 1976 with his first vintage that won a prestigious San Francisco tasting. Even so, he kept his day job as a microbiologist for 15 years while he grew Ravenswood Winery into one of the most well known and well respected names in the industry.
Because of Ravenswood’s strong brand, Bill Hambrecht of WR Hambrecht thought it was the perfect candidate to test out his new idea for taking a company public via Dutch auction. Bill approached Ravenswood and in 1999 the company made history by becoming the first company to sell their IPO shares via auction over the internet. Two years later, the company was bought by Constellation Brands (STZ), the largest wine company in the world, for 3 times the initial IPO market cap. Tune in to hear the full story behind Ravenswood and how Joel built such a strong brand.
