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Sunday, March 14th, 2010Saturday’s Guest: Tony Hsieh of Zappos
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Saturday’s guest will be Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, General Manager of Venture Frogs, coming to you live from SXSW. Many of you already know Zappos and the amazing customer service and culture that surrounds the company but what do you know about it’s CEO? I thought I’d focus on somethings you might not know:
- He attended Harvard, class of 1995
- He Co-Founded LinkExchange and sold the company to Microsoft in 1998 for $265M
- He is a Co-Founder of Venture Frogs an incubator / investment company
- Did you know Tony isn’t a founder of Zappos? He was and investor and advisor in the beginning but quickly joined the Zappos team in 2000 and yes he recently sold Zappos to Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.
- He has a book coming out soon, Delivering Happiness, release date June 7, 2010.
Some of the highlights of Delivering Happiness include:
- Pay new employees $2000 to quit.
- Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company, not just a department.
- Focus on company culture as the #1 priority.
- Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business.
- Help employees grow both personally and professionally.
- Seek to change the world.
- Oh, and make money too.
Here is a few of Kevin Rose’s favorites quotes:
“It may seem sometimes like we don’t know what we’re doing. And it’s true: we don’t. That’s a bit scary, but you can take comfort in knowing that nobody else knows how to do what we’re doing either… so there are no experts in what we’re doing. Except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this.”
“The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They serve those they lead.”
Special thanks to Bing and Sonos and our regular sponsors DNAMail, Ustream, WebSpy and PowerVPS for bringing TWiST to SXSW. We will have more exciting sponsors announced soon.
Details: Saturday the 13th at 2pm (Pacific), 5pm (Eastern), 10pm (London), March 14th 9am (Sydney) at the Six Lounge (117 West 4th Street Austin, TX 78701) if you plan on attending live the first 200 in the door get two drink tickets.
TWiST, SXSW, Tony Hsieh, 2 Drink Tickets, Does It Get Any Better?
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Six Lounge: 117 West 4th Street Austin, TX 78701
TWiST Coming To SXSW!!!
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010SAVE THE DATE: This Week In Startups will be live from SXSW on Saturday the 13th 4-7 pm (Central), 2-5pm (Pacific).
That’s right, 3 hours of TWiST live, we will be announcing three amazing guests, who knows who will show up unannounced.
If you are interested in sponsoring please email us at: partners@thisweekin.com
DETAILS TO FOLLOW!
Friday’s Guest: Dr. Howard Morgan of First Round Capital
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Howard Morgan, Co-Founder of First Round Capital
Jason’s guest this week will be Dr. Howard Morgan, Co-Founder of First Round Capital, he brings 30 years of diverse experience to the interview ranging from venture capital work to teaching at some of the finest institutions in the country. In addition, to First Round Capital he is President of Arca Group, serves on the board for Idealabs, and is Director at Intelligize and Altruik.
He has also been involved in more than 3 dozen startups and is a lead investor of Bill Gross’s Idealabs, an incubator for internet companies. He is also an active consultant and speaker in the information space, working with companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies to government agencies.
Not only has he been involved in the startup community, he has a Ph.D. in Operational Research and has been a professor or associated with many institutions including: The Wharton School, The Moore School, California Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School.
If you have a question that you would like Jason to consider asking, please submit them to the comments.
When: Mar. 5th: 1pm (Pacific), 4pm (Eastern), 9pm (London), 8am (Sydney, Mar. 6th)
NetDNA Saves The Day
Thursday, February 25th, 2010We have been listening and understand your frustration with regard to the download time for our shows and it looks like we have found a solution. This Friday we will be switching over from Blip.tv to NetDNA for our iTunes feed. We have been testing their service with This Week In Android and we think you will see a significant improvement. You won’t need to change anything regarding your iTunes subscription just continue to download like normal.
We feel that you will be happy with the results, let us know if you run into any problems.
Friday’s Guest: Andy Smith of DailyBurn
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Andy Smith, CEO of DailyBurn
Jason’s guest this week will be Andy Smith, CEO of DailyBurn. Andy started his career with a brief stint as a security engineer for SYColeman and quickly transitioned to President at Information Security and Assurance Corporation (ISAC, Inc.). While serving as President he secured $3.5 million in government funding and grew the company to 15 employees.
Currently he is the CEO of DailyBurn a social networking fitness site, that allows you to track what you eat, record your workout, join a challenge and find like minded people for support in your fitness goals. Check out the foodscanner they created to help you track your intake.
One interesting note is the company is part of the 2008 TechStars program that Brad Feld (a former guest) helped co-found.
Premiere Episode: This Week In Cloud Computing
Monday, February 15th, 2010
This Week In Cloud Computing will premiere this week with host Amanda Coolong. The show is an informative weekly series all about the hot new trend towards abstracting and virtualizing computing resources. It will cover the players and providers, the applications and technologies, and the benefits — as well as the drawbacks. A rotating panel of experts join the panel each week to discuss and debate the news and developments of the day. For the very best and latest in analysis of this important topic, This Week In Cloud Computing has you covered.
Live Wednesday Feb. 17th at 3pm (Pacific), 6pm (Eastern)
Friday’s Guest: Michael Robertson of MP3Tunes
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Michael Robertson, CEO and Founder of MP3Tunes
Friday’s guest will be Michael Robertson, CEO and Founder of MP3Tunes and long standing advocate for open standards, competition and empowering the consumer with choice. This has often brought him head to head with big corporations and the occasional big corporation lawsuit.
The first company Michael founded was MP3.com 1997 where he amassed 1 million downloaded able MP3 files. Four years later he sold the company to Vivendi Universal for $372 million in cash and stock.
His next project was Linspire an affordable, license-free desktop Linux operating system that in four years became one of the easiest Linux distributions available.
Next Michael decided to enter the VoIP market with SIPphone.com (renamed Gizmo5) in which they built a platform and directory that hardware or software developers could offer free VoIP services. Google acquired Gizmo5 in November 2009 for a reported $30 million to integrate with Google Talk and Google Voice.
Currently Michael is back in the music business with MP3Tunes, a music storage “locker” where users upload their music and can listen to it through any web browser including mobile devices and home entertainment systems. Working in the music industry again has also brought lawsuits back into his life, most recently from EMI.
Supporting higher education, Michael launched REEF (Robertson Educational Empowerment Foundation) in the fall of 2002 at the University of California, San Diego. REEF is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to promoting new and innovative programs of investment in education.
When: Feb. 19th: 1pm (Pacific), 4pm (Eastern), 9pm (London), 8am (Sydney, Feb. 20th)
Friday’s Guest: James Segil of EdgeCast
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
James Segil, President & Founder of EdgeCast
This week’s guest will be James Segil, President and Co-founder of Edgecast, a next generation content delivery network. Prior to his work at Edgecast, James started his career at Mattel and was the first ever company sponsored MBA student and was responsible for 150 million in sales under the Hot Wheels brand. He then moved on to Virtualis Systems (now Hosting.com, a CRM software company) as the COO and helped lead the merger / integration into Allegiance. His next endeavor was KnowledgeBase Solutions, where he was President and Founder, which was acquired by Talisma. This leads us to his present day position as President and Co-founder of EdgeCast. He brings to the interview an extensive background in startups and formal education having earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
When: Feb. 12th: 1pm (Pacific), 4pm (Eastern), 9pm (London), 8am (Sydney, Feb. 13th)
