Bill, was working a corporate job, and moved back home to Chicago to take over his family art supply business that had a handful of employees that was not online. It was the 90s so who was?
Bill had big plans and aspirations, but it took a radio interview in Rockefeller plaza where after a one hour discussion the DJ could not remember his company name.
That is when he knew it was time for a change. The problem was that those who had invested in his company did not see the same benefits the perfect domain name would bring to their business….Additionally, Bill had to find a way to convince the current owner of ART.com to sell it to him…
Hear his story, about the power of the perfect domain name and how this decision ended up leading to a 200,000,000+ million dollar exit.
**Special thanks to our Editor, Mike who saved the day!**
About Jeffrey:
Jeffrey M. Gabriel is the founder of Saw.com, a boutique brokerage that specializes in acquiring, selling, and appraising domains. With over 14 years of experience in the domain industry, Jeffrey has a proven track record of closing multimillion-dollar deals and delivering exceptional value to his clients.
Jeffrey's core competencies include remote team management, online marketing, and strategy. He is passionate about helping businesses and individuals achieve their online goals and dreams. He has been involved in some of the most notable domain sales in history, such as Ai.com, Sex.com, and Poker.org. He is also a Guinness World Record holder and a frequent speaker and writer on domain-related topics.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sawcom/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/saw-com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sawsells
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast, we have
Bill Lederer.
Bill was introduced to me by mygood friend and fellow domain
broker, alan Dunn, who is theowner of NameCorp.
Bill and I spoke over the phoneand realized that he lived
about 45 minutes away from myhouse.
We decided to meet in personand, for the record, I have
never recorded a thing in mylife, but I bought a high-end
camera and brought it with mefor the interview.
(00:21):
It might look a little bit likea deposition, but I did the
best I could.
Bill was working a corporate joband moved back home to Chicago
to take over his family artsupply business that had a
handful of employees.
That was not online Now.
It was the 90s, so who was?
Bill had big plans andaspirations for the business,
but it took a radio interview inRockefeller Plaza where, after
(00:43):
a one-hour discussion, the DJcould not remember his company
name.
That's when he knew it was timefor a change.
The problem was that those whohad invested in his company did
not see the same benefits theperfect domain name would bring
to their business.
Additionally, bill had to finda way to convince the current
owner of Artcom to sell it tohim.
Hear his story and how thisdecision, amongst others, ended
(01:09):
up leading to a 200 million plusdollar exit.
This is one hell of a story.
I loved recording every minuteof it.
Thanks for listening.
(01:31):
Today, on a very special episodeof the uncomfortable podcast, I
have traveled to st petersburgto meet bill letterer, founder
and founder and the leader ofisocrates.
As chairman and ceo, he is aglobal C-level digital media and
marketing services executivewith extensive consulting,
founding, building, turnaroundexpertise in both
(01:53):
entrepreneurial and establishedcompanies, in mad tech,
programmatic trading, data andanalytics, advanced TV and
online and mobile video,internet and e-commerce,
advertising, marketing andinformation services services.
That's a lot of things.
Bill has served as a divisionalceo and or c-level executive
with kantar, wpp, tns and gettyimages.
(02:14):
He was a founder and ceo ofe-tailer artcom we're certainly
going to talk about that and aprogramic media trader, media
crossing, and is a former boardmember for public and private
companies, including WPP Digital, kantar Digital Rewards Network
, major universities andnon-profits.
He has an extensive workexperience in the Americas,
(02:37):
europe, india and Israel and hewas an adjunct professor at the
New School Graduate Program inMedia Management and is the
co-author of the leadingindustry textbook, media Selling
, the fifth edition.
You're a very accomplished manand thank you for your time
today.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Thank you, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
All right.
So there's a lot to go overhere and, as we talked about
before starting the show, isthat we like to kind of hear a
little bit about your backgroundand then and then get into what
you know you're up to now.
So you know someone likeyourself.
I think a lot of people don'treally always see the struggle
to get where you are and theysee c-level titles and they see
(03:18):
you know you're a professor at acollege, a a very accomplished
author.
You know you've started a lotof very popular businesses.
You ran Getty Images for aperiod of time.
You know why don't you tell usyour story about how you got
there and how you accomplished alot of these things?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, let's see.
Thank you, let's see.
It doesn't feel like I'veaccomplished a lot of things.
It definitely feels like I'm onthis journey and I had a lot of
experiences.
Let's see, I think all of thisbegan a little bit out of a
state of envy and curiosity.
(03:55):
For me, as a digitalentrepreneur, this really
started by watching a fellow whowas working at a firm similar
to one that I had been workingat on Wall Street, where he and
his wife left to go to Seattleto go sell books on the World
Wide Web, and I saw thathappening in real time and saw
(04:21):
Bezos stand up Amazon and startselling books.
I saw Bezos stand up Amazon andstart selling books and I'm to
(04:52):
CD-ROMs with music and DVDs.
It immediately, I think, Iunderstood that business model
and where that was going andsaid, okay, what would be
another category that perhapswould have higher margins and a
little bit more barriers toentry?
It might be another attractivearea within B2C where I could
leverage skills that I haddeveloped working on Wall Street
(05:17):
, being a quant, doing data andanalytics and working with
technology, and I picked printsand posters.
I thought that the web was notintrinsically text-based, but
that instead, with ultimatelyubiquitous bandwidth available
and having it be very cheapwhich I thought would be the
(05:38):
case that it's really sight,sound and motion.
It was just a matter of timefor this to evolve.
When Amazon started, peoplethought, well, this is a
text-based medium.
I'm like sound and motion.
It was just a matter of timefor this to evolve.
When Amazon started, peoplethought well, this is a
text-based medium.
I'm like no, no, no, no, it'snot text, it's going to be sight
, sound and motion.
It's just a question of howfast this innovation can diffuse
across society.
And I picked prints and posters.
(06:00):
I picked something visual whereyou needed a lot of selection,
where the supply chain didn'tquite already exist to be able
to do fast fulfillment and wherethere's a little bit more
barrier to entry, and I was veryfortunate.
I got in early, but I didn'tget in with artcom.
(06:22):
Like a lot of entrepreneursvirtually all of us we learn by
making mistakes.
Very few of us come out withperfect business plans and
they're executed flawlessly andit works exactly the way that
you thought that it would.
Very rarely does that happen.
So in my case, I startedArtUframecom and it was pretty
(06:43):
good.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
How would you spell that?
Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
A-R-T-U-F-R-A-M-Ecom, and the time frame was May 5th
of 1998.
Okay, and we launched, and veryquickly we discovered that
people were not comfortable touse a credit card to make a
purchase on the internet.
And boy, it sure takes a longtime to load these images online
(07:12):
if you're a consumer.
And how many clicks you had togo through to get through the
shopping cart to make a purchase.
And they may or may not have anemail address.
Let's just say that these wereearly days on the World Wide Web
, not to mention the fact that Iwas running another company at
the same time, and so my wifewas putting up with me, letting
me essentially reinvest ourlimited resources into this new
(07:34):
business, and we did a verysteady five orders a day on
average through the course ofthe late spring and summer of
1998.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So, speaking of your wife, real quick and sorry to
interrupt, so you were in NewYork as a quant, so you were
doing I was in Connecticut as aquant.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Okay, I wound up moving to Chicago to look after
my family business and my dadwho was getting sicker and
sicker.
And when I came up with thisidea of artuframecom, I was
living in the northern suburbsof Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
So when you were obviously probably making a
quite a decent living.
You're an intelligent person inthe corporate world, you know
working at a financialinstitution and you go to your
wife or you say I want to quitand open an art business which
you involved in art at the time,or you just kind of studying it
.
Was it on a?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
whim.
I was involved with artsupplies and picture framing
materials, which was our familybusiness.
It was not prints and posters,but prints and posters are often
sold where art supplies andpicture framing is sold, so I
was aware of it as a tangentialpart of my professional life.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So when your father became ill, did you take over
his business and help him duringthat time?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I absolutely did not, knowing that he was ill with a
terminal illness and that I wasgoing to lose him shortly.
So I had no idea.
What I did know was that Iwould go to see my customers,
who were largely retailers,sometimes mail-order catalogs,
wholesalers.
Invariably I would watchconsumers having a tough
(09:12):
experience in stores and withmail-order companies and I would
observe and say, oh, I thinkthe Internet could probably do
this a whole lot better.
And I would make thatobservation quietly to myself,
talk to my customers and sayhave you thought about having a
presence on the Internet?
And 100% of the clients saidwhat are you crazy?
(09:32):
No one's ever going to buy thisonline for any number of
reasons.
And I said well, you knowthere's a lot of success right
now in the book business on theInternet.
Why wouldn't prints and postersand framing of prints and
posters be done online?
But no one shared my interestor enthusiasm for the likelihood
that that would happen.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Okay, and when you brought this up to your father,
when you were taking over thebusiness that you were going to
kind of bring it online, or toyour other family members, what
did they think about?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
it.
That would never have been apossibility.
First of all, my father passedaway in 1996, so this would have
been the beginning of Amazonand I wouldn't have talked about
it with him.
But my father was aDepression-era guy and the idea
that you would be involved witha negative cash flow startup,
the idea that somebody would bemaking these purchase decisions
(10:26):
on the world wide web, that justthat they really wouldn't fit
for somebody who had come fromthat generation.
So in some ways, I reallydidn't want to lose my dad and
my business partner under anycircumstances.
But the fact that he wasn'tthere to say no and would allow
me to be able to reinvest myearnings in this crazy
(10:47):
enterprise it wouldn't havehappened while my dad was still
around, and I'm too respectful ason that I wouldn't have gone
against his demand that I stickto the way the business had
always been done.
So he wasn't there to say noand my mother, as it turns out,
(11:07):
was there to say yes.
So my mother heard what I wasinterested in and she said oh,
this makes perfect sense to me.
There's just two things.
The first is I said oh great,mom, so you're supportive.
Oh, yeah, she said I thinkyou're really built for this.
Whatever this industry is goingto be, this is, this is you.
(11:30):
But there's just two things.
I said yes and she said well.
The first one is don't screw upthe family business.
We work awfully hard to get itto where it is, so don't, don't
mess that up.
And the other is please don'task me for any money yeah, so
there you go.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
At least she was very upfront and honest about that.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Well, that was always my mother.
So we got started with Art youFrame and I think your listeners
might appreciate this.
