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.

Six Lounge: 117 West 4th Street Austin, TX 78701

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!

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)

We feel that you will be happy with the results, let us know if you run into any problems.

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.

Live Wednesday Feb. 17th at 3pm (Pacific), 6pm (Eastern)

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)

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)

Scott Morrow, CEO of ThisNext

Jason’s guest this week will be Scott Morrow, CEO of ThisNext, prior to joining ThisNext Scott worked for IAC/Citysearch as Executive Vice President, Product & Marketing where he repositioned the brand and successfully launched the merchant and consumer Web sites, including integrated video. Prior to IAC, Morrow worked for more than five years for CNET Networks where he served as vice president, marketing and sales for the Download.com business unit. Earlier, Morrow held executive marketing and sales positions at the Edison Schools division of Whittle Communications.

When: Feb. 5th: 1pm (Pacific), 4pm (Eastern), 9pm (London), 8am (Sydney, Feb. 6)

Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing Search

This week’s guest will be Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing Search at Microsoft.  Stefan’s primary focus is to reach out to the community to promote and improve search.  Prior to search he worked on the MSN portal platform and helped Microsoft’s municipal WiFi strategies.

Bing has recently made great strides by gaining market share in the search market.  One of the highlights of Bing is the map experience:

• Destination Maps: You can now create your own customized map such a special invitations or event announcements. You can even select multiple map styles such as Sketchy, European, American or Treasure to give it a different look and feel.
• Local Events: You can search for what’s happening around where you plan to be – for example, it will pop up the time and locations of nearby shows and community events.
• Twee Maps: See real-time geo-based Tweets from users across the world.
• Bing Map Challenge, where you can have a chance to win a $100 gift card.

They have also placed an emphasis on guided search (showing additional categories to help narrow results) and on semantic search (index and search by different facets) a nice example of a new feature is Bing Recipes.

This should prove to be an interesting conversation due to search being very important to Jason, don’t miss it.

Philip Kaplan, co-founder of Blippy

Jason’s guest this week will be Philip Kaplan co-founder of Blippy.  Prior to Blippy, Philip worked at Charles River Ventures as Entrepreneur in Residence  and before that was CEO and Founder of AdBrite and F*ckedCompany.  Philip’s latest endeavor Blippy has recently burst on to the scene with a similar theme from a prior show, “We Live in Public”.  It is a service that allows you to automatically share your credit card transactions as you make them. This includes the place you made the purchase, the amount, and in some cases, the item. This is all placed in a social stream where other Blippy users can comment on and “like” the various items.

Brad Feld, Co-Founder of Foundry Group

Jason’s guest this week will be Brad Feld a MIT graduate that started his first company, Feld Technologies in 1987 at his fraternity and was later acquired by AmeriData.  He then went on to work for a couple venture capital firms and then co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and most recently he is a co-founder of Foundry Group.

In addition to his venture capital work, Brad serves on the board of many companies including widely popular; Zynga, Gist and Oblong to name a few.  Brad also believes in giving back and promoting the community by serving as Chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and mentoring at TechStars where he is quoted as saying “While the seed funding is nice, the real value is the advice, mentoring, and connections provided by TechStars. When I started my first company – Feld Technologies – in 1987, I had a few mentors which I’ve written about in the past. However, the notion of having three months full of concentrated mentors, surrounded by 20+ other entrepreneurs starting up their own companies, in one of the best and fun cities on the planet, blows my mind.”

He also actively posts on AsktheVC and Feld, while researching his work I came across the 10 precepts that defined Feld Technologies which I found interesting and apply today.

This week will be a special all “Ask Jason” show, on Thursday January, 7^th at 5pm (Pacific), 8pm (Eastern).  We look forward to hearing all your great questions, please send them to contact@thisweekinstartups.com.

Due to the shortened week we have decided to extend the Bing Review Contest of TWiST episode 33 for another week.  Remember keys to winning are:

• Writing a high quality review
• Be colorful
• Insightful
• At least 500 words
• Post it on a blog (don’t have a blog, consider Posterous).

Then write a comment in the TWiST #33 show notes including the link.  Grand prize is a $500 Microsoft prize pack.  We look forward to your reviews.

Shawn Gold, CEO of Cocodot

Jason’s guest this week is Shawn Gold, CEO of online invitation startup, Cocodot.  Shawn has helped form and run some of the biggest web properties including MySpace (where he was CMO) and Weblogs, Inc (where he was the President, and where he and Jason worked together).  Cocodot, which launched at TechCrunch50 2009, is setting out to revolutionize the way that people are invited to online events.  It combines the best of both offline invites (beautiful designs) and online systems (functionality and affordability) for a totally new approach to invites for high end events.  Tune in to see what Shawn’s inspiration was and how he’s built the company so far.  you can also head over to Cocodot now and try it out for yourself (its in public beta).

