With Sean’s new position at MySpace and a baby on the way, the growing Percival family is still managing to stay on top of the LA tech scene and enjoy the success of their first major project. While many couples might think it is impossible to share every waking moment together, especially those grueling workdays, Sean and Laurie agree that the joy of creating something with one another is a unique connection that few couples ever get to share. The key to making it work? Open communication and a strong sense of mutual respect for each other. The “Tweethearts,” as some have come to call the power couple, look back fondly on the process of creating lalawag and watching it grow, and still get excited to think about its potential to continue on this upward journey. For Sean and Laurie, it’s all about putting passion into your creation, and it doesn’t hurt to have the one who loves you by your side to cheer you on along the way.

THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Brangelina, who? This is Laurie and Sean Percival

Kim Ngo: So, tell us, how did you guys meet?

Sean Percival: We met through a friend. One night I was literally dragged out to Hollywood and thrown into a whole new word. I was lucky to meet Laurie that night, and as cheesy as it sounds, it was actually one of those love at first sight moments.

Kim Ngo: Sean, how did you go from being a janitor to a web designer?

Sean Percival: Over 10 years ago, I worked as a janitor. One of the offices I happened to clean belonged to Vegas.com and that is where I got my first introduction to a startup. It was a night shift, but these guys were still cranking away and having a blast in the process. I knew it was for me, so I did whatever I could to get there. I eventually found a better job doing tech support for companies like Adobe and Logitech. I stayed at work late at night (sometimes all night) to use their computers and broadband connections. It was in those late nights where I learned what it took to create a website. I made some of the most awful sites, real crimes against humanity, but I learned a few things and eventually found full-time work building websites for companies.

Kim Ngo: Is lalawag something you guys mutually created? How did you guys come up with the idea? What obstacles did you guys face?

The lalawag Home Office

Sean Percival: Lalawag is something I initially created. Laurie,as always, was there to support my crazy idea. At the time, Valleywag was closing down and the Los Angeles tech community had started to develop. It seemed like the perfect timing to start something like lalawag.

So one night while drinking, I loudly called former Valleywag writer Alaska Miller and pitched the idea. He didn’t think it was horrible and that was all the confirmation I needed. The next weekend I built the site and launched it soon after. After running the site for a few months, I turned it over to Laurie.

Kim Ngo: What were your expectations when you started the site? Did you guys ever expect the site to be as popular as it is?

Sean Percival: I didn’t have many expectations when I started lalawag. I wanted to capture some of the spirit of tech in Los Angeles, and I’m just happy I’ve done that to some degree. I’m still shocked when people come up to me and tell me how much they love the site.

LOVE AT FIRST SITE

Kim Ngo: Does working together ever cause a strain on your relationship? If so, how do you guys deal with those problems? If not, let us in on your secret!

Sean Percival: Of course it does. We are both stubborn Virgos and often bump heads over the direction of lalawag. I wouldn’t say it puts a strain on our relationship, though. Actually, I look back at some of our debates over lalawag with fond memories. Laurie is basically brilliant so I love the back and forth and eventual compromise we typically make.

On Laurie's Desk at lalalwag

Laurie Percival: Fortunately lalawag was not the first time we worked together; we actually had an ecommerce site that Sean built and then turned over to me. We have always had amazing communication with each other and through that first website, we learned how each of us handles business situations and how we could compromise or make decisions that would be best for where we wanted to take it. Working with family or friends is always hard, but if you respect the other person’s opinions and realize that you are working towards a common goal, it can be really fun too.

Kim Ngo: According to the site, as well as Sean’s blog, you guys are always at events and in meetings. How do you find time for each other?

Sean Percival: Recently we’ve scaled back the amount of events we personally attend. We try to make it to the big events, but it’s just not possible to make everything. With my new job at MySpace and a baby on the way, some open bars will just have to be missed. Although thanks to the LA tech community’s over-sharing, we can still read all about the events via Twitter.

Kim Ngo: With your new role as the Director of Content Socialization with MySpace, and a baby on the way, how is the future of lalawag looking?

Sean Percival: Busy! Laurie manages to take care of lalawag and we’ve started to expand our writer roster so she can focus on the baby more. Lalawag is and always has been a great pleasure for us. I imagine and hope it’ll live on and continue to grow as Los Angeles tech also continues to.

Kim Ngo: Laurie, what’s it like being married to a “web micro-celebrity,” as you call Sean in your blog?

Laurie Working

Laurie Percival: Oh wow, you found that. When I wrote that it was kind of my own personal joke. I was new to the tech scene and it very much seemed like Sean was a celebrity. Anytime we would go to events, people would continuously come up to say “Hi,” and anytime I met someone new and they saw my last name was Percival, they would say “Oh, you must be Sean’s wife.” Once Sean turned lalawag over to me, I was finally able to gain some of my own identity in the scene. Being married to Sean is awesome, I am very lucky to be with such a smart, talented and loving man.

Kim Ngo: How is it being a well-known, married couple on the tech scene? Do you guys ever feel the pressure to live up to your title as The Tweethearts?

Sean Percival: Yes and no. It’s not too difficult because we still genuinely like each other. I do get concerned some may feel we have the perfect relationship and everything is all rainbows and unicorns. Of course, we go through the same challenges as any couple. Of course, we’re less likely to broadcast those moments online.

Laurie Percival: It’s a lot of fun. I get to spend more time with Sean, and we can have conversations about things that are going on in the community or with tech in general. Most couples have one spouse that is not involved in tech, so it must be hard for them to relate something happening that they feel is important. Try explaining Twitter to someone who has never used it!

I never feel pressure to live up to anyone’s opinion of us, we have our ups and downs like any couple, we just don’t broadcast them in public. We also do a good job of communicating with each other. If something is bothering me or Sean we talk about it and come to a resolution.

Kim Ngo: Would you say that working together on lalawag has strengthened your relationship?