I had a seminal moment at oneof those lightning strike
moments that really was veryinspirational.
And the story is this it wasSeptember of 1998, I think the
(12:05):
beginning of September and I wasdoing I just finished an
interview with CBS Radio Networkin New York.
I was at Black Rock on 6thAvenue and the interview had
gone fine.
The interviewer said you know,you're really great at this.
This seems to be an industryyou're really comfortable with.
You're a fun interview and Ireally wish you good luck with.
(12:28):
He just spent the last hourtalking to me about ArtUFrame
and ArtUFramecom.
I'm getting on an elevator,elevator doors are closing and
he's stammering.
He cannot remember the name ofthe internet site that I run
that he'd just been interviewingme for an hour about.
So as the doors closed, Irealized I have a brand problem
(12:51):
and I said to myself I am notgetting off this elevator until
I fix this problem, because ifthis guy can't remember, that
means nobody else is going toremember either and all I can
say is Luckily, the building was80 stories tall because you had
time to think about it, right?
I was on an upper floor.
I had the time to think itthrough and as the elevator
(13:15):
doors opened, I got that lookfrom New Yorkers waiting to get
on the elevator.
That's a famous look thatanybody who's ever been to New
York has had, which is sort ofthat insistence of hey, you're
holding me up, you know you'rein my way because I'm not
getting out of the elevator.
I'm still thinking through theresolution and finally what
comes to me is it's art.
(13:36):
Stupid, keep it simple.
Stupid.
He remembered the art.
He didn't remember the U-frame.
Just keep it simple.
It's art, artcom, that's it.
And so these people are lookingat me.
Door is open, I'm on the groundfloor, it's time for me to get
out, and on my mind is get to aphone.
So I get out of there.
People look at me, give me adirty look as they're getting
(13:56):
into the elevator and I go outand this will tell you how long
ago it.
I walk out onto Avenue of theAmericas, 6th Avenue, and I go
to a payphone.
Remember payphones.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Oh yeah, I remember those yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So I go to a payphone .
I made a collect call to theoffice back in Chicago and I
said who owns artcom?
And that began an ordeal.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So, before the ordeal begins, to paint the picture
for everybody listening,including myself, when you made
that phone call and you said youcalled the office.
How many people worked for you?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
do you think at that time, At Art you Frame, we
probably had about maybe 20people, Maybe 20.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Maybe 20.
Maybe 18 to 20.
And before you went online, wasit about the same size company
and working with the vendors, orno?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
No, it was smaller, smaller business Because we
weren't in the art and framingbusiness.
We were in the art supplies andpicture framing materials
business.
That's a business that wasstructured very differently, so
it was a smaller business.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Okay, and then were you sourcing the things you were
selling online from the peoplethat you were selling to before
and using the community?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
We weren't online at all.
There was no online presence.
I had no experience online.
I had never done anythingonline.
I hadn't bought, I hadn't soldnothing.
I'd spent a lot of time on pornsites and CDW and CD Universe
and Dell and a few others, but Ireally was not an internet
(15:27):
person until that time that Ispent getting Art Uframe online.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Uh-huh and all right.
So you called the office andwho's in the office that you
called at the time?
What was the structure of thebusiness?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I should clarify the reason I was on the porn site
was strictly for the business.
I was there to study thebusiness models, that's it.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I mean things that I've read is that porn has been
a pretty big industry that hasadvanced the internet immensely,
I think, with video andpictures and downloading and yes
, it's hosting and things likethat.
It's been very, it seems thatway.
Yeah, of course, it's alwaysabout research.
So you call, call yourco-worker, or who is the person
(16:06):
that you called in the office tosay find me, the owner of
artcom.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I called I'm not sure who I called.
I called somebody in the office.
They looked it up in the ICANNregistry to determine who had
the domain and it turned out itwas something called Advanced
Rotorcraft Technology.
And I'm thinking AdvancedRotorcraft, it's a helicopter
consulting business doingdefense industry consulting and
(16:34):
I'm like I got it ART, likethat's crazy.
Oh well, they're clearly notbenefiting from the highest and
best use of that domain, yep,they're clearly not benefiting
from the highest and best use ofthat domain, yep.
So I called California andadvanced rotorcraft technology.
I said may I speak to thepresident?
(16:55):
And the immediate response Igot is our URL is not for sale.
Stop bothering us.
And I said oh, oh, wait aminute, I'm.
I don't know what this isconcerning, but I'm I'm trying
to speak to the president of thehelicopter consulting firm.
I don't know what you're saying.
She said people bother us allthe time.
They call here and they theywant to buy our domain and URL
(17:18):
and it's not for sale.
And I said, well, that that'sgood to know, but that's not why
I'm calling, which is, of ofcourse, why I was calling.
But clearly I was going to getpast her if I said, oh, that's
unfortunate Yep.
So instead I get through and afellow says you know, hello.
He introduces himself and Isaid you know, before I talked
(17:40):
to you about the purpose of mycalling.
I said it was a curious thing.
I called and I hear that youhear that your URL is not for
sale.
And I said what's that allabout?
So he begins to tell me thestory that he had registered the
domain when it was ARPANET andhe was doing work in the defense
industry.
Never occurred to him that thiswould have any commercial value
(18:01):
.
But as the internet began tobecome a viable channel for
media and marketing, all of asudden people seemed to care.
So in time frame this is 1998,and he said this is just a
nuisance.
And he said, man, every singleday.
(18:22):
I said, oh, so it's reallydisruptive to the business.
He goes.
Yeah, he said man, he said uh,every single day.
I said, oh, so it's reallydisruptive to the business.
He goes.
Yeah, he said you know, we'relike a helicopter consulting
firm.
We get maybe a phone call a day, but with these guys they call
all the time.
It's really a problem.
They said, oh, uh, that that'sunfortunate.
I said, well, you shouldprobably get rid of the problem,
so it makes your life easier.
And he goes well, how the hellam I going to?
(18:42):
Said I don't know, get rid ofthe domain, I guess.
And he goes yeah, I could dothat.
But he said my email is tied tothe domain.
And I said, well, I'm suresomebody could give you like a
redirect.
And he said yeah, it's sort ofa pain in the neck.
I said which is a bigger painin the neck to set of an email,
forwarding email, or theseconstant calls that you're
(19:06):
getting".
And he goes yeah, they send meemail too, and they're really
bothering me.
They send mail.
And I said, well, it seems to methat you ought to try to get
rid of the nuisance.
And he goes Well, how would youdo that?
And I said I don't know, exceptone of their offers.
He goes, yeah, he goes.
I don't know how much it'sworth, but it's got to be a lot.
He goes.
I said, well, how much trafficdo you get?
Well, he knew his traffic.
(19:27):
And he told me and I did somequick math and I'm like okay,
this is one of the most valuabledomains in the world,
interesting.
The price that would be paidessentially is like buying
permanent advertising, you'regoing to get all this traffic.
So I said, well, maybe I couldhelp you out.
(19:49):
And he goes how?
And I said you know what?
I'll buy the domain from you,I'll take it off your hands.
And he goes really, you woulddo that.
And I said, well, how much doyou want for it?
And he said, oh well, geez,it's gotta be worth I don't know
at least half a million dollars.
I'm like that's nuts, that's acrazy number.
And it actually wasn't thatcrazy because of the amount of
(20:11):
traffic it was getting.
And it wasn't.
They weren't doing anything topromote it, it wasn't, you know,
they weren't selling anythingthere that was relevant and he
goes well, of course.
Yeah, no, I'd take less thanthat.
So we worked on what thatnumber might be.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
He still has no idea why I'm calling.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
He thinks I'm calling about something to do with the
helicopter and he goes.
But you're not going to pay methat kind of money.
I said you know what I'll do.
I'll wire you $10,000 right nowfor a nonrefundable deposit,
giving me the option to purchaseat that price for a limited
period of time, could you do?
(20:49):
that he said yeah, I mean, Isaid do you have a good use for
$10,000?
He goes.
Yeah, he said he goes, butdon't you wanna talk about
helicopters?
And I said well, let's finishthis discussion first so we work
it out.
And I said so, do we have adeal?
And he said yeah, put it inwriting.
He said but I'm a man of myword.
And he said you send me themoney and you can send me
paperwork.
(21:09):
He goes okay, now why did youcall?
And I said well, I hate tosound like a total scoundrel,
but it occurs to me that this isreally a good idea, this artcom
.
And he goes well, do you have abusiness that you would use it?
And I said not yet, but I'mhopeful.
But I said I'm a man of my wordand I literally got off the
(21:33):
phone.
I sent him the $10,000.
Simultaneously sending him thecontract.
I'm not sure which got therefirst, but I took care of both
of them at the same time.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So at this point in time, you took over your dad's
business.
You're growing it intosomething from 5 to 20 people.
You're going down to New Yorkdoing a radio show talking about
it.
So you obviously had momentum.
You're totally all in on thebusiness.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
This is right, so you obviously had momentum.
You're totally all in on thebusiness.
Yes, this is 1999.
98, 98, 98.
Yep, how the hell are you goingto come up with 490?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
000 more dollars after you sent them.
Yeah well, we agreed on anumber under 500 000 but it was
uh north of 450 000.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Okay, but how did you know?
Even like even now, that's awholeload of cash.
Good question.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
All right.
So what do you do when youdon't have the money to purchase
something that's of value andthere's a sort of a story
associated with it?
Well, if you're a digitalentrepreneur, you're a creative
person who doesn't take noeasily and who has a lot of
passion and stick-to-itiveness.
(22:40):
So I wrote a business plan andI got my ass out to California
and I was fortunate to haveBenchmark and SoftBank agree to
fund a business where use ofproceeds would include the
purchase of the artcom name andthat's how I would pay for it
(23:03):
that I would have other people'smoney pay for allowing me to
exercise the option to buy thedomain.
So that's how I figured I woulddo it.
It was going to be using otherpeople's money in the context of
a business plan, taking Art youFrame to another level.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So how does a person from Chicago who isn't in the
circles of VCs an art?
Guy get to two of the biggerVCs in the world, who are the
most popular ones, even get anappointment and then get them to
give you money?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
How does that even happen?
That's an excellent question,thank you.
So this is not easy.
You're gonna have to beprepared to hear no or get no
response, where they gocompletely silent.
Or sometimes they say yes andthen they say no, or they just
go silent after saying yes.
There's a lot of bumps alongthe way.