Also, remember that we’ll be announcing the winners of our PowerVPS giveaway on the show Friday.  Just tweet why you deserve free hosting for life (and make sure to include #TWiST and @PowerVPS in your tweet) and you’ll be eligible to win one of five free (lifetime) hosting packages that we’re giving away.

George Naspo, CEO of IKANO

We’re doing a special episode of TWiST this coming Friday with a live in studio viewing party and reception!  If you’re near LA, come on over to the Mahalo offices where you can hang out and watch the episode live with other TWiST fans from our studio.  Plus, as soon as the episode’s over, we’ll be hosting a reception with Jason and the whole TWiST gang.  It all starts live @ 4:30p PST on Friday.  If you’re going to be coming, make sure to let us know by RSVP’ing.

Jason’s guest on Friday will be George Naspo, CEO of IKANO Communications (the parent company of DNAMail).  George has over 30 years of business experience with telecommunication start-ups, turnarounds and emerging growth companies.  He joined IKANO in 2005 after working at three other Insight Venture Partners NYC portfolio companies.  He has led the company’s push into cloud computing and hosted services with a series of acquisitions and strategic partnerships – DNAmail is part of Naspo’s larger push to bring numerous services from one provider to start-ups, medium sized enterprises, and small business.  He holds a BS from the University of Toleda and an MS from University of Southern California.

Jack Andrys, CEO of WebSpy

Coming up this Friday on This Week in Startups is Jack Andrys, CEO of WebSpy. Jack has been running IT business since 1994 when he founded Netlink which he later sold and transformed into what is now WebSpy.  He has also sold and bought several businesses as part of the development of WebSpy over the years.  Prior to founding Netlink, he was a commercial diver for offshore oil and gas construction projects.

TWiST viewers should be very familiar with Jack and WebSpy as they’ve been sponsors since very early on in the show.  WebSpy is part of the emerging and growing Australian tech scene and has been recently doing its own growing, having recently acquired MarketBoomer back on October 2009.  Currently WebSpy offers a host of products aimed at letting business better understand how their networks and servers are being utilized.  Tune in to see how WebSpy got started, where they’re going and much more!

We’ll be live at the normal time, 1pm (PST) on Friday, right here.

And don’t forget, we’re live with Annie Duke @ 2pm (PST) on Wednesday for another special TWiST bonus episode.

Coming back from the Thanksgiving weekend we’re going to put a twist in TWiST with our very first female guest! In this special bonus episode we will have professional poker player Annie Duke who is an entrepreneur in her own right and knows how to hustle her way to the top. For almost 20 years she has been competing and mentoring the likes of Ben Affleck in the ways of high stakes poker. She also currently holds the women’s record for most “in the money” finishes at the World Series of Poker. Annie Duke also is an author and penned her life in her autobiography How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, arnd Won Millions at the World Series of Poker.

We’ll be live with Annie @ 2pm on Wednesday (12/2) so make sure you don’t miss it!

So another “twist” in this week’s episode – thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, we’ll be broadcasting Tuesday @ 1:30pm instead of the normal Friday time.  Jason’s guest for this special episode will be Jim Lanzone, CEO of Techcrunch50 finalist, Clicker (which just opened up to everyone, so go try it out).  Clicker is an internet video guide – just tell it what show you’re interested in and it will show you everywhere on the web that you can find episodes, clips or any other content from it.  Before starting Clicker, Jim was the CEO over at Ask.com and has also been an adviser to a number of startups including Ustream, Gigya and CNET Networks.  Jim got his start when he founded eTour back in 1997, a site later acquired by Ask.com.

As you can see, Jim has quite the wealth of experience to share, so don’t miss this episode!

Jason’s guest this week will be Kamran Pourzanjani, co-founder and CEO of Pricegrabber – also, week’s episode will be happening at a special time, Thursday @ 3pm (PST).  Kamran founded PriceGrabber back in 1999 and built it into one of the biggest comparison shopping sites on the web before selling it to Experian in 2005 for almost $500 million.  Since selling PriceGrabber, Kamran has been a fixture in the LA tech scene as both an angel investor and advisor to startups.  His newest project is Bestcovery, an expert rating and reviews site.

We’ll also have a special scheduled episode next week (Tuesday @ 2pm) thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday.  Jason’s guest then will be Jim Lanzone, CEO of Clicker.

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Joining Jason this Friday will be entrepreneur and angel investor extraordinaire, Matt Coffin.  Matt is well known for his creation of LowerMyBills.com, which was later sold to Experian.  Since then Matt has advised, and invested in, a number of startups including Mahalo, DocStoc, and Demand Media.  Matt will chatting with Jason about how he got his start, the process of building LowerMyBills.com and how he chooses his angel investments.