Sean Percival: I’d be interested to hear Laurie’s answer first, but I’ll go ahead and say yes. For one, it has made me a million times prouder of Laurie. She took over the site with no experience managing a blog. The fact that she has done such an amazing job is totally hot, no? Some guys get turned on by skimpy outfits, but I don’t mind a woman who can handle WordPress. Okay seriously though, I love that we’ve created something together. Few things we do together can ever really compare to that.

Laurie Percival: I’ve never looked at it that way. Lalawag is just another chapter in our relationship, something that we have put our hearts into and have grown together. Our relationship is solid and will continue to evolve and strengthen, regardless of what obstacle we are currently tackling. Overall, I am sure that some of the challenges we faced did help us to get through situations we may not have otherwise. It did make me proud of Sean—he always has great ideas—and to see this one become a reality with such support from the community behind it was great.

Kim Ngo: Last question, so many of us look to find that one special partner, can both of you give us some advice and tips on finding that special someone?

Sean Percival: It’s cliché, but I always say, “… to find the one for you, don’t look.” I say that because it worked for me, and I’m pretty sure if you’re looking too hard, you’ll probably miss it. I also always recommend to find that person organically somewhere way outside of your comfort zone. Break out from your circle of friends, or business circles, and see what else is out there! I also have this personal theory that the grocery store is the ULTIMATE place to meet someone new. Look there!

Laurie Percival: My advice would be to forget about whether or not you like the same movies or music—things in common are honestly not that important. The perfect partner is one that “gets” you. After that, nothing else matters. Though make sure you agree on religion and politics—those two subjects can cause issues no therapist can fix. Go out and mingle, try to meet someone new every time you are out. I don’t think you’re going to meet the love of your life sitting on your couch.

Kim Ngo: Thank you for sharing your story with us – Sean and Laurie! It was very interesting and entertaining. And of course, heartfelt.

Not only is it filled with useful information about upcoming events and real tech news, lalawag is a great site to just wander around and click away for the sake of pure amusement. It’s news with an edge delivered by the kind of people who speak their minds that you’d like to invite to your dinner party. Articles are insightful and intelligent with a witty flavor that makes for a rollicking good read. For me, what started as research for this article turned into several sidetracked hours of perusing through lalawag before I remembered that I was supposed to be working, not playing. Sean and Laurie have created the ideal vehicle to explore every corner of the LA tech world and wrap it all up in intelligent and colorful articles, videos, pictures, and more. Whether it’s event info, tech facts or a good laugh, lalawag should be your destination for all of the above.

Return Wednesday, March 10th to read about Sean & Laurie Percival and their labor of love.

Silencing his doubts about leaving behind secure employment, Mark has weathered the highs and lows that shape the risky startup process and has come out on top with a sense of fulfillment that can only be earned by taking a leap and doing it. Mark admits that it was a long road, and the ride wasn’t always smooth, but the rush of those highs has made the experience incredibly rewarding. “It’s all about trudging through it,” according to Mark, and his story proves that staying positive and confident in your own abilities will pull you through to your ideal destination.

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Mark Hendrickson
Trouble Viewing? Visit: IntimateMath on YouTube

Mark Hendrickson of Plancast

PROFILE

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. Worldly Developments (makers of Plancast) – 2009
Title: Co-Founder
Total Funding: Bootstrapped
Highest Number of Employees: 2

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Menlo Park, CA
Resides: San Francisco, CA
Education: Bowdoin College
Age: 24
Hobbies/Interests: Tennis, philosophy, running, working, hiking, and the outdoors
Biggest Fear: Fear is a strong word. I think if I were going to be afraid of anything, it would be if the startup fails.
Role Models: Several teachers and mentors throughout college and high school.

Mark Hendrickson’s: Plancast | HomePage | Twitter | Linkedin

THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Kim Ngo: Thank you for meeting with IntimateMath today, Mark. Tell us about Plancast. And why would I love it?

Mark Hendrickson: Plancast is a service you can use to share your upcoming plans with friends and to find out what others in the community are doing. As of right now, there is really no other site or service that connects you with people for activities you want to do in real life. Plancast makes it extremely easy for you to keep track of what your friends are doing, whether they’re going to a concert or just going out for drinks.

All these small, often improvised activities, which are very important to us, are not easily sharable right now. In general, online services haven’t reached their potential in bridging the gap between the virtual world and the real world. You can chat with people on Twitter or post pictures on Facebook, but those aren’t terribly meaningful activities in reality. We are trying to connect people for real experiences by helping them figure out what their friends are up to.

Mark Hendrickson at the Apple Conference

Kim Ngo: How did you come up with the idea?

Mark Hendrickson: When I started, I wanted to work on something to help connect people locally. There was a lot of brainstorming before the concept of Plancast came about, and it seemed that the most powerful way to connect people is to help them share information about what they plan to do. But the general goal was, “How do I help users meet new people in their area? How do I help people learn about new places and new activities?” I want to help them get more out of their lives, wherever they are.

Kim Ngo: Has Plancast been a success so far? Has Plancast impacted the number of attendees at recent events?

Mark Hendrickson: Yeah, we’ve already seen a lot of activity on the site. People have been referring to it as the reason they found out about events.

We just recently launched, but you can see the kinds of events people are posting and how they are interacting on the site. People are having discussions about the things they are doing. They are also joining each other for things like carpooling.

Kim Ngo: What is your business plan?

Mark with His Mom, Lisa Hendrickson - CEO of Plancast

Mark Hendrickson: We want to have all different types of users on Plancast. Right now, Plancast’s main users are friends sharing with friends. We would like to have business and organizations posting upcoming events and opportunities. So if you’re a band, we want you to post your upcoming show. Plancast could also be used to post sports teams’ games or local organizations’ meeting times. Plancast is not just for individuals to use for recreational events; it’s a tool that any kind of organization or business can use as a vehicle to promote events.

Kim Ngo: Can users create private events?