In my case it was cold outreachto Benchmark.
(24:04):
There really was no other wayto do this, both for myself and
someone that I hired.
We basically blitzed Benchmark,focusing on getting their
attention.
Interestingly enough, they havea different view of things.
I think those principles ofbenchmark today would say oh
(24:27):
well, you know, we thought ofguy.
But I have a different memoryof it and my memory was a
constant barrage of outreach toget their attention, which
ultimately ended up in a phonecall, in a meeting and
(24:52):
interestingly enough, theyreally weren't paying much
attention to the idea of buyingthe artcom name.
I didn't know that.
I thought that this was goingto be like one of my key assets.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It turns out that that's actually not what they
were thinking.
They made their name and theirmoney in fund number one,
investing in eBay.
So, in the case of eBay, whatdoes eBay mean?
It could mean anything.
So their thought was well, youdon't need to have a special
name or URL to be successful inthe consumer Internet.
The product and the consumerexperience should be enough.
(25:24):
And I disagreed.
I thought this is a case wherewe had the right brand at the
right time.
So what wound up happening wasthat we were able to close on
the financing.
By the way, we got SoftBankbecause Benchmark introduced us
to SoftBank.
Benchmark accepted and thendeclined the deal and introduced
(25:44):
us to SoftBank.
Softbank called Benchmark andsaid "'Thank you very much, "'we
love the guy, "'we love thedeal, "'we want the whole thing,
"'we'll take your allocation aswell as our own'".
And then Benchmark said to hellwith that.
It's our deal.
So we wound up getting the twoof them, which worked out fine
until we had the first boardmeeting.
(26:05):
And at the first board meeting,our Benchmark partner said I've
thought about it and I reallydon't think the money should be
used to buy the URL.
So I don't support using ourmoney to buy the URL.
Let's go all in on television.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Which is definitely the way it was in the 90s,
without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
To give everyone an idea, we're talking about the
fourth quarter of 1998.
Among other things, that periodof time was known as the
beginning of Black Friday.
It was the beginning of thishuge online push for Christmas
shopping, but at the time thegeneral feeling was well we'll
(26:50):
use traditional methods.
And I thought no, no, no, no,like we've already proven that
digital advertising and digitalmarketing works for our time,
for for our business, but you'vegot the ability to buy this
block of traffic and this nameand this is extremely valuable
and way undervalued at thatprice.
(27:11):
It was very clear that we had,we had, a complete win, but it
was every.
It was clear to everyone exceptour board of directors.
Most of the board membersthought well, you know
television, that's what other?
We had a complete win, but itwas clear to everyone except our
board of directors.
Most of the board membersthought well, you know
television, that's what otherpeople are doing, it's what eBay
was going to be doing.
We'll go with TV.
And this was a case where thecharismatic, visionary founding
(27:31):
CEO, who actually had a controlof the board from a voting
standpoint, said yeah, we'regoing the other way.
We're not doing television,we're going to buy the Artcom
name and we're going to be amarketing presence, not spending
so much time and effort andmoney offline.
That purchase of Artcom was themaking of that business and
(27:56):
subsequently, in the variousversions of Artcom, was the
making of that business andsubsequently, in the various
versions of Artcom as a businessthat have happened subsequently
.
I would say it certainly is avery key asset.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So at that time I don't know I'm too young to
remember how VCs were then buttoday, when I hear about a VC
investing in a company, it'susually not anything to do with
artwork, because artwork likethat posters, frames, things
like that isn't very sexy.
It's not a new technology, it'skind of I don't want to say
(28:28):
it's boring, but it's just astandard, regular business.
And so if they're not going tolet you run with the domain, why
would they even bother to giveyou money when any other art,
larger art supplier out therethey could just go and work with
them with more of anestablished business model and
more shops carrying and more youknow, more power behind it and
(28:49):
a more experienced managementteam.
That's what I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So at that moment, if you think about what looked
like it was successful on theinternet in these B2C companies,
it didn't appear that the namewas going to be that important.
It was more like did you havefirst mover advantage?
Did you have focus?
Did you have an extrememaniacal focus on the customer
(29:18):
experience?
Back then, more establishedcompanies were thought to be
more like an anchor and so, forexample, why would Michaels be
more successful at this than wewere?
There are many reasons whythose more traditional retailers
moved too slowly.
You know why didn't BarnesNoble catch up to Amazon and
beat Amazon in the book businessand never got close?
(29:40):
So I think that the story then,as it is now, is a small group
of incredibly focusedindividuals.
In my case, I had some domainexpertise within that particular
industry but I mean, I wasworking 18 hours a day, every
day, seven days a week,completely and totally focused
(30:01):
on absolute customer joy.
We had an incredibly positiveexperience from the consumer
standpoint and that really drovethe business.
It wasn't the advertising wewere very good at affiliate
marketing and other things but Iwould say it was the execution
of the model.
It was pretty flawless, toughfrom a profitability standpoint.
(30:25):
In the near term it became avery profitable business but,
like many Internet companies, ithad to go through that very
early discovery process.
But by the end of the firstyear we were hitting 14 million
in run rate revenue and thebusiness was clearly on fire.
The ultimately we monetized byselling to get images in a stock
(30:49):
transaction.
But the alternative was to goto a B round which was heavily
oversubscribed in a nine-figurepre-money valuation.
God bless them.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So let's back up a little bit.
So you get artcom, you have theboard meeting, you get what you
want.
You're the petulant young guywith the older board that you
said nope, we're going to do itmy way.
You get the name?
How long did it take for you toprove that you were right?
When did you start to see thenumbers?
(31:20):
Well, I'm actually changed.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I was very fortunate.
So basically within 30 days Ihad complete total proof
positive that we're headed inthe right direction.
A lot of it had to do withtiming.
So by the time we had the boardmeeting and I executed the
purchase of the domain in full,we did some redesign of the
(31:44):
website, which was alreadyunderway.
We bought a database calledArtPrintIndex that allowed us to
be able to be really the onlycomprehensive database of all
the prints and posters publishedin the world.
That allowed us to be both awholesaler and a retailer.
(32:04):
When we put those piecestogether, it was all within 30
days and we hit Thanksgiving of1998.
The day after Thanksgiving, allthe DNSs around the world
updated from ArtUframe to Artcom.
We did 500 orders that dayafter Thanksgiving of 98.
(32:27):
We did 15 orders the previous24-hour cycle.
Oh wow, the website never didless than 500 orders a day from
then on.
So it was a very, veryfortunate experience.
A lot of good things happenedand we knew within 30 days we
had a total win on our hands.
(32:48):
So then, as an entrepreneur,the next two challenges become
okay, we need to go raise a newround.
Okay, we need to go raise a newround.
And the immediate response fromthe board was we're not going
to accept less than anine-figure pre-money value,
because you clearly have got abig win here.
For us, that was one challenge,so now I've got to go focus on
going out and telling the storyto a new group of people, as
(33:11):
opposed to running my business.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So second issue is we became an apparent success to
everybody else as well.
So then you're gettingeverybody in the world wants to
do business with you, includingwanting to acquire you.
So it becomes this massivedistraction to hey, I'm just at
the beginning of trying to buildmy business and I've got all
this stuff I want to execute inthe coming year.
So had a lot of ambitious folksaround us and a lot of options,
(33:41):
a lot of ways that we couldhave gone wrong, but we got
lucky again in terms of steeringtowards a good outcome.
The ultimate challenge in thatperiod of time became the board
really would like to do anotherround, a B round, with a monster
valuation.
And I had come from Wall Streetbefore all this and have a
(34:03):
pretty good sense of cycles andthe lack of the danger of
extrapolating on things.
And I said, if we do a B round,these people are gonna need a
venture-like return on theirinvestment.
How likely is it that we'regoing to get public or sold
within a few years?
That's going to give them thatreturn.
(34:24):
What's the likelihood of that?
And then sort of, if we don'tdo it, what's the implication?
And I looked at the stockmarket and I said the market's
not going to stay like this thisincredible B2C frenzy that was
going on in 99 and I said Idon't think this is gonna last
more than a year, or two at most, and it looks like I'm gonna be
the last guy out of the boat.
(34:47):
Meanwhile, I had been looking atGetty Images as a company and
I'm like, oh my god, thiscompany is so well positioned to
do well in a digital economy,but they have three or four
things they need to accomplish.
Maybe I could help them toaccelerate the transition that
they need to go through.
So one plus one equals three.
That might be an interestingstock to have and I wonder if I
(35:12):
could help them to make thattransition and if I'd be better
off to be a minority shareholderin a public company that's got
solid revenue, profitability andit's going to benefit from
tremendous positivetransformation.
So we ran this process wherewe're looking at these different
(35:35):
alternatives.
There was no investment bankers, just me and the board figuring
things out, and we wound upgoing with Getty Images.
The business was sold.
For those of us that took thestock and held it, we wound up
exiting an evaluation that woundup being worth just under a
quarter of a billion dollars fora business that did two million
(35:57):
in revenue in the first 12months in business Wow.
And we sold it on the one-yearanniversary exactly the one-year
anniversary of the day westarted taking revenue.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
What do you think your dad would have said about
that?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Well, I think he would have had me sell the
business a hell of a lot earlier.
You think so Definitely.
I don't think he would haveseen the risk that I had to take
every day in that business andsay, oh my God, what are you
doing?
I'll give you a small example.
One of the things about theBezos set as a standard for the
rest of us was that consumersthought that if they placed an
(36:31):
order, they should get itshipped pretty much immediately.
Yep, they weren't thinkingabout what's happening with the
supply chain, they just figuredthe logistics are.
It ships right away.
Well, let me just tell you, ifyou're gonna have 120,000 prints
and posters in your databasethat's fuelable by the consuming
public and they wanna put acredit card through and they
think they're gonna getsomething immediately you better
(36:53):
be a genius, because otherwiseyou're gonna go out of business.
On the working capitalrequirement of carrying the
inventory, because at that timethe distributors didn't carry
inventory.
A distributor in the print andposter business meant that you
had the right to resellsomething, but typically they
weren't sitting on physicalgoods, or at least extremely
limited inventory.
So you had huge supply chainissues about how are you going
(37:16):
to get from the original imageto something that was shippable
the same day or the next day tothe client by UPS or FedEx.
And there were a lot of thingsthere that we had to figure out
in order to be able to make thiswork.
Essentially, you don't want tochoke on your working capital,
your inventory.