A full list of Matt’s investments include:
Buscape (comparison shopping in south america – sold oct 2009 for 330m)
Mahalo
Rubicon Project
Demand media
Docstoc
Ebureau
Hautelook
Impact radius
Inadco
Machinima
2tor
Billshrink

Don’t forget, special bonus episode Wednesday @ 5pm, live from Joel Spolsky’s Startup Workshop.  Jason will be interviewing Wordpress.com founder Matt Mullenweg and taking tons of questions from the audience.  Make sure to tune in!

Episode starts at 5pm (PST) on Wednesday the 11th.  Make sure to tune in!

Mark is also an avid twitter-er and blogger, covering everything from news in the industry to detailed advice on how to pitch VC’s (and be successful of course).

If you’re starting your own company, and especially if you’re looking for funding, this is an episode you don’t want to miss!

About Gary:

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.” His impact on the wine world has been commemorated via his inclusion in the 2009 Decanter Power List, an index of the 50 most influential figures in the industry.

In addition to the Web 2.0 keynote above, Gary’s remarks on personal branding, social media, and business at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs

If they haven’t stopped charging startups by November 15th @ 1pm, we’ll be launching the Open Angel Forum to put them out of business. Stay tuned for details.

UPDATE: Amazing News!  We’ve convinced Keiretsu to drop some of their fees!  Read about it at Silicon Alley Insider.  Still waiting on updates from the rest of these guys – the counter continues!

You can get background on the controversy by reading Jason’s posts on the matter: Part 1 and Part 2

See you right here at http://www.thisweekinstartups.com @ 1pm on Friday.

We’ll also be announcing the winner of the Episode 13 review contest, so make sure to watch!

As always, you can submit your questions to Mark on Twitter, using the #TWiST hashtag.

We’ll be doing two episodes next week: on Tuesday @ 5pm, Jason will be live with author Mark Goulston talking about his new book “Just Listen.”  And on Friday, we’ll be live from New Noise Santa Barbara with Sonos CEO John MacFarlane.  Make sure to tune in, or better yet, grab some tickets and come watch it live!

We’ll also have special call-ins from some of the top TechCrunch50 companies – tune in to hear about what it was like to present at the conference.  We’ll also have the news, deadpool and hope you did your homework!

Also, if you want to catch up on any of the old TWiST episodes, but don’t have time to watch – or you want to find out exactly what was said, check out these two great fan sites:

• First up is Scott Simko’s “This Week in Startups Recap” – bringing you a weekly synopsis of every episode, along with helpful links!
• And brand new is J. Pablo Fernández’s site “This Week in Startups Transcriptions“, featuring full transcripts of all the episodes.  It’s a community based site though, so he needs your help to make all of the episodes complete!

Enjoy!

This week’s guest is Roelof Botha, from Sequoia Capital.  Botha is routinely ranked as one of the top deal makers in the tech world and has been part of some of the biggest deals to hit Silicon Valley.  Before joining Sequoia he was the CFO at Paypal and a consultant for McKinsey and Co.  Botha holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Actuarial Science, Economics, and Statistics from the University of Cape Town.

See you Friday, at a slightly later time than normal, 2:00pm PDT

UPDATE: We’ve had tons of great reviews pouring in – keep them coming!

• Nanfeng Oranges
• Patrick McMahon
• Lee’s Daily Blog
• Elegant Machines
• Scott Parisi
• OpusApps
• Scott Simko / TWiST Recap
• Ted’s Blog
• Jonah Knight
• Mike Bohlmann
• Jason Schuman
• Marc Ferguson
• Erik Blazynski
• John Fairley
• Steve Hampton
• Darius Dunlap
• Cale Mooth
• Minority Feature
• Linton Davies
• John Carter
• Peter Christensen
• Noah Hendrix
• Morton Saxnes
• John Bumstead
• Richard Cunningham
• Jon Barnes
• Luke Murray
• Jose Rivera (en Espanol)

We’ll update this post as we get new reviews – so keep them coming!

Yep!

The rules are pretty straightforward : You write a review of TWiST episode #13.  What did you like?  What didn’t you like?  Great episode of TWiST or GREATEST episode of TWiST?  Just lay it all down in a blog post.

What’s the contest aspect?

Jason is giving away a $500 dollar iPhone gift card to the BEST review.  That means you can get an iPhone without giving Apple and Crazy (talented) Steve Jobs your first born!

Post it on your blog, or start a new blog and let TWiST be the first review, either way, email us a copy at contact@thisweekinstartups.com (so Jason knows where to look).

Write an awesome review, and get a brand new iPhone 3G S, and a few months of service.  Simple, right?

Now get crackin’!

1. Your first audiobook free (thanks to Audible)
2. Jason gives you twenty dollars which, along with the TWiST discount, means you get three months of Audible.com FREE!
3. A ‘Mahalo Pack’, containing a Mahalo mug, Mahalo towel, Mahalo iPhone case, Mahalo mug and more, all wrapped up in a Mahalo canvas tote!

This is a very limited offer – good only for the first 50 viewers to send us their reciepts.  So hop on over to http://www.audiblepodcast.com/twist and sign up now!