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Justin and Jason interview serial entrepreneur and angel investor Travis Kalanick about his initial success co-founding the Scour multimedia search engine and how it got sued out of existence by the MPAA, RIAA and NMPA, how within weeks of it’s demise he was able to flip the dead concept into a new venture called Red Swoosh that was eventually acquired by Akamai Technologies for $19 million, and how he harnesses his entrepreneurial experience in his new role as an angel investor.
Great interview guys. This and the Central Desktop one are the best interviews for entrepreneurs by far (no offense to the others)
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh Thx for the kind words 🙂
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh It could also be that Isaac and Arnulf from Central Desktop and Travis are all personal friends of mine, so that might explain why the interviews went well. The only problem is that I’m running out of friends who’ve built cool shit. 😉
@Justin
Welcome 😀
@Jason Roberts
Time to get out and hustle to find more friends, I guess 😀
Yeah, no kidding. 😉 I need to take my own advice and go to a conference or host one or something.
YCombinator just did it’s pitch to investors day, maybe you could email the founders of the ‘graduating’ companies.
@Samh Yep, we’re actually interviewing Jessica Mah of Indinero next week to get a follow up from her about her YCombinator experience.
I recall one of you guys were talking about percentage of income spent on marketing and Justin was right in that smaller companies spend more: http://info.trialpay.com/software/acquisition_report.pdf
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh Wow, that looks really interesting. Thanks.
This should be a movie! “The Travis Kalanik Story” …Thailand, Disney, crazy investors, f-bombs, physics lab investor calls, IRS…somebody sell me the rights I’m makin’ a movie.
@Neville Despite the fact that Justin just stole my thunder on Hacker News (I was just posting it), please give his submission some love if you have an NN account:
How I Sold Red Swoosh to Akami for $19m
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635090
Wow – this was a really good show guys. Travis’ stories were brilliant and told with such high energy. Add that to your usual excellent chemistry and BAM! – great show!
Thanks guys!
@Alex Gemmell Thanks for the positive feedback. 😉 Travis is an awesome guy and fun to talk to so I thought he might be a good guest. I’m really happy it turned out to be a good show.
(Yer probably all over this, but…) Get FlowTown’s Dan & Ethan on the show, they sound like the new breed.
I listened to the show yesterday and I have to agree that it’s probably one of the best interviews. Unlike what Travis said about having to pause or fast forward, on the contrary you want to constantly rewind and replay.
The story shows “shear determination mixed with a big dose of hustling”. Thanks for the interview! 🙂
PS: I agree with @Neville about how cool a movie it would be! So many gems in the story!
Hi, for new people who listened to this show and DIDNT like it, please try earlier episodes. As a long time listener the show is immensly good. Yet I struggled to get through this show. Lots of interesting stuff in it, I just didnt like the delivery of it by the guest. Clearly he has a reason to be confident, yet so in my eyes did Peter(60), but the difference in delivery is stark!
Turned out I hadn’t heard #60! Just heard it today and I agree it’s a good one.
Fantastic episode, one of my favorites! Not only did Travis provide a TON of great info but the way he described it and his passion really made it fascinating. Thanks!