So how do you know whatmerchandise to carry when
(37:40):
nobody's ever done this before?
So there were things, because Ihad come from the domain where
I had a leg up from thebeginning on the deals.
I negotiated the inventory.
We carried what we didn't carry, what we had other people carry
for us, lots of things likethat.
How do you ship a single framedpiece of art without it
(38:01):
breaking?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
I mean, how would you like an 80 inch diagonal or 60
inch piece of artwork sent tosomebody?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Just even a 24 by 36.
That alone, when I firstentered the business, ups and
FedEx wouldn't give me anaccount to ship.
They wouldn't give anybody anaccount to ship a single frame
piece of art.
They wouldn't allow it.
That was the standard corporaterule was no, there's too much
breakage yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
So I worked with a cupcake company to acquire a
domain and I asked why aren'tyou shipping more?
And they said it's an absolutenightmare shipping cupcakes
because most of the time theyget the cupcakes and the
frosting is a mess.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
And then the customer complains and you say well, how
the hell are we supposed toship cupcakes unless you freeze
them?
But if you freeze them.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
They don't work.
People don't like thawing outcupcakes.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I can tell you that there were hundreds of these
things that occurred along theway.
In the beginning I couldn't getpeople who were publishers in
the print and poster business toactually give me a commercial
account.
They thought that if I scannedthe images and put them online,
somebody would scan or take downthe JPEG and reproduce it
(39:10):
themselves, and they wouldn'tbuy it.
I said do you have any ideawhat the quality of that is?
It doesn't work that way, butthat's what they thought.
Then they thought well, you'regoing to cherry pick us.
You only pick the you know thebest of our things.
I said no, I'll take everything.
Give me everything that you'vegot.
Then they thought oh well,there must be a scam involved.
The only way that we could startthe business after 29 days of
(39:31):
trying to get the leadingpublishers to supply us and none
of them would publishers tosupply us and none of them would
was we had to agree to takeevery image of one particular
publisher had.
We would scan it, annotated, itwould be in the available in
the database.
And he said no matter what Isend you, it has to be there.
And I said absolutely so.
He sends me everything thathe's got and we've got to scan
it and put it online.
Well, about one out of every 20images was completely
(39:54):
pornographic.
Are you you?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
kidding.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Hardcore.
Hardcore gay porn.
Wow, had no idea.
Had absolutely no idea.
So about a week later he saidwell, where are we?
I said it's all done.
And he said I don't see itonline.
I'm on your website, I don'tsee it.
He said I'm going to leteverybody in the industry know.
You know you're not a man ofyour word.
And I said no, it's there.
I said give me a skew number.
So he gives me a skew number, Itype it in and I said it's
(40:19):
right there.
And he goes what are youtalking about?
I said type it in, he goes.
Oh, he said well, how come Ican't find it?
I said well, that's not myproblem, it's on there.
He goes.
Wait a minute.
He said it's on there.
Well, if I type in, so, and sohe goes, it doesn.
And I said oh well, I guessit's not annotated in the
database to be able to do that.
But I said if they know whatthey're looking for, they'll
(40:41):
find it.
Yeah, he goes.
Oh, you're a very tricky guy.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
And I said I'm a man of my word.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I did exactly what I said I would agree to do, do you
?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
think he was trying trouble getting distribution for
his pornographic posters.
Okay, so he was trying to findan alternative distribution
channel.
Okay and so, but he said hegoes.
You are a man of your word.
He said you're a very goodbusinessman.
He said it's okay, you can useour name.
So I immediately recontactedall the people that turned us
(41:14):
down and I said we have thisextremely well-known distributor
who are now carrying theirimages.
And they said, oh, okay.
And so we got pretty mucheverybody else.
But man, those first 29 days inbusiness, that was tough.
We didn't have the artcom name.
We didn't.
(41:34):
You know we UPS and FedExwouldn't give me accounts
because I was shipping out of myhome.
At that time you weren'tallowed to be able to do
commercial shipments out of ahome.
Oh, really, yes, they wouldn'tbecause the truck wouldn't come.
And then, when they did come,they said, oh, this is a framed
piece of art.
We can't do individual framedpieces.
So I had to re-engineereverything to figure out how to
(41:59):
ship it without breaking it.
And you have to make money soanybody can do something to
redesign a package so it doesn'tbreak, but you have to do it in
such a way that it's actuallyyou can make money because you,
if you over engineer it, all themoney will.
All the profit will be tied upin the packaging.
So there's tons of those issues.
The rebranding of the businesswas absolutely critically
(42:20):
important to the success of thebusiness in that period of time
and it became an incrediblyimportant asset.
Should I have sold the nameinstead of leasing the name when
we sold the business and sortof kept a long-term right to the
name?
That's a possibility.
It wasn't in my thinking at thetime to do sort of a hong kong
(42:41):
lease hold the name, lease itfor 99 years and have it come
back to me in 100 years.
I guess that's something thatwe could have done.
But uh, no, no regrets thepower of a name boy.
The real test was not that.
The real test was for me, as afounding CEO, to sit in a board
meeting, our first board meetingwhere there was a real test of
(43:06):
the confidence the board had inme, for me to say, no, we're not
going to spend the money ontelevision, we're going to buy
this URL, when at that timethere was really no proof
statement that that was going tobe such an important factor in
the success of the business.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, I mean, but you obviously did it with such
conviction and they believed inyou to get you to that point
anyway, so you deserve to bethere.
You earned their respect and,obviously, their money to do it.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, but I think the only reason it really happened
this is for those of you thatare founders it was because I
negotiated in the investment forthe Series A that I had two
votes instead of one vote onmatters like this until we got
to the B round, and I think thatmy sticking to my guns with the
(43:57):
attorney for the lead VC onthis topic I think turned out to
be a really important thing.
I feel like sometimes thesource of the money is not
always right.
Sometimes the guy who's closestto running the business may
have insight that others don't.
(44:17):
Closest to running the businessmay have insight that others
don't and I felt like, hey, Ibetter hold that vote, just in
case I may need that vote so Ican compromise on other things,
but I can't compromise on that.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, let's back up slightly.
You mentioned the beginning ofthe interview that people were
having a hard time using theircredit card on your site.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right, or any site or any site?
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, did you see conversions change immensely?
I mean, if you're looking atyour website and trying to make
the customers ecstatically happyfor 18 hours a day, one of the
metrics you must be looking atis abandonment.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Correct.
So in that particular website,I was really looking at two
things.
So definitely abandonmentCorrect.
So in that particular website,I was really looking at two
things.
So definitely abandonment isone, but the other is did they
leave any breadcrumbs behind inthe form of saving the framed
piece of art or the images thatthey were interested in in the
gallery?
So one of the things that Isort of created and invented
(45:15):
with that business was that youcould select your picture, pick
your framing options, you couldsave it and come back to it
later, and what we saw waspeople were abandoning for sure,
but they were setting up apassword-protected gallery which
(45:37):
they were coming back to andcoming back to, and one of the
challenges with getting theventure capital money was they
said what's wrong with you?
You have all these people whoare saving things and they're
coming back, but they're notbuying.
I mean, like, why do you notknow how to do your job better?
Because and I said I think it'sconsumer psychology, I think
(45:58):
there's actually they need toshow it to their spouses or
friends and that they want otherpeople to see.
And I'm thinking about it.
It's a considered purchase, andmany of these people have never
bought online or maybe theybought a book or something.
And I said I think it'sactually just we're building up
(46:20):
kind of a deferred momentum thatit's gonna happen.
And during that time I came upwith a phrase that it was rubber
band, airplane economics.
And they said what does thatmean?
And I said, well, you know,when you hold like one of these
(46:41):
balsa wood airplanes, it's got arubber band in the chassis and
it's connected to the propellerand you're turning the propeller
over and over and you'reholding that chassis and the
rubber band is twisting andtwisting and it's building up
this kinetic energy.
It's sitting still, but what ishappening is it's building up
this energy that gets convertedinto thrust.
(47:02):
When you take your hand off thechassis and you let go of the
propeller, that thing is goingto take off.
You know, it's not apparent toanybody other than maybe the
person who's watching andholding this thing that that's
what's going on, but this energyis getting converted.
I think that's what happenssometimes with consumers.
It's people who are not yetready to buy.
(47:24):
They're getting ready to buyand the challenge for all of us
as entrepreneurs is sort of whatdoes it take to encourage them?
How do you induce the behaviorthat you're seeking, and
sometimes it's a social thing,sometimes it's a budget thing,
circumstances, absolute need.
There are all kinds ofmotivators, but in this
(47:45):
particular case it turned outthat what we know, with the
benefit of hindsight, in thefourth quarter of 1998, that was
the e-commerce introduction.
That was the first time whenbusiness-to-consumer e-commerce
really took off.
It became a thing.
So it turns out, all that hardwork that I had put in in the
(48:06):
previous year and a half, thenegative cash flow, the
challenges, the internalsecond-guessing, all that nudges
I got from people that, oh Bill, you know he's crazy that
payoff came, and usually ittakes quite a long time for that
to happen.
It just happened in that periodof time.
(48:29):
It all came together and itwould be easy to say that it's
just the name, just the domain.
But the domain was the fertileground on which everything else
was built.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
It also takes the management team to execute and
make it happen.
So when you talked aboutspending the $450,000 for ARKcom
right, and then you did theraise, how much was the raise
and what percentage of thebudget budget did artcom take up
?
Because I think that sometimesdomain investors, who we're
(49:03):
trying to acquire domain fromyou know, will see that this
company has raised five milliondollars and so they're saying,
oh well, they could easily spend20 percent on domain that they
want from me and it's like well,no, they can't you know, or you
know what, what is a fair?
what was the proportion for youguys?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
so I'm doing this from memory, but I think um
we're looking at uh pre-moneyvalue was probably around eight
and a half million.
We raised maybe eleven and ahalf million.
Um, let's assume that we spentuh four,000 for the domain.
So of the 11 and a half million, we're spending 450,000 on the
(49:50):
domain Five percent or so okay.
Yeah, five percent, or anotherway of looking at it.
In terms of the traffic itwould be.
Back then, the big thing thatpeople were doing were spending
money with AOL.
You were becoming a partner ofAOL.
Maybe you'd be like a leaderwithin a particular channel or
(50:11):
merchandise category.
What I spent was the equivalentof being a one-year partner of
AOL in the if there was an art,art and framing channel, which
there wasn't at the time.