Mark Hendrickson: They can’t yet, but they will be able to in the future. Right now all events are public, but we have plenty of users that want to have more privacy.

Kim Ngo: Does Plancast have plans to offer pay services?

Mark Hendrickson: We have to figure that out. We want to provide premium services at a fee to businesses to market events. Also, we would like to charge event promoters for targeted advertising on the site. There are a lot of different opportunities to make money from Plancast.

Kim Ngo: How confident are you about the future of Plancast?

Mark Hendrickson (front left) with the TechCrunch Team

Mark Hendrickson: Very confident. Everything is an experiment. Am I confident that I have a viable idea that I’m excited about? Yes!

Am I confident that two years from now it’s going to sell for a billion dollars? I don’t know. It’s impossible to know for sure whether Plancast will be successful or not. But I do feel good about where I’m going with it.

Kim Ngo: How did you get started? Tell us about the first 6 months.

Mark Hendrickson: I worked at TechCrunch for a year and a half, and towards the end, I wanted to start my own company, but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. When I left, I spent the first few months trying to get used to the idea of doing something totally new. The next few months were spent honing out ideas. It was a very exploratory type of process with lots of false starts and ideas that didn’t pan out. But in the end, it was about honing my plans into a successful product.

Kim Ngo: How did you find the courage to leave a great job and start Plancast?

Mark Hendrickson: I wouldn’t call it courage. I had an overwhelming desire to do something like this, something that was sort of harebrained; I didn’t want to go into a normal job. And I can’t say I didn’t have any doubts. There were plenty of times when I woke up and asked myself, “What am I doing? I’m trying to build something from nothing, and there’s such a long road ahead. Why did I think I could do this?” It took me a lot of strength to push through those moments.

Kim Ngo: Is it tough to stay positive?

Mark Hendrickson Representing

Mark Hendrickson: Over time you build courage, and you keep going. It’s all about trudging through it. Starting a company is all about silencing the self-doubt you have and persevering. But you do take hits from time to time. People say doing a startup is like a roller coaster, and it is. You have days where you feel on top of the world because you’re creating something that’s going to be of huge value to people. It’s the best feeling in the world. But an hour later, you can feel like the cards are stacked against you, and that your product isn’t valuable. You have to be able to ride the highs and the lows and not let either of them steer you off course.

Another thing is that after a while, people are actually more enthusiastic about what you’re working on than you are. And you think, “Wow, that’s cool, but let’s stay real about this.” Ultimately you have to learn to trust your instincts. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s a very individualistic sort of process where you can’t let anyone else be the authority to what you’ve chosen to do.

Kim Ngo: Why does someone start a company from scratch?

Mark Hendrickson: There are lots of reasons for starting a company. Maybe you want to prove to yourself that you can succeed at it or you think you can make a difference. When it comes down to it, I think all entrepreneurs have the desire to create something from nothing.

Starting a business isn’t done with the expectation that you are going to make a lot of money. For me, I felt compelled to do it on a very basic level. I didn’t want to let my life go by without going out on a limb and trying something like this. I also wanted to do it at a very early age so I would have a higher chance of success, a minimal cost associated with it, and a chance to do it again if I didn’t succeed the first time.

Kim Ngo: Is the startup world similar to Hollywood?

Mark Hendrickson with Friend

Mark Hendrickson: In a way, it is. But ours is also a very different dream than you find in Hollywood. Hollywood actors are trying to become the next big thing. People in the tech industry are often trying to create the next big thing. As individuals, they may want to be the next Steve Jobs. But overall, I don’t think people are as focused on fame as in Hollywood. Though, there is certainly a good dose of that desire. In Silicon Valley, people look to their peers and they want to impress them. They want to show that they can be something. To that extent, I think it’s very similar.

Kim Ngo: Does a good business model make for a successful startup?

Mark Hendrickson: Starting a company, in my experience, is not about any one aspect of the company. It’s about the whole thing. You don’t start off thinking: I want to find a business model for something, that’s just part of what you have to do. My job is to get people enthusiastic about whatever I am doing, to get the attention of people who might want to work with your company, invest in it, or help promote it. As the owner, my main process is assembling of all those pieces. The rest is just details; all business is business when it comes down to it. You face the same sort of problems and tasks.

Kim Ngo: Do you think in the last 6 months you’ve grown the most than you have ever in the 24 years of your life?

Mark Hendrickson

Mark Hendrickson: Yeah. In the last 6 to 8 months, I’ve probably developed at a much faster rate than in the past 6 month span. I was sort of forced into a situation where I had to be on my toes all the time, absorbing new ways of looking at situations. I picked up skills at a much faster rate than I would have otherwise.

Kim Ngo: Can you tell us your most painful moment in the last six months?

Mark Hendrickson: Probably early on when I had a lot of self-doubt. There were moments where I thought my ideas weren’t good or I talked to people who weren’t excited about what I was doing. There were also times where I researched markets which I thought I wanted to go into but found twenty other people who tried what I was thinking about doing. Seeing others with the same ideas that I had fail was tough.

Kim Ngo: It’s timing too, though.

Mark Hendrickson: It’s mainly execution. Timing is important, but chances are, whatever you’re going to do, people have already done it or tried to do it. But on the other hand, they haven’t done exactly what you’re thinking, because whatever idea you have, you’re going to at least try to do it a little differently. You’re going to do it quite differently, if not better, because you’ve learned what mistakes they have made.

One thing I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t worry about competition or the other players in the market as much as you think you should. You should just worry about your own ability to execute. You need to take your vision and actually make it happen.

If you’re working very hard and you’re being smart about your work, you’re going to build something that’s competitive. It’s going to be harder than you think, but it’s also going to be hard for other people as well. Don’t discount your own abilities to do it better than someone else.

Kim Ngo: What are you passionate about?

Mark Hendrickson: I’m passionate about product design and the “interwebz.” I can’t answer that question with a straight face! I’m passionate about the good life: being healthy, having people you care about, and doing something you love. The good life is pretty simple, but it’s hard to get.

The Young Mark Hendrickson

Kim Ngo: And you’re motivated by?

Mark Hendrickson: I used to have a desire to do the best that I could; now, I think I’m mostly motivated by trying to prove myself things. I’m also motivated by money to some extent. I could run a startup and if it was success and I benefited from it monetarily, it would still be worth doing as long I wasn’t starving.

Kim Ngo: If you can tell future founders one thing, one piece of advice, what would it be?

Mark Hendrickson: Always be willing to adapt. Learn from your situation. Trust your instincts on one hand and question them with the other. Surround yourself with good people, and always seek help.

Treat it as an experiment. You’re going to fail at certain things, and you’re going to learn from others. Your mindset needs to be, “I’m going to try something. I have no idea if I’m going to be successful, but I’m going to give it my best shot and I’m going to learn along the way. And if it fails, then it fails.”

At the end of the day, we’re all idiots. So stay humble, don’t take what other people say too seriously, and don’t take yourself too seriously.

Whether you’re wondering what an old friend has been up to lately, or if you’re looking to join a group of pals for a drink, Plancast makes it easy. New in town? Looking to learn more about the local social scene? Need a ride? Just wondering where your friends like to eat? Plancast makes it simple and fun to get to know people and the things they like to do. Unlike event planning sites like Evite or any other typical social networking sites, Mark’s new project goes beyond picture-posting and messaging and encourages people to come together in the real world and interact face-to-face.

Mark Hendrickson of Plancast

In addition to spreading the word about informal social activities among friends, Mark plans to reach out to businesses to provide a medium for promoting events, meetings, shows, and similar activities. Plancast makes social interaction personal again, bringing people out from behind the keyboard to meet face-to-face.

Mark your calendar for Wednesday, March 3rd to catch Mark Hendrickson’s full interview and video feature with IntimateMath.

While many would consider this outcome very painful, Michael sees it as a source of pride, a valuable experience, and ultimately, inspiration to build greater things like his most recent project, PeekYou—a people search engine whereby users can find people through their first name, surname, online aliases, e-mail address, or physical location. Click here to read more about PeekYou: Call Off the Search; Michael Hussey Can Find Who You’re Looking For

Michael sits in with IntimateMath to let us in on his trying experiences with the companies he’s founded and how he keeps moving forward to build websites which “make enough people’s lives a little bit better or simply more fun.”

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Michael Hussey
Trouble Viewing? Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ERcJKJHD6E

PROFILE

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. RateMy™ Network / infiniteMedium, 2000-2002
Holding company for: RateMyFace, RateMyProfessors, RateMyTeachers, and other rating sites
Total Funding: $100,000
Highest Numbers of Employees: 5

2. StudyBreakers, 2005
Studybreakers (earlier known as Classface) was a free service for high school students to communicate with each other through an interactive network of online photo albums, weblogs, user profiles, web forums, and groups. It was acquired by Bolt.com, which eventually went out of

Michael Hussey with McGruff The Crime Dog

business and took the site down with it.

Total Funding: Bootstrapped
Highest Numbers of Employees: 5

3. PeekYou, 2006 – Current
Title: Founder & CEO
Total Funding: $1.4M
Highest Numbers of Employees: 12

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Alfred, Maine
Current Residence: New York City, New York
Education: University of Maine, BA, Financial Economics, May 2000
Age: 31
Hobbies/Interests: Reading, skiing, tennis, basketball, digital photography, GigaPan robots, watching the Celtics, watching football, watching movies with my wife, and traveling
Most Notable Quality: Foresight
First Taste of Success: SoccerSpot.com (as a 19-year-old kid with a press pass to Foxboro Stadium, sitting next to reporters from ESPN and other big networks)
Proudest Moment: My wedding day
Worst Habit: A penchant for fast food
I’m Happiest …: Breathing life into what was a mere concept just yesterday
Biggest fear: Not trying hard enough, not doing enough to get what I want, and not having enough time in a day to do everything I’d like to do.
Favorite Quote: “All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”—Edward Gibbon
Role Model: Peter Thiel

Michael Hussey’s: PeekYou | HomePage | Twitter | Linkedin | Facebook | 2006 CNN Interview

THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Kim Ngo: Hi Michael. Thanks for chatting with IntimateMath. Tell us what drives you.

The Young Michael Hussey

Michael Hussey: I love building concepts and organizing data. These are things I’ve been doing nearly my whole life. I remember sitting in front of a computer since I was three years old.

Kim Ngo: Is that what inspired you to code?

Michael Hussey: No, it inspired me to seek out other people I could work with to develop (and code) concepts I envision.

Kim Ngo: You don’t code?

Michael Hussey: I considered majoring in computer science and I even did well in my programming classes, but I realized that my time was better spent working with more passionate and talented developers. I consider myself more like an architect of ideas who is able to speak well and clearly to the various parties involved in developing a web business like techies, developers, or would-be end users.

Kim Ngo: Did you have any idea that RateMyFace would become so popular?

Michael Hussey: I knew it was going to be big. I just didn’t know how much work it would be. In the first week, we had 100,000 visitors. Ron, my business partner who I met at the University of Maine, and I spread the word about the site through AOL chat rooms – it didn’t take much to stoke the fire. RateMyFace was growing so quickly, but the program we wrote required five minutes of manual labor per photo uploaded just to create an account. At the time, I had a day job and an internship. I felt that I couldn’t manage all the work for RateMyFace on top of my other commitments to school and work, so I decided to temporarily shut down RateMyFace to focus on finishing school.

The next summer I re-launched the site, but by then, HotOrNot was also online. They had a very simple site, and it worked well. HotOrNot was basically a copycat of RateMyFace where users were able to rate other people’s pictures.

Kim Ngo: Then what happened?

Michael Hussey: Soon after RateMyFace was relaunched, the New York Times picked up on this face rating fad and interviewed both me and someone from HotOrNot. At the last minute, however, the editors struck out our site’s URL from the article because we were an age 13+ site while HotOrNot was 18+. The Times was nervous about our lax age restrictions since face rating was such a new and controversial thing. So I did get quoted in their article, name and all that, but RateMyFace’s URL wasn’t mentioned. From that point on HotOrNot went on to get all the credit.

Today, everyone has heard of HotOrNot. That’s what happened. I was sort of upset at first, but I wasn’t entirely disappointed because I had already started working on the RateMy™ Network of sites: RateMyTeachers, RateMyPets, RateMyWheels, etc.—we owned 700 domains back then. I knew I could use the success of RateMyFace to promote those more important sites. This was always the intention anyway.

PeekYou

Kim Ngo: Tell us about your new venture, PeekYou.com.

Michael Hussey: I wanted to build something enduring and eternal that will be useful forever. PeekYou is an attempt to reorganize the web around individuals. The building blocks of the web are web links. Google is able to index links, the sites that are linked to each other, and the text on those pages. I wanted to add the human component to these web links.

Kim Ngo: Is PeekYou a virtual web-book, like a phone book but with links?

Michael Hussey: It’s an index or database. It’s like, “Here’s Kim’s bucket with all her public links to pictures, homepages, social networks, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.” Everyone who is online is going to keep creating links and pages for the rest of their lives. It is my goal to keep filling your “URL bucket” throughout your lifetime and create a single comprehensive repository that belongs to you.

Michael Hussey and PeekYou Team

Kim Ngo: Sounds like you’re creating a web identity for users.

Michael Hussey: Your identity can be derived from the data on your links. You can understand people’s motives by understanding where they participate on the web, what they say on the web, and what they share about themselves. At PeekYou, we ask ourselves, “Can we make sense of the content on that link? Can we make sense of the data on that page?” If so, PeekYou will organize it.

Kim Ngo: And what do you do with this data?

Michael Hussey: There are so many applications for this kind of data. For example, we can use it to bring about more relevant search results from traditional search engines by knowing something about the person performing the search, their background and interests, and, hence, the search results they are likely interested in. People search is a massive market; 25 to 30 percent of Google’s searches are related to specific people in some way, but a lot of people searching on Google is aimed at common people. I believe that people search is still Google’s weakest technology because, for example, there are 100 or more people with my name, and Google doesn’t really know who’s who. Try Googling Michael Hussey. He’s a famous cricket player from Australia, but I’m not that Michael Hussey.

PeekYou Version1.0, 2006

This chaotic experience for searching my name on Google was one of the instigators of the PeekYou concept. This example makes clear how important our database of personal identities tied to web links can be.
With time, the output of ordinary people on the web will only grow, and keeping track of that output, organizing it, and assigning every element of it to its respective author is a necessary endeavor. When I started PeekYou, nobody was doing work in people search; nobody was talking about it. The space has substantially heated up over the past year, and we no longer necessarily enjoy the first-mover advantage. We’re looking to really blow things out this year, in 2010.

Kim Ngo: Let’s go back. How did you get started?

Michael Hussey: When I was 19 years old, I helped start a little web magazine called Soccerspot.com with other fans of U.S. Soccer around the country. There I was, just a kid, but I was sitting next to reporters from publications like ESPN and The Boston Globe. The experience came and went, but it definitely sparked my interest and confidence and taught me that I was capable of much more.

I started playing with the idea of creating an online popularity contest or a rating contest on the web. I’ve always been obsessed with rating things on a scale of 1 to 10. Every time I walk out of a movie, I rate it and I ask the people I watched it with to rate it too.

I started thinking about rating other things besides movies. So I thought to myself, we could have a site for rating coffees, cameras, teachers, and just about everything else. But I knew that I needed to start with something big—something kind of controversial that would generate traffic and interest. Along with this idea, I realized that we could build other sites’ traffic from that of the first popular site through cross promotion.

Michael with His Very Supportive Wife

The first site my business partner, Ron, and I built was RateMyFace.com. Though, we shut it down soon after its first launch because its popularity and traffic were going through the roof, as was the work needed to keep it going. I also wanted to finish school. After graduation, we rebuilt the site. At about the same time, a technology law firm was interested in what we were doing and joined us as an investor and managing partner. This was a good thing because it was clear that I couldn’t operate more than 100 of these rating sites on my own. Ron and I knew that we needed individuals who were passionate about the specific sites and interested in performing the day-to-day operations.

I figured that anyone interested in ratings and in creating a community around a product would pay me for the rights to, say, RateMyCoffee and RateMyCellphone. I developed a plan to run the “RateMy” sites as a franchise business whereby third parties would pay us for the right to operate their own site in the network. We were set to work on software that would get any new rating site up and running within minutes. The software was to include a single login across the network and linked community features. In the meantime, we launched “test” franchises such as RateMyWheels, RateMyRecipe, and of course, RateMyTeachers/Professors. All these sites were launched between the spring and summer of 2001, and about $100,000 dollars went into them, provided by our new investors from the technology law firm. The law firm brought on a managing partner or CEO-type to help us build the business.

As things were progressing, I realized that the CEO was spending a lot of our money, but I wasn’t aware of the actual state of the finances until September 13th, 2001. It was a strange week. Obviously, no one came in on Wednesday, September 12th, but on Thursday, the D.C. police left us phone messages asking to speak with the CEO. It turns out he had been bouncing checks all across town and embezzling our company funds.

Besides the matter with the CEO, the contracts for the rating sites were set up to protect the test franchisees so that if anything happened to the holding company, they would have first rights on the rating sites they were operating. I owned a third of the company by then, but when the holding company fell apart as a result of the CEO’s actions, I lost my rights to all of my RateMy sites.

Michael Hussey in 2006, Working Out the Early Details of PeekYou

Kim Ngo: Did you lose rights to every single one of the rate sites?

Michael Hussey: Yes—everything.

When the “mothership” of the network fell apart due to our CEO’s fraudulent actions and final settlements were reached, the site operators took 100% ownership of the existing sites. So, for example, the operator of RateMyProfessors took full control of the site and did a good job running its day-to-day operations. As for RateMyTeachers, its operators were kind of clueless. About a year later, they had the good sense to invite me back on as a partner. I made it my mission to turn the site into a success over the following years. Over the next few years, we rebuilt RateMyTeachers from the ground up with a different design and enhanced functionality, and the site started making real money. By that time, I wanted to move on, and RateMyTeachers was able to continue growing essentially with one full-time employee and a team of very smart administrators from across the world. The site was essentially running itself.

Kim Ngo: Can you tell me about the sale of RateMyProfessors to MTV?

Michael Hussey: When RateMyProfessors was acquired, John, a guy with whom we started the site, had taken up 100% ownership and had become its sole operator. John sold it for a good amount of money, though I’m not sure exactly how much. He sold it to a really sharp guy named Pat who owned an online textbook company in Baltimore. Pat held on to RateMyProfessors for a year and then swung it to MTV for many millions of dollars—a most impressive feat.

Kim Ngo: Was that painful for you?

Michael Hussey: Not really. I felt pretty good about it even though I wasn’t participating in the upside. I was happy for John and Pat.

Kim Ngo: Did you learn anything from that experience?

Michael Hussey: Yeah, it gave me a lot of confidence. If I could create something that eventually sold for that much, I could do much greater things into the future. In fact, I knew I was already on that road with the PeekYou database.

The Birth of Your Online Identity

Kim Ngo: If you can leave one piece of advice to future founders, what would that be?

Michael Hussey: Get a mentor. Succeeding at a startup venture demands young entrepreneurs to be competent in many aspects of the business, not only in being creative and technically savvy but also being good at organizing and negotiating. The good advice of a mentor —or even better, their good example — can be invaluable at guiding a young entrepreneur in making sound decisions in the early days of his or her startup.

More generally, it is important to surround yourself with experienced people who want you to succeed, and to learn from them.

A good habit is to write down everything. If you come up with any worthwhile new ideas, get it down on paper. Writing it down is the first step to taking action on the concept. Getting it on paper helps me a lot in clarifying my own thoughts as they occur to me and it helps me make sure I don’t forget anything valuable in the heat of the moment.

And perhaps most important, have fun with whatever your endeavor is and make sure everyone you work with is having fun too.

Michael working on the first of his rating sites, RateMyFace, in the summer of 1999.

More like a virtual white pages for the internet than a typical search engine, PeekYou scours the vast reaches of the web for information about an individual, then consolidates that information into one neatly compacted and easy-to-navigate package. A PeekYou profile makes it effortless for people to find the links to all of your social networking profiles, personal websites, blogs, news articles—you name it—by putting it all in one place. Users can find who they’re looking for by using any number of descriptive characteristics, starting with first and last name, known aliases, location, and keywords. Results can be further refined to the point of distinguishing between two John Smiths from the same town, who attended the same high school at the same time– this can be done by noting an interest in skydiving or the other’s current employer in the search inquiry. Not only is the breadth of information remarkable, but the tags and links are conveniently organized into helpful subcategories that make surfing a breeze.

PeekYou

One primary goal of Michael’s is to make it easier for people to monitor their own identity on the web. PeekYou is an index of the information that is already publicly available online, compiled from social networking sites, new coverage, blogs, and more; Michael brings it all together so a user can see his/her online footprint. Profiles are largely user-generated and anyone who becomes a registered user can add a new profile or edit existing results. Whether you’re tempted to see what your friend is up to or want to sneak a peek at yourself, PeekYou does the searching for you, so all that’s left for you to do is point and click.

Meet Michael Hussey in an exclusive one-on-one interview that features Michael’s thought process behind creating PeekYou and his previous experience in building RateMyTeachers, RateMyFace , RateMyProfessors (which sold to MTV), and other rating sites: Michael Hussey and IntimateMath

While working for companies like Veoh and Powerset in product management and software engineering, Siqi discovered an opportunity to capitalize on an emerging market in social media. When Facebook Platform was initially launched in May 2007, developers were able to make headway in the market by means of creating apps and games that were engaging and amusing to users. Siqi Chen and Friends for Sale co-founder, Alex Le, then took the real life dilemma of finding a date and solved it through social gaming.

Friends for Sale is a profitable social game on Facebook where facebookers buy and sell friends to make profit with virtual currency. With this virtual money, users can buy other game players who are more expensive, poke them, give them gifts, and even nickname them. Click here to read more about the Friends for Sale game: Siqi Chen is Selling Your Friends to the Highest Bidder.

A Short Clip of My Conversation with Siqi Chen
Trouble Viewing? Visit: Watch Siqi Chen, Friends for Sale

PROFILE

Siqi Chen

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. FluidPlay – 2006
Title: Founder

2. Serious Business (makers of Friends for Sale)
Title: CEO & Founder
Fundraised: $4M
Investor: LightSpeed Venture Partners
Highest Numbers of Employees: 32
Sold To: Zynga, February 2010

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Dalian, Liaoning, China
Currently Resides: San Francisco, CA
Age: 26
Bachelors of Science:
Mathematics, University of California, San Diego
Favorite Book: How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
Role Models: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Dennis Felix

Favorite Quote: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt in “The Man in the Arena”

Siqi’s: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

THE INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Kim Ngo: Hi, Siqi. Thanks for meeting with me today. Your company
Serious Business is the maker of Friends for Sale.  To be honest, I was really engaged with your Facebook app for a while, but then I fell off.

Friends for Sale

Siqi Chen: Why did you fall off?

Kim Ngo: It was fun and cool in the beginning, but there was no real life value for me. Friends for Sale virtually allowed me to buy and sell my friends. Yes, I made profit with virtual currency, but I just didn’t see the real world value in it.

Siqi Chen: Interesting. Did you play with people you didn’t know?

Kim Ngo: No, only with friends.

Siqi Chen: Friends for Sale is a social game that allows you to buy people (within and outside of your network) and make them your pets with virtual currency. The more virtual currency you earn, the more you can do. You can buy more pets and potentially get a return on your investment if they get purchased. You can make money as a shrewd pet investor or as a hot commodity! Friends for Sale allows you to engage with friends and meet people outside of your friends list.

For a social game, Friends for Sale retains users extraordinarily well, relatively speaking. And the reason for this is because a lot of people play to meet new people.

Facebook is all about connecting and interacting with your friends, which by design, makes it very hard to meet new people. When Facebook Platform originally came out, we realized it could also be used to connect people across different social graphs. On Friends for Sale, not only do you buy your friends, but you can also buy and get bought by people you don’t know. As this happens, people start forming new relationships.

The Serious Business Team

Kim Ngo: So Friends for Sale is a dating app in disguise?

Siqi Chen: Definitely. When we designed it, we thought of it as a stealth-dating site. We explicitly wanted to make a dating site without calling it one. Friends for Sale is a social app, and people are more likely to tell their friends about a social app or game than a dating site. Nobody wants to tell their friend that they’re on a dating site. When we called Friends for Sale a game instead of a dating site, it became a lot more palatable.

It’s a game you play with your friends, but it also happens to be an easy way to meet new people; Facebook users really latch onto that. Not only do you meet new people, but you can also see who the hottest person (generally the most expensive person) is. Our features allow people to form new relationships. Users stick around for the people, not the actual game.

Kim Ngo: What’s your pitch for Friends for Sale?

Siqi Chen: We have a bunch of ways to describe it, but I think the one I use the most is “Hot or Not with a market economy.” We liked Hot or Not, but it only told you who was hot or who was not. What you want is a fluid supply and demand environment, so we added a market economy to the idea which keeps everything up to date.

Kim Ngo: So how did you come up with the market economy?

Siqi Chen: Funny story—it was an idea my co-founder and I came up with in Las Vegas. I was there for the two-year anniversary of Club Tao. While waiting to get into the club, I was looking at the line which was mostly comprised of middle-aged dudes who had just bought a table. Every guy looked like he was thinking, “This is going to suck; where are all of the girls?” My friend pointed to the other side of the room where there were fifty really hot girls just hanging out.

It was a microcosm of life. Everyone knows it’s awesome to be a hot girl or rich guy. I thought about how we could fuse that into an app, which is how we came up with Friends for Sale. In our app, it’s awesome to be a hot girl because you make money by being bought, and it’s awesome to be a rich guy because you can buy people.

Serious Business Lobby (Prior to Zynga Sale)

Kim Ngo: Where does Friends for Sale stand in Facebook App rankings?

Siqi Chen: It stands in the top twenty. We were in the top five at one point, but that was two years ago. The competition has definitely increased since then.

Kim Ngo: Can you tell us what the top two apps are, and why you think they are ranked so high?

Siqi Chen: Farmville and Cafeworld are the top two apps by the numbers, because Zynga, the developer of these games, has been more aggressive than anyone in investing in Facebook Apps.

Kim Ngo: Do you think Friends for Sale will ever get back to being a top five app?

Siqi Chen: It depends on how fast we grow. It’s hard to say. But what I can say is that we are bigger than we have ever been. We didn’t go from number five to number twenty because we’re smaller. We’re actually three times larger than when we were in the top five. It’s just that the platform ecosystem has expanded so much, and it takes a lot more traffic to be in the top ten than it did two years ago.

Kim Ngo: Where do you see Friends for Sale going from here? What do you have planned for the future?

Siqi Chen: We’re planning to create more ways to earn money, more ways to spend it, and more ways to meet and interact with friends, new and old.

Kim Ngo: Where do you see the industry of social gaming in five years?

Siqi Chen: Games will be more social, beautiful, and immersive but just as simple and casual as they are today.

THE MORE PERSONAL INTERVIEW – (Full Interview Transcription)

Kim Ngo: It sounds like you’re really passionate about what you do?

Siqi Chen: I would say so. I feel like I was always meant to do what I do now. I’ve always known I wanted to build things that lots of people would use.

Kim Ngo: What are your hobbies and interests?

Siqi Chen: I tend to play a lot of video games, but my hobbies involve what I do in my job. If I weren’t working, I’d still be doing the same things I do now: building and making cool things that people love.

It’s funny though. I was in a board meeting, and the board told me that I needed to play more video games. So I did. I was spending a lot of my time building the company and not actually playing games. The board felt that the company would benefit if I were to play video games. They recommended everything from Xbox to casual games. I bought a Nintendo DS and started playing more games. It was really educational. As usual, the board was right.

Siqi Chen

Kim Ngo: What’s your biggest fear?

Siqi Chen: My biggest fear is not living up to the potential that this company and team holds. Considering the many things we’ve done wrong over the past couple of years, one of the things we’ve done right is putting together a great team. Bringing failure to the team is my greatest fear.

Kim Ngo: Tell us about your first taste of success and proudest moment.

Siqi Chen: Shortly after we launched Friends for Sale, the initial reaction was explosive. After a month and a half, we were the largest Ruby on Rails app in the world, despite being just two guys with day jobs.

It was an idea we came up with on our own, and we had all of these theories about why it would work. Ultimately, most of them have proven to be true, which rarely happens when you’re building a web app. It was a combination of a small amount of good judgment and a very large amount of luck. It was very rewarding to see all of these assumptions that were put into the idea come to fruition.

Kim Ngo: What did you guys do to make sure those assumptions were right?

Siqi Chen: We got lucky. We did the best we could in thinking about how people are currently meeting new people and fused this into an app about buying and selling. What would people want to do with this app? We thought about how it’s a funny idea to buy your friends, but we also asked ourselves why people want to own anything in the first place. We needed to allow people to do things to someone they owned that they couldn’t have done otherwise in the real world.

Kim Ngo: So one day you were like, “Alexander (the co-founder of Serious Business), let’s leave our jobs and create this app?”

The Mascot

Siqi Chen: In May 2007, I built a game called Mafia. Though it wasn’t an extraordinary success, it attracted 100,000 users, which is pretty good on the web. It was barely existent on Facebook, but through advertising, I was making a good chunk of cash on the side—about the same amount as my salary.

One day, I decided I should make something viral. I was talking to Alexander Le about it, and we came up with Friends for Sale. We spent ten nights building and designing it before it was launched. About a month later, we had one million users.

Kim Ngo: What do you think you do better than your competitors?

Siqi Chen: There are things I know we do very well, but I wouldn’t say I definitely know there are things we do better. There are things we understand very well, like data driven and iterative development and metrics. We are an extremely data focused company. We have a very good team, and we understand product design and sociability. We make games that allow you to interact with other people, which is something I think we do better than other companies.

Kim Ngo: What do you enjoy most and least about being a CEO?

Siqi Chen: That’s a tough one. My favorite and least favorite parts of being a CEO are in the management of the people—the hiring and firing of employees. It’s never pleasant to fire somebody, and it’s always rewarding to hire somebody extremely talented.

Kim Ngo: What was your toughest experience in building Friends for Sale?

Serious Business Bored Room

Siqi Chen: A month after we launched, I had already quit my job, and I was the only full time employee at Friends for Sale. At the time, it was the largest Ruby on Rails site in the world. We were getting 10 million views a day. It was nuts! The site was barely up because with only one person, it’s very hard to scale a site that size, especially if you’ve never done it before. I was only getting about two to three hours of sleep a night. It was just awful!

Eventually, we migrated to a different hosting center, got better hardware, and fixed some of the architecture. Things definitely improved around January, but the whole month of December was rough.

Kim Ngo: Was there a point where you felt like you couldn’t do it anymore? Did you ever want to give up?

Siqi Chen: No, I felt like I didn’t have a choice. This thing had a life of its own with hundreds of thousands of users. I had to make it work. I knew of other sites that were a thousand times bigger that worked, so I knew that running Friends for Sale was doable. But it was something that I had never done before, and we had to build everything from scratch.

Kim Ngo: What does it take to succeed in your field?

Siqi Chen: I think it’s a combination of ego, drive, and innate design that makes an entrepreneur successful. Another thing that works for me is that I am technical so I’m able to understand what’s possible and what’s not possible. I can also talk to our engineers. In fact, I’m on the line with our engineers probably an hour each day and I actually do write code—that’s definitely a plus. I’m also really product oriented.

Serious Business

Kim Ngo: What motivates you?

Siqi: Chen: I wasn’t especially hardworking in high school or college, but I’ve always known what I wanted to do. I had this feeling of knowing what I wanted to do and that I would make it happen.

Kim Ngo: Why were you so sure you could make it happen?

Siqi Chen: Because I was able to see and hear about other people who have done it – I felt if other people could do it, then there’s no reason I couldn’t.

Kim Ngo: What inspires you? And what makes you happiest? Is it money or a sense of accomplishment?

Siqi Chen: It is building things that have a lasting impact in this world — things that are beautiful and useful. Things that fuse form and function into something that affects people’s lives on an everyday level.

Kim Ngo: So this is why you moved to Silicon Valley?

Siqi Chen: Yes. Moving to Silicon Valley allowed me to meet people that I needed to in order to do what I wanted to do. And that proved to be absolutely true. Moving here was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Kim Ngo: What advice would you give to the young aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start something?

Siqi Chen: Stop reading, stop watching videos, and just do something.

Siqi Chen

Launched in November 2007 by Serious Business founders Alex Le and Siqi Chen, Friends for Sale now holds the ranks among the top games on the social networking site. Once users join the app, they become eligible for purchase by friends and strangers alike, with the ultimate goal of becoming more expensive, or highly valued. Every time a player is bought, his or her value increases. The trading can get pretty competitive. People and their pets continue to pick up new strategies to build up more cash and buy up more pets, but the central purpose of the game is just to have a good time with friends and perhaps connect with a few new faces in the process. After all, Facebook is all about bringing people together and keeping them in touch, and Siqi offers a fun and entertaining way to keep these interactions exciting with Friends for Sale.

Serious Business

In recent news, the company behind Friends for Sale, Serious Business, was acquired by social gaming powerhouse Zynga. Who knows what is in store for Siqi and his co-workers’ big move to the Zynga San Francisco office and the bright future of Friends for Sale?

Meet Siqi Chen in an exclusive one-on-one interview that will take you behind the scenes with Siqi and his thought process for creating the popular Facebook app: Siqi Chen and IntimateMath

THE OFFERING by Project X Films
Trouble Viewing? Visit: THE OFFERING

In this interview, I talk to Mike about:
- His dreams of becoming a director of an animated feature film
- What he’s given, and given up, on his journey thus far
- How far he is willing to go to make his dream a reality

STATS
Companies Founded:
1. Gravity 3D
2. Huber Films
3. Project X

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Hometown: Sierra Vista, AZ
Currently Resides: San Jose, CA
Education: San Francisco State University Film School and CADRE San Jose State University

Hobbies/Interests: Motorcycles, making margaritas
Quality Most Remembered For: Very goofy
In 10 Years, I see myself…: Directing A list films
I’m Happiest when…: I am directing
I’m Motivated by…: Beauty, the thought of doing something unique
Biggest Fear: Economic failure and heights
Favorite Quote: “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Role Models: My Dad, Richard Huber

LINKS
Linkedin
Facebook
Project X

Click Here for The Interview with Michael Huber

Below are some short video clips of our meeting.