Internet Story

Here’a a bit about Ben Joslin, and the Internet ride I’ve taken over the last decade.  First the family & personal:  Two great boys, happily married to Susie, avid skier, owner of a tool belt (not afraid to use it), and neighborhood Celebrity Chef.  Here’s the story:

So how did I get into the Internet?  And, actually rise to what some may call the “top”?   I started by quitting.  I quit my job as National Call Center Director, responsible for 400+ people and a huge PL because I loved the internet.  By 1998 I had already bought a car on-line, (probably Autobytel’s first customer).  Despite rocking a 9600 baud modem,  I loved the Internet and wanted to forge my career in a field that I loved.

Reporting to Diller…

So why do I love the Internet? Immediacy and change.  Maybe I’m impatient by nature, or an ever present change addict?   The Internet satisfies my immediate needs.  Of course we have all been “finding” for years now – where to go, what to buy – but as a marketing professional the Internet supplies something more.  Immediate measure and constant change.  The early days of email marketing were the best – analyzing clicks, opens, response, conversion.  The Internet allows a business person to keep score. And if you can keep score you know if you are winning or losing.  Like many reading this, you probably prefer one over the other.  Winning right?  The immediacy, change, measure equation is what has kept me engaged all of these years – and I’m certain will continue to do so.

Here’s how it all started.  During the heady days of 1999 the Boston Globe’s help wanted section was about as thick as the WHOLE Sunday edition is now (I still read the newspaper).  It wasn’t long before I landed a job at a CMGI start up.  I distinctly remember our VC board member telling us, we’d go public and have a $1 billion dollar market cap within 18 months!  Here’s a look at how CMGI did…share price peaked at $500 (when our VC sold).

CMGI’s Stock…

I joined Inpho, which quickly renamed itself “Domania”.  I went from managing 400 telemarketers and 5 offices to an army of one, doing business development.  Very liberating.  I signed some of the company’s first revenue deals – mostly pay for performance advertising before pay per click was chic.  Domania was the Internet’s first Zillow.com minus $87 million in VC funding, and without Richard Barton (Expedia) at the helm.  Just about when the graph above started to slide downwards, I was promoted to Vice President of Marketing, and we changed the company focus to email marketing for banks.  We landed Countrywide, Chase, CitiMortgage, Fleet, and started to take off.  Just not quickly enough.

Domania Grew Up, Profitability

Domania.com was purchased by Primedia out of bankruptcy in the fall of 2002, and 14 of us to stayed on – down from 25.   The new team?  Our Founder, VP Sales, 2 Tech folks, Myself (VP Marketing),  and my team of 8 marketing client ops people.  My first trip to New York to present the budget for 2003 was surreal, the Sales guy quit (when he didn’t show up in NYC), I presented the budget and plan.  Within a week I was promoted to GM, and was now the “founder’s” boss (it was like herding house cats).

Over the course of the first year as GM,  I wound up delivering what two hired CEOs, and two founder’s couldn’t do – I got the company profitable.  Our clients became loyal, we won awards, and we were “the solution” for bank email marketing and retention.

LendingTree, Internet Marketing U.

Domania was purchased along with RealEsate.com in the first quarter of 2004.  I joined a team of some of the country’s finest marketers.  The LendingTree brand has north of 90% recognition, and they spend a ton of cash on marketing.  I learned how to spend money, and how to make even more money.   Domania flourished at LendingTree.  I grew the company’s client list signing Bank of America and Wells Fargo.  Domania.com finally grew into a home price destination and we signed up 1 million registrants.   In 2006 we were recruited by the RealEstate.com team to do massive lead generation project.  In 2005 Domania generated ~ 60,000 leads, when we were asked to step up in 2006, we drove 300,000 leads.  Real Estate Agents wanted to talk with our sales team, and consumers wanted a valuation.  Internet lead nirvana.

IAC, Excite.com, Life123.com is Invented

Getting recruited by IAC was like getting the call from Bill Belichick.  The big leagues.  A lot of people were on my side:  Doug Lebda,  IAC’s then President and founder of LendingTree, Peter Horan former CEO of About.com and CEO of IAC’s Search and Media Division.   My whole team picked up shop, and “moved to IAC”.  Granted that only meant changing the name on the door – but we had a new home and a new canvas.  I was promoted as Senior Vice President of Excite.com.  The plan?  My team would re-launch one of the Internet’s most storied brands – and make it into a content destination.  Imagine showing up for your fist day of Patriots practice and getting handed a basketball – not a football – a basketball!  That’s kind of what happened.   The Excite project was scuttled by the board room within my first week of joining IAC.  My advice: when you are handed a basketball, start dribbling!  Which is what my team did.  We figured out how to build a content site from scratch and placed our new future on Life123.com.  We came up with the brand, the content product concept, and the road map that would lead to profitability.

Life123.com Rocket Ship Launches

Within a year and a half, Life123.com was on our way.   Nearly 2 million visitors a month, more than 50,000 pieces of SEO content, a 5000 person vibrant growing writers community that was reducing our product cost by 10x, and most importantly a business model that was driving revenue.   But, like Yogi Bera says, it’s deja vu all over again.  Remember Zillow?  Domania vs. ex-Expedia CEO Richard Barton?  This time around it was ex-MySpace CEO Richard Rosenblatt.  His new company, Demand Media raised $320 million and created a content juggenaut that can’t be beat.  Despite Life123.com’s clear path to a nicely profitable business, and amazing SEO results (page rank 7 and 90% of traffic from SEO only), Mr. Diller and the gang were not interested in coming in second or third.  With a $318 million head start Demand Media can’t be caught.  IAC isn’t a place to incubate, it is a place to create free cash flow.  It was time to sell.

Five great offers came in from companies who wanted to buy Life123.com!  Value proven, and the validation was great.  But, ultimately the business unit was absorbed into struggling ASK.com.  They needed the cash that Life123.com was generating.

Out of the content businesses started at IAC while I was there, Green.com, RushmoreDrive, FiLife/Dow Jones, all closed their doors, and their Web sites taken down.   Only Life123.com and the Daily Beast remain as IAC brands.

Our use of capital was less than 1/100th of our big competition.  Over ninety percent of the articles we wrote and published out ranked our competitors who were in business on average five years longer than Life123.com.   I created the company for a fraction of the operating budgets of some of the other content plays at IAC.  And I could go on about the other metrics that make Life123.com a rocket, but for now I’ll choose to just gaze at the stars, and put an end to that story’s chapter.

Here and Now

In February of 2010, I left IAC, after a ten plus year sprint in the world of  the Internet.  In regular work years that is a lifetime!  I’ve stayed incredibly engaged with several business consulting arrangements, and I am launching a real estate lead generation web site with a partner.  I have learned to tune skis, and now volunteer for YES – Youth Enrichment Services, teaching urban youth how to ski (.., I get to be a ski tech once a week).  My new basement office (built with aforementioned tool belt) is my work sanctuary, and I am now spending time looking for the next great opportunity.   And, looking for the the next great story.