But if there was art andframing channel would be like
spending a year of that moneywith AOL.
Oh wow, so it was a.
(50:31):
It was a relative bargain.
I think the key thing is it wasthe right name at the right time
and where the name was thecategory.
There's a lot of alignmentthere.
I mentioned this because we'regonna talk about another area
(50:57):
within the internet, which isartificial intelligence, and
there are moments in time whenthere's very fertile ground
available.
It may not have been availablein interesting and valuable
before, and maybe not even twoyears later, but sometimes
(51:17):
there's a moment and I thinkthat you can agree that we're
living in that moment with AI.
Absolutely, we'll talk aboutthat, but I think at that
particular moment that was a B2Ce-commerce era when everyone,
both consumers and investors,were looking for who's the
(51:39):
leader in the space, and we werefortunate.
We were very fortunate andlucky to be alive during that
period of time.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Looking back at it now through clear eyes and the
dust has settled and you're notpart of that business any longer
.
Do you own any other stock inGetty anymore, or have you sold
all of that as well?
No, I'm completely out,Completely clear.
Other than you're sayingpotentially doing a 99-year
lease of Artcom.
Looking back at it, what do youthink you could have done
(52:13):
differently?
Is there any regrets behind itor are you just happy with how
it all turned out?
Is there any regrets behind itor are you just happy with how
it all turned?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
out Well.
I have a larger regret that Iwould share with Walmart, who's
the owner of Artcom today, andthat is, if God is good to you
and you're lucky enough to haveArtcom as a URL and you are the
leader in this space, I thinkthat the world deserves more
(52:44):
than prints and posters andinexpensive art gifts.
I think the art world is a bigplace and it would be great to
leverage the potential power ofthe domain to be able to offer a
gateway into other kinds ofproducts and experiences.
I didn't start the business onthe basis that it was forever
going to be a poster company.
(53:04):
Artcom, relative to what wewere, was aspirational.
We're selling posters and wecalled it art, which is fine, it
is, there's no problem but it'snow more than well's.
Now, more than 25 years later,I think it's time to embrace the
(53:27):
bigger opportunity that thatdomain represents or could
represent.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Do you think it's limited by Walmart?
Because of the exact sameissues you mentioned with
suppliers and supply chain.
If you're going to have aproduct on the shelves of
Walmart, you better be able tokeep up with the volume of the
product they're probably goingto sell, right?
Speaker 2 (53:54):
And the distribution that they deal with.
I think it's limited by theimagination and vision of the
people that lead the business,vision of the people that lead
the business.
I don't think you could makearguments about how grounded is
that broader vision in thenarrower needs and interests of
Walmart.
But what I would argue is, ifyou sit back and think about
(54:15):
this, how much better off wouldWalmart be if they open this
thing up?
They're only touching a smallpart of the potential.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, always there's a lot of assets that I see
around that companies aren'tusing.
I look at, loanscom is owned byBank of America and I check it
from time to time, usually aboutonce a year.
I've contacted them saying Ihave clients who would love to
own this name or recent from you.
It's just a dead page and it'samazing that they don't didn't
even put through the biggestrefinance boom, the lowest
(54:47):
interest rates ever, sure,didn't put even just a lead
generation page that was sent totheir loan officers.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
So it would seem that they should have a marketplace
that's more like progressive YepRight that opens it up and says
, hey, we're going to competewith everybody else.
Come here, right.
This is the destination.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Come here, first Do something you know anything.
It's strange, I think, if westart from the premise that all
the wrong people in life havethe power.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Unfortunately, it's usually not us.
Yeah, We'll save ourselves alot of stomach lining if we just
recognize that things don'talways work the way they should.
Yeah, but for me, as anentrepreneur, I've always had
this sense of.
I've had this very strongreality, distortion field of how
.
But how should the world be?
(55:41):
How could it be?
And I've spent now the betterpart of my life pursuing what
could be and trying to get somevalidation by the outside world
that I'm right about things.
And when it happens, that'sgreat.
It feels really good.
It's like a comedian that'sbeen killing connecting with his
(56:05):
audience.
But it sure takes a lot of hardwork as an entrepreneur to make
that happen.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
Absolutely.
You know.
People see the success but theydon't know how many times you
failed to get there Correct andthere's little failures.
Yeah, there's big mistakes, bigfailures, big failures, and you
know that gets you there.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
I think clearly, for me the single best thing that
ever happened was meeting mywife, and I've had the benefit
of a long marriage to a lovingwoman who's put up with me and
is, you know, in this thing as aco-venturer, as a you know
she's been along for the ride,the ups and the downs and
whatever challenges that I'vehad.
(56:44):
A she's been there.
And I think it's much harderfor the spouse.
I think you know there's a lotof endorphins and emotions and
psychological stuff that carriesme through.
It's not so easy to share withother people and anyway,
(57:06):
entrepreneurship is tough but ifyou don't have a partner, a
life partner that's in it withyou would make my life a hell of
a lot harder and I never couldhave done any of these things
without that support.
So I'm lucky that I had theright mother who said go for it
and don't count on my money.
So it made me be a little morecapital efficient, maybe because
(57:30):
of that Of course.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
And then a wife who didn't quit on me every time I
faced some kind of significantchallenge, and it's funny that
you say that, because a lot ofthe other entrepreneurs that
I've interviewed and then otherpeople that I've spoken to in my
life say the same thing.
It's a pretty common answer issaying that their wife is a
major part of their success andthat having a supportive family
(57:55):
is just as close and asimportant as well.
And I think in my experience mywife sees how and I'm sure he
does too is just the bodylanguage and see how you're
feeling after coming home aftera long day, and just seeing the
way you're acting and knowingthat it isn't just you're tired
from work, like something reallybad's going on, or you didn't
(58:16):
get that account, or yourdeveloper quit on you, or your
website is hacked or somethingbad, or the good stuff comes
home and surgery couldn't removethe smile from your face, and
it's the highs and lows ofentrepreneurship.
And she's there celebrating itwith you and crying with you too
, at the same time, and feelingbad about it.
And you're right, you can'thaving a supportive wife.
(58:37):
She's there that you can tellher your true feelings about
everything.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
I think the other thing is having a sense of
equanimity about things, notletting the highs get too high
or the lows get too low.
I've been doing this a longtime now and you know when
things are tough.
I've been at this long enoughto know that there's a light at
the end of the rainbow, yeah.
And when things are going greatand everybody's telling you how
(59:03):
wonderful you are andeverything appears to be so
wonderful, bad times are coming.
Yeah.
God is great about that.
It's just you know you shouldnot extrapolate on success.
Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah, it's like things are too good right now.
I need to prepare.
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast, we have
Bill Lederer.
Bill was introduced to me by mygood friend and fellow domain
broker, alan Dunn, who is theowner of NameCorp.
Bill and I spoke over the phoneand realized that he lived
about 45 minutes away from myhouse.
We decided to meet in personand, for the record, I have
never recorded a thing in mylife, but I bought a high-end
camera and brought it with mefor the interview.
(00:21):
It might look a little bit likea deposition, but I did the
best I could.
Bill was working a corporate joband moved back home to Chicago
to take over his family artsupply business that had a
handful of employees.
That was not online Now.
It was the 90s, so who was?
Bill had big plans andaspirations for the business,
but it took a radio interview inRockefeller Plaza where, after
(00:43):
a one-hour discussion, the DJcould not remember his company
name.
That's when he knew it was timefor a change.
The problem was that those whohad invested in his company did
not see the same benefits theperfect domain name would bring
to their business.
Additionally, bill had to finda way to convince the current
owner of Artcom to sell it tohim.
Hear his story and how thisdecision, amongst others, ended
(01:09):
up leading to a 200 million plusdollar exit.
This is one hell of a story.
I loved recording every minuteof it.
Thanks for listening.
(01:31):
Today, on a very special episodeof the uncomfortable podcast, I
have traveled to st petersburgto meet bill letterer, founder
and founder and the leader ofisocrates.
As chairman and ceo, he is aglobal C-level digital media and
marketing services executivewith extensive consulting,
founding, building, turnaroundexpertise in both
(01:53):
entrepreneurial and establishedcompanies, in mad tech,
programmatic trading, data andanalytics, advanced TV and
online and mobile video,internet and e-commerce,
advertising, marketing andinformation services services.
That's a lot of things.
Bill has served as a divisionalceo and or c-level executive
with kantar, wpp, tns and gettyimages.
(02:14):
He was a founder and ceo ofe-tailer artcom we're certainly
going to talk about that and aprogramic media trader, media
crossing, and is a former boardmember for public and private
companies, including WPP Digital, kantar Digital Rewards Network
, major universities andnon-profits.
He has an extensive workexperience in the Americas,
(02:37):
europe, india and Israel and hewas an adjunct professor at the
New School Graduate Program inMedia Management and is the
co-author of the leadingindustry textbook, media Selling
, the fifth edition.
You're a very accomplished manand thank you for your time
today.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Thank you, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
All right.
So there's a lot to go overhere and, as we talked about
before starting the show, isthat we like to kind of hear a
little bit about your backgroundand then and then get into what
you know you're up to now.
So you know someone likeyourself.
I think a lot of people don'treally always see the struggle
to get where you are and theysee c-level titles and they see
(03:18):
you know you're a professor at acollege, a a very accomplished
author.
You know you've started a lotof very popular businesses.
You ran Getty Images for aperiod of time.
You know why don't you tell usyour story about how you got
there and how you accomplished alot of these things?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, let's see.
Thank you, let's see.
It doesn't feel like I'veaccomplished a lot of things.
It definitely feels like I'm onthis journey and I had a lot of
experiences.
Let's see, I think all of thisbegan a little bit out of a
state of envy and curiosity.
(03:55):
For me, as a digitalentrepreneur, this really
started by watching a fellow whowas working at a firm similar
to one that I had been workingat on Wall Street, where he and
his wife left to go to Seattleto go sell books on the World
Wide Web, and I saw thathappening in real time and saw
(04:21):
Bezos stand up Amazon and startselling books.
I saw Bezos stand up Amazon andstart selling books and I'm to
(04:52):
CD-ROMs with music and DVDs.
It immediately, I think, Iunderstood that business model
and where that was going andsaid, okay, what would be
another category that perhapswould have higher margins and a
little bit more barriers toentry?
It might be another attractivearea within B2C where I could
leverage skills that I haddeveloped working on Wall Street
(05:17):
, being a quant, doing data andanalytics and working with
technology, and I picked printsand posters.
I thought that the web was notintrinsically text-based, but
that instead, with ultimatelyubiquitous bandwidth available
and having it be very cheapwhich I thought would be the
(05:38):
case that it's really sight,sound and motion.
It was just a matter of timefor this to evolve.
When Amazon started, peoplethought, well, this is a
text-based medium.
I'm like sound and motion.
It was just a matter of timefor this to evolve.
When Amazon started, peoplethought well, this is a
text-based medium.
I'm like no, no, no, no, it'snot text, it's going to be sight
, sound and motion.
It's just a question of howfast this innovation can diffuse
across society.
And I picked prints and posters.
(06:00):
I picked something visual whereyou needed a lot of selection,
where the supply chain didn'tquite already exist to be able
to do fast fulfillment and wherethere's a little bit more
barrier to entry, and I was veryfortunate.
I got in early, but I didn'tget in with artcom.
(06:22):
Like a lot of entrepreneursvirtually all of us we learn by
making mistakes.
Very few of us come out withperfect business plans and
they're executed flawlessly andit works exactly the way that
you thought that it would.
Very rarely does that happen.
So in my case, I startedArtUframecom and it was pretty
(06:43):
good.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
How would you spell that?
Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
A-R-T-U-F-R-A-M-Ecom, and the time frame was May 5th
of 1998.
Okay, and we launched, and veryquickly we discovered that
people were not comfortable touse a credit card to make a
purchase on the internet.
And boy, it sure takes a longtime to load these images online
(07:12):
if you're a consumer.
And how many clicks you had togo through to get through the
shopping cart to make a purchase.
And they may or may not have anemail address.
Let's just say that these wereearly days on the World Wide Web
, not to mention the fact that Iwas running another company at
the same time, and so my wifewas putting up with me, letting
me essentially reinvest ourlimited resources into this new
(07:34):
business, and we did a verysteady five orders a day on
average through the course ofthe late spring and summer of
1998.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So, speaking of your wife, real quick and sorry to
interrupt, so you were in NewYork as a quant, so you were
doing I was in Connecticut as aquant.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Okay, I wound up moving to Chicago to look after
my family business and my dadwho was getting sicker and
sicker.
And when I came up with thisidea of artuframecom, I was
living in the northern suburbsof Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
So when you were obviously probably making a
quite a decent living.
You're an intelligent person inthe corporate world, you know
working at a financialinstitution and you go to your
wife or you say I want to quitand open an art business which
you involved in art at the time,or you just kind of studying it
.
Was it on a?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
whim.
I was involved with artsupplies and picture framing
materials, which was our familybusiness.
It was not prints and posters,but prints and posters are often
sold where art supplies andpicture framing is sold, so I
was aware of it as a tangentialpart of my professional life.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So when your father became ill, did you take over
his business and help him duringthat time?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I absolutely did not, knowing that he was ill with a
terminal illness and that I wasgoing to lose him shortly.
So I had no idea.
What I did know was that Iwould go to see my customers,
who were largely retailers,sometimes mail-order catalogs,
wholesalers.
Invariably I would watchconsumers having a tough
(09:12):
experience in stores and withmail-order companies and I would
observe and say, oh, I thinkthe Internet could probably do
this a whole lot better.
And I would make thatobservation quietly to myself,
talk to my customers and sayhave you thought about having a
presence on the Internet?
And 100% of the clients saidwhat are you crazy?
(09:32):
No one's ever going to buy thisonline for any number of
reasons.
And I said well, you knowthere's a lot of success right
now in the book business on theInternet.
Why wouldn't prints and postersand framing of prints and
posters be done online?
But no one shared my interestor enthusiasm for the likelihood
that that would happen.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Okay, and when you brought this up to your father,
when you were taking over thebusiness that you were going to
kind of bring it online, or toyour other family members, what
did they think about?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
it.
That would never have been apossibility.
First of all, my father passedaway in 1996, so this would have
been the beginning of Amazonand I wouldn't have talked about
it with him.
But my father was aDepression-era guy and the idea
that you would be involved witha negative cash flow startup,
the idea that somebody would bemaking these purchase decisions
(10:26):
on the world wide web, that justthat they really wouldn't fit
for somebody who had come fromthat generation.
So in some ways, I reallydidn't want to lose my dad and
my business partner under anycircumstances.
But the fact that he wasn'tthere to say no and would allow
me to be able to reinvest myearnings in this crazy
(10:47):
enterprise it wouldn't havehappened while my dad was still
around, and I'm too respectful ason that I wouldn't have gone
against his demand that I stickto the way the business had
always been done.
So he wasn't there to say noand my mother, as it turns out,
(11:07):
was there to say yes.
So my mother heard what I wasinterested in and she said oh,
this makes perfect sense to me.
There's just two things.
The first is I said oh great,mom, so you're supportive.
Oh, yeah, she said I thinkyou're really built for this.
Whatever this industry is goingto be, this is, this is you.
(11:30):
But there's just two things.
I said yes and she said well.
The first one is don't screw upthe family business.
We work awfully hard to get itto where it is, so don't, don't
mess that up.
And the other is please don'task me for any money yeah, so
there you go.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
At least she was very upfront and honest about that.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Well, that was always my mother.
So we got started with Art youFrame and I think your listeners
might appreciate this.
I had a seminal moment at oneof those lightning strike
moments that really was veryinspirational.
And the story is this it wasSeptember of 1998, I think the
(12:05):
beginning of September and I wasdoing I just finished an
interview with CBS Radio Networkin New York.
I was at Black Rock on 6thAvenue and the interview had
gone fine.
The interviewer said you know,you're really great at this.
This seems to be an industryyou're really comfortable with.
You're a fun interview and Ireally wish you good luck with.
(12:28):
He just spent the last hourtalking to me about ArtUFrame
and ArtUFramecom.
I'm getting on an elevator,elevator doors are closing and
he's stammering.
He cannot remember the name ofthe internet site that I run
that he'd just been interviewingme for an hour about.
So as the doors closed, Irealized I have a brand problem
(12:51):
and I said to myself I am notgetting off this elevator until
I fix this problem, because ifthis guy can't remember, that
means nobody else is going toremember either and all I can
say is Luckily, the building was80 stories tall because you had
time to think about it, right?
I was on an upper floor.
I had the time to think itthrough and as the elevator
(13:15):
doors opened, I got that lookfrom New Yorkers waiting to get
on the elevator.
That's a famous look thatanybody who's ever been to New
York has had, which is sort ofthat insistence of hey, you're
holding me up, you know you'rein my way because I'm not
getting out of the elevator.
I'm still thinking through theresolution and finally what
comes to me is it's art.
(13:36):
Stupid, keep it simple.
Stupid.
He remembered the art.
He didn't remember the U-frame.
Just keep it simple.
It's art, artcom, that's it.
And so these people are lookingat me.
Door is open, I'm on the groundfloor, it's time for me to get
out, and on my mind is get to aphone.
So I get out of there.
People look at me, give me adirty look as they're getting
(13:56):
into the elevator and I go outand this will tell you how long
ago it.
I walk out onto Avenue of theAmericas, 6th Avenue, and I go
to a payphone.
Remember payphones.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Oh yeah, I remember those yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So I go to a payphone .
I made a collect call to theoffice back in Chicago and I
said who owns artcom?
And that began an ordeal.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So, before the ordeal begins, to paint the picture
for everybody listening,including myself, when you made
that phone call and you said youcalled the office.
How many people worked for you?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
do you think at that time, At Art you Frame, we
probably had about maybe 20people, Maybe 20.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Maybe 20.
Maybe 18 to 20.
And before you went online, wasit about the same size company
and working with the vendors, orno?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
No, it was smaller, smaller business Because we
weren't in the art and framingbusiness.
We were in the art supplies andpicture framing materials
business.
That's a business that wasstructured very differently, so
it was a smaller business.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Okay, and then were you sourcing the things you were
selling online from the peoplethat you were selling to before
and using the community?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
We weren't online at all.
There was no online presence.
I had no experience online.
I had never done anythingonline.
I hadn't bought, I hadn't soldnothing.
I'd spent a lot of time on pornsites and CDW and CD Universe
and Dell and a few others, but Ireally was not an internet
(15:27):
person until that time that Ispent getting Art Uframe online.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Uh-huh and all right.
So you called the office andwho's in the office that you
called at the time?
What was the structure of thebusiness?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
I should clarify the reason I was on the porn site
was strictly for the business.
I was there to study thebusiness models, that's it.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I mean things that I've read is that porn has been
a pretty big industry that hasadvanced the internet immensely,
I think, with video andpictures and downloading and yes
, it's hosting and things likethat.
It's been very, it seems thatway.
Yeah, of course, it's alwaysabout research.
So you call, call yourco-worker, or who is the person
(16:06):
that you called in the office tosay find me, the owner of
artcom.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
I called I'm not sure who I called.
I called somebody in the office.
They looked it up in the ICANNregistry to determine who had
the domain and it turned out itwas something called Advanced
Rotorcraft Technology.
And I'm thinking AdvancedRotorcraft, it's a helicopter
consulting business doingdefense industry consulting and
(16:34):
I'm like I got it ART, likethat's crazy.
Oh well, they're clearly notbenefiting from the highest and
best use of that domain, yep,they're clearly not benefiting
from the highest and best use ofthat domain, yep.
So I called California andadvanced rotorcraft technology.
I said may I speak to thepresident?
(16:55):
And the immediate response Igot is our URL is not for sale.
Stop bothering us.
And I said oh, oh, wait aminute, I'm.
I don't know what this isconcerning, but I'm I'm trying
to speak to the president of thehelicopter consulting firm.
I don't know what you're saying.
She said people bother us allthe time.
They call here and they theywant to buy our domain and URL
(17:18):
and it's not for sale.
And I said, well, that that'sgood to know, but that's not why
I'm calling, which is, of ofcourse, why I was calling.
But clearly I was going to getpast her if I said, oh, that's
unfortunate Yep.
So instead I get through and afellow says you know, hello.
He introduces himself and Isaid you know, before I talked
(17:40):
to you about the purpose of mycalling.
I said it was a curious thing.
I called and I hear that youhear that your URL is not for
sale.
And I said what's that allabout?
So he begins to tell me thestory that he had registered the
domain when it was ARPANET andhe was doing work in the defense
industry.
Never occurred to him that thiswould have any commercial value
(18:01):
.
But as the internet began tobecome a viable channel for
media and marketing, all of asudden people seemed to care.
So in time frame this is 1998,and he said this is just a
nuisance.
And he said, man, every singleday.
(18:22):
I said, oh, so it's reallydisruptive to the business.
He goes.
Yeah, he said man, he said uh,every single day.
I said, oh, so it's reallydisruptive to the business.
He goes.
Yeah, he said you know, we'relike a helicopter consulting
firm.
We get maybe a phone call a day, but with these guys they call
all the time.
It's really a problem.
They said, oh, uh, that that'sunfortunate.
I said, well, you shouldprobably get rid of the problem,
so it makes your life easier.
And he goes well, how the hellam I going to?
(18:42):
Said I don't know, get rid ofthe domain, I guess.
And he goes yeah, I could dothat.
But he said my email is tied tothe domain.
And I said, well, I'm suresomebody could give you like a
redirect.
And he said yeah, it's sort ofa pain in the neck.
I said which is a bigger painin the neck to set of an email,
forwarding email, or theseconstant calls that you're
(19:06):
getting".
And he goes yeah, they send meemail too, and they're really
bothering me.
They send mail.
And I said, well, it seems to methat you ought to try to get
rid of the nuisance.
And he goes Well, how would youdo that?
And I said I don't know, exceptone of their offers.
He goes, yeah, he goes.
I don't know how much it'sworth, but it's got to be a lot.
He goes.
I said, well, how much trafficdo you get?
Well, he knew his traffic.
(19:27):
And he told me and I did somequick math and I'm like okay,
this is one of the most valuabledomains in the world,
interesting.
The price that would be paidessentially is like buying
permanent advertising, you'regoing to get all this traffic.
So I said, well, maybe I couldhelp you out.
(19:49):
And he goes how?
And I said you know what?
I'll buy the domain from you,I'll take it off your hands.
And he goes really, you woulddo that.
And I said, well, how much doyou want for it?
And he said, oh well, geez,it's gotta be worth I don't know
at least half a million dollars.
I'm like that's nuts, that's acrazy number.
And it actually wasn't thatcrazy because of the amount of
(20:11):
traffic it was getting.
And it wasn't.
They weren't doing anything topromote it, it wasn't, you know,
they weren't selling anythingthere that was relevant and he
goes well, of course.
Yeah, no, I'd take less thanthat.
So we worked on what thatnumber might be.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
He still has no idea why I'm calling.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
He thinks I'm calling about something to do with the
helicopter and he goes.
But you're not going to pay methat kind of money.
I said you know what I'll do.
I'll wire you $10,000 right nowfor a nonrefundable deposit,
giving me the option to purchaseat that price for a limited
period of time, could you do?
(20:49):
that he said yeah, I mean, Isaid do you have a good use for
$10,000?
He goes.
Yeah, he said he goes, butdon't you wanna talk about
helicopters?
And I said well, let's finishthis discussion first so we work
it out.
And I said so, do we have adeal?
And he said yeah, put it inwriting.
He said but I'm a man of myword.
And he said you send me themoney and you can send me
paperwork.
(21:09):
He goes okay, now why did youcall?
And I said well, I hate tosound like a total scoundrel,
but it occurs to me that this isreally a good idea, this artcom
.
And he goes well, do you have abusiness that you would use it?
And I said not yet, but I'mhopeful.
But I said I'm a man of my wordand I literally got off the
(21:33):
phone.
I sent him the $10,000.
Simultaneously sending him thecontract.
I'm not sure which got therefirst, but I took care of both
of them at the same time.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So at this point in time, you took over your dad's
business.
You're growing it intosomething from 5 to 20 people.
You're going down to New Yorkdoing a radio show talking about
it.
So you obviously had momentum.
You're totally all in on thebusiness.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
This is right, so you obviously had momentum.
You're totally all in on thebusiness.
Yes, this is 1999.
98, 98, 98.
Yep, how the hell are you goingto come up with 490?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
000 more dollars after you sent them.
Yeah well, we agreed on anumber under 500 000 but it was
uh north of 450 000.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Okay, but how did you know?
Even like even now, that's awholeload of cash.
Good question.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
All right.
So what do you do when youdon't have the money to purchase
something that's of value andthere's a sort of a story
associated with it?
Well, if you're a digitalentrepreneur, you're a creative
person who doesn't take noeasily and who has a lot of
passion and stick-to-itiveness.
(22:40):
So I wrote a business plan andI got my ass out to California
and I was fortunate to haveBenchmark and SoftBank agree to
fund a business where use ofproceeds would include the
purchase of the artcom name andthat's how I would pay for it
(23:03):
that I would have other people'smoney pay for allowing me to
exercise the option to buy thedomain.
So that's how I figured I woulddo it.
It was going to be using otherpeople's money in the context of
a business plan, taking Art youFrame to another level.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So how does a person from Chicago who isn't in the
circles of VCs an art?
Guy get to two of the biggerVCs in the world, who are the
most popular ones, even get anappointment and then get them to
give you money?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
How does that even happen?
That's an excellent question,thank you.
So this is not easy.
You're gonna have to beprepared to hear no or get no
response, where they gocompletely silent.
Or sometimes they say yes andthen they say no, or they just
go silent after saying yes.
There's a lot of bumps alongthe way.
In my case it was cold outreachto Benchmark.
(24:04):
There really was no other wayto do this, both for myself and
someone that I hired.
We basically blitzed Benchmark,focusing on getting their
attention.
Interestingly enough, they havea different view of things.
I think those principles ofbenchmark today would say oh
(24:27):
well, you know, we thought ofguy.
But I have a different memoryof it and my memory was a
constant barrage of outreach toget their attention, which
ultimately ended up in a phonecall, in a meeting and
(24:52):
interestingly enough, theyreally weren't paying much
attention to the idea of buyingthe artcom name.
I didn't know that.
I thought that this was goingto be like one of my key assets.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It turns out that that's actually not what they
were thinking.
They made their name and theirmoney in fund number one,
investing in eBay.
So, in the case of eBay, whatdoes eBay mean?
It could mean anything.
So their thought was well, youdon't need to have a special
name or URL to be successful inthe consumer Internet.
The product and the consumerexperience should be enough.
(25:24):
And I disagreed.
I thought this is a case wherewe had the right brand at the
right time.
So what wound up happening wasthat we were able to close on
the financing.
By the way, we got SoftBankbecause Benchmark introduced us
to SoftBank.
Benchmark accepted and thendeclined the deal and introduced
(25:44):
us to SoftBank.
Softbank called Benchmark andsaid "'Thank you very much, "'we
love the guy, "'we love thedeal, "'we want the whole thing,
"'we'll take your allocation aswell as our own'".
And then Benchmark said to hellwith that.
It's our deal.
So we wound up getting the twoof them, which worked out fine
until we had the first boardmeeting.
(26:05):
And at the first board meeting,our Benchmark partner said I've
thought about it and I reallydon't think the money should be
used to buy the URL.
So I don't support using ourmoney to buy the URL.
Let's go all in on television.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Which is definitely the way it was in the 90s,
without a doubt.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
To give everyone an idea, we're talking about the
fourth quarter of 1998.
Among other things, that periodof time was known as the
beginning of Black Friday.
It was the beginning of thishuge online push for Christmas
shopping, but at the time thegeneral feeling was well we'll
(26:50):
use traditional methods.
And I thought no, no, no, no,like we've already proven that
digital advertising and digitalmarketing works for our time,
for for our business, but you'vegot the ability to buy this
block of traffic and this nameand this is extremely valuable
and way undervalued at thatprice.
(27:11):
It was very clear that we had,we had, a complete win, but it
was every.
It was clear to everyone exceptour board of directors.
Most of the board membersthought well, you know
television, that's what other?
We had a complete win, but itwas clear to everyone except our
board of directors.
Most of the board membersthought well, you know
television, that's what otherpeople are doing, it's what eBay
was going to be doing.
We'll go with TV.
And this was a case where thecharismatic, visionary founding
(27:31):
CEO, who actually had a controlof the board from a voting
standpoint, said yeah, we'regoing the other way.
We're not doing television,we're going to buy the Artcom
name and we're going to be amarketing presence, not spending
so much time and effort andmoney offline.
That purchase of Artcom was themaking of that business and
(27:56):
subsequently, in the variousversions of Artcom, was the
making of that business andsubsequently, in the various
versions of Artcom as a businessthat have happened subsequently
.
I would say it certainly is avery key asset.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
So at that time I don't know I'm too young to
remember how VCs were then buttoday, when I hear about a VC
investing in a company, it'susually not anything to do with
artwork, because artwork likethat posters, frames, things
like that isn't very sexy.
It's not a new technology, it'skind of I don't want to say
(28:28):
it's boring, but it's just astandard, regular business.
And so if they're not going tolet you run with the domain, why
would they even bother to giveyou money when any other art,
larger art supplier out therethey could just go and work with
them with more of anestablished business model and
more shops carrying and more youknow, more power behind it and
(28:49):
a more experienced managementteam.
That's what I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So at that moment, if you think about what looked
like it was successful on theinternet in these B2C companies,
it didn't appear that the namewas going to be that important.
It was more like did you havefirst mover advantage?
Did you have focus?
Did you have an extrememaniacal focus on the customer
(29:18):
experience?
Back then, more establishedcompanies were thought to be
more like an anchor and so, forexample, why would Michaels be
more successful at this than wewere?
There are many reasons whythose more traditional retailers
moved too slowly.
You know why didn't BarnesNoble catch up to Amazon and
beat Amazon in the book businessand never got close?
(29:40):
So I think that the story then,as it is now, is a small group
of incredibly focusedindividuals.
In my case, I had some domainexpertise within that particular
industry but I mean, I wasworking 18 hours a day, every
day, seven days a week,completely and totally focused
(30:01):
on absolute customer joy.
We had an incredibly positiveexperience from the consumer
standpoint and that really drovethe business.
It wasn't the advertising wewere very good at affiliate
marketing and other things but Iwould say it was the execution
of the model.
It was pretty flawless, toughfrom a profitability standpoint.
(30:25):
In the near term it became avery profitable business but,
like many Internet companies, ithad to go through that very
early discovery process.
But by the end of the firstyear we were hitting 14 million
in run rate revenue and thebusiness was clearly on fire.
The ultimately we monetized byselling to get images in a stock
(30:49):
transaction.
But the alternative was to goto a B round which was heavily
oversubscribed in a nine-figurepre-money valuation.
God bless them.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So let's back up a little bit.
So you get artcom, you have theboard meeting, you get what you
want.
You're the petulant young guywith the older board that you
said nope, we're going to do itmy way.
You get the name?
How long did it take for you toprove that you were right?
When did you start to see thenumbers?
(31:20):
Well, I'm actually changed.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
I was very fortunate.
So basically within 30 days Ihad complete total proof
positive that we're headed inthe right direction.
A lot of it had to do withtiming.
So by the time we had the boardmeeting and I executed the
purchase of the domain in full,we did some redesign of the
(31:44):
website, which was alreadyunderway.
We bought a database calledArtPrintIndex that allowed us to
be able to be really the onlycomprehensive database of all
the prints and posters publishedin the world.
That allowed us to be both awholesaler and a retailer.
(32:04):
When we put those piecestogether, it was all within 30
days and we hit Thanksgiving of1998.
The day after Thanksgiving, allthe DNSs around the world
updated from ArtUframe to Artcom.
We did 500 orders that dayafter Thanksgiving of 98.
(32:27):
We did 15 orders the previous24-hour cycle.
Oh wow, the website never didless than 500 orders a day from
then on.
So it was a very, veryfortunate experience.
A lot of good things happenedand we knew within 30 days we
had a total win on our hands.
(32:48):
So then, as an entrepreneur,the next two challenges become
okay, we need to go raise a newround.
Okay, we need to go raise a newround.
And the immediate response fromthe board was we're not going
to accept less than anine-figure pre-money value,
because you clearly have got abig win here.
For us, that was one challenge,so now I've got to go focus on
going out and telling the storyto a new group of people, as
(33:11):
opposed to running my business.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
So second issue is we became an apparent success to
everybody else as well.
So then you're gettingeverybody in the world wants to
do business with you, includingwanting to acquire you.
So it becomes this massivedistraction to hey, I'm just at
the beginning of trying to buildmy business and I've got all
this stuff I want to execute inthe coming year.
So had a lot of ambitious folksaround us and a lot of options,
(33:41):
a lot of ways that we couldhave gone wrong, but we got
lucky again in terms of steeringtowards a good outcome.
The ultimate challenge in thatperiod of time became the board
really would like to do anotherround, a B round, with a monster
valuation.
And I had come from Wall Streetbefore all this and have a
(34:03):
pretty good sense of cycles andthe lack of the danger of
extrapolating on things.
And I said, if we do a B round,these people are gonna need a
venture-like return on theirinvestment.
How likely is it that we'regoing to get public or sold
within a few years?
That's going to give them thatreturn.
(34:24):
What's the likelihood of that?
And then sort of, if we don'tdo it, what's the implication?
And I looked at the stockmarket and I said the market's
not going to stay like this thisincredible B2C frenzy that was
going on in 99 and I said Idon't think this is gonna last
more than a year, or two at most, and it looks like I'm gonna be
the last guy out of the boat.
(34:47):
Meanwhile, I had been looking atGetty Images as a company and
I'm like, oh my god, thiscompany is so well positioned to
do well in a digital economy,but they have three or four
things they need to accomplish.
Maybe I could help them toaccelerate the transition that
they need to go through.
So one plus one equals three.
That might be an interestingstock to have and I wonder if I
(35:12):
could help them to make thattransition and if I'd be better
off to be a minority shareholderin a public company that's got
solid revenue, profitability andit's going to benefit from
tremendous positivetransformation.
So we ran this process wherewe're looking at these different
(35:35):
alternatives.
There was no investment bankers, just me and the board figuring
things out, and we wound upgoing with Getty Images.
The business was sold.
For those of us that took thestock and held it, we wound up
exiting an evaluation that woundup being worth just under a
quarter of a billion dollars fora business that did two million
(35:57):
in revenue in the first 12months in business Wow.
And we sold it on the one-yearanniversary exactly the one-year
anniversary of the day westarted taking revenue.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
What do you think your dad would have said about
that?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Well, I think he would have had me sell the
business a hell of a lot earlier.
You think so Definitely.
I don't think he would haveseen the risk that I had to take
every day in that business andsay, oh my God, what are you
doing?
I'll give you a small example.
One of the things about theBezos set as a standard for the
rest of us was that consumersthought that if they placed an
(36:31):
order, they should get itshipped pretty much immediately.
Yep, they weren't thinkingabout what's happening with the
supply chain, they just figuredthe logistics are.
It ships right away.
Well, let me just tell you, ifyou're gonna have 120,000 prints
and posters in your databasethat's fuelable by the consuming
public and they wanna put acredit card through and they
think they're gonna getsomething immediately you better
(36:53):
be a genius, because otherwiseyou're gonna go out of business.
On the working capitalrequirement of carrying the
inventory, because at that timethe distributors didn't carry
inventory.
A distributor in the print andposter business meant that you
had the right to resellsomething, but typically they
weren't sitting on physicalgoods, or at least extremely
limited inventory.
So you had huge supply chainissues about how are you going
(37:16):
to get from the original imageto something that was shippable
the same day or the next day tothe client by UPS or FedEx.
And there were a lot of thingsthere that we had to figure out
in order to be able to make thiswork.
Essentially, you don't want tochoke on your working capital,
your inventory.
So how do you know whatmerchandise to carry when
(37:40):
nobody's ever done this before?
So there were things, because Ihad come from the domain where
I had a leg up from thebeginning on the deals.
I negotiated the inventory.
We carried what we didn't carry, what we had other people carry
for us, lots of things likethat.
How do you ship a single framedpiece of art without it
(38:01):
breaking?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
I mean, how would you like an 80 inch diagonal or 60
inch piece of artwork sent tosomebody?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Just even a 24 by 36.
That alone, when I firstentered the business, ups and
FedEx wouldn't give me anaccount to ship.
They wouldn't give anybody anaccount to ship a single frame
piece of art.
They wouldn't allow it.
That was the standard corporaterule was no, there's too much
breakage yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
So I worked with a cupcake company to acquire a
domain and I asked why aren'tyou shipping more?
And they said it's an absolutenightmare shipping cupcakes
because most of the time theyget the cupcakes and the
frosting is a mess.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
And then the customer complains and you say well, how
the hell are we supposed toship cupcakes unless you freeze
them?
But if you freeze them.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
They don't work.
People don't like thawing outcupcakes.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I can tell you that there were hundreds of these
things that occurred along theway.
In the beginning I couldn't getpeople who were publishers in
the print and poster business toactually give me a commercial
account.
They thought that if I scannedthe images and put them online,
somebody would scan or take downthe JPEG and reproduce it
(39:10):
themselves, and they wouldn'tbuy it.
I said do you have any ideawhat the quality of that is?
It doesn't work that way, butthat's what they thought.
Then they thought well, you'regoing to cherry pick us.
You only pick the you know thebest of our things.
I said no, I'll take everything.
Give me everything that you'vegot.
Then they thought oh well,there must be a scam involved.
The only way that we could startthe business after 29 days of
(39:31):
trying to get the leadingpublishers to supply us and none
of them would publishers tosupply us and none of them would
was we had to agree to takeevery image of one particular
publisher had.
We would scan it, annotated, itwould be in the available in
the database.
And he said no matter what Isend you, it has to be there.
And I said absolutely so.
He sends me everything thathe's got and we've got to scan
it and put it online.
Well, about one out of every 20images was completely
(39:54):
pornographic.
Are you you?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
kidding.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Hardcore.
Hardcore gay porn.
Wow, had no idea.
Had absolutely no idea.
So about a week later he saidwell, where are we?
I said it's all done.
And he said I don't see itonline.
I'm on your website, I don'tsee it.
He said I'm going to leteverybody in the industry know.
You know you're not a man ofyour word.
And I said no, it's there.
I said give me a skew number.
So he gives me a skew number, Itype it in and I said it's
(40:19):
right there.
And he goes what are youtalking about?
I said type it in, he goes.
Oh, he said well, how come Ican't find it?
I said well, that's not myproblem, it's on there.
He goes.
Wait a minute.
He said it's on there.
Well, if I type in, so, and sohe goes, it doesn.
And I said oh well, I guessit's not annotated in the
database to be able to do that.
But I said if they know whatthey're looking for, they'll
(40:41):
find it.
Yeah, he goes.
Oh, you're a very tricky guy.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
And I said I'm a man of my word.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
I did exactly what I said I would agree to do, do you
?
Speaker 2 (40:52):
think he was trying trouble getting distribution for
his pornographic posters.
Okay, so he was trying to findan alternative distribution
channel.
Okay and so, but he said hegoes.
You are a man of your word.
He said you're a very goodbusinessman.
He said it's okay, you can useour name.
So I immediately recontactedall the people that turned us
(41:14):
down and I said we have thisextremely well-known distributor
who are now carrying theirimages.
And they said, oh, okay.
And so we got pretty mucheverybody else.
But man, those first 29 days inbusiness, that was tough.
We didn't have the artcom name.
We didn't.
(41:34):
You know we UPS and FedExwouldn't give me accounts
because I was shipping out of myhome.
At that time you weren'tallowed to be able to do
commercial shipments out of ahome.
Oh, really, yes, they wouldn'tbecause the truck wouldn't come.
And then, when they did come,they said, oh, this is a framed
piece of art.
We can't do individual framedpieces.
So I had to re-engineereverything to figure out how to
(41:59):
ship it without breaking it.
And you have to make money soanybody can do something to
redesign a package so it doesn'tbreak, but you have to do it in
such a way that it's actuallyyou can make money because you,
if you over engineer it, all themoney will.
All the profit will be tied upin the packaging.
So there's tons of those issues.
The rebranding of the businesswas absolutely critically
(42:20):
important to the success of thebusiness in that period of time
and it became an incrediblyimportant asset.
Should I have sold the nameinstead of leasing the name when
we sold the business and sortof kept a long-term right to the
name?
That's a possibility.
It wasn't in my thinking at thetime to do sort of a hong kong
(42:41):
lease hold the name, lease itfor 99 years and have it come
back to me in 100 years.
I guess that's something thatwe could have done.
But uh, no, no regrets thepower of a name boy.
The real test was not that.
The real test was for me, as afounding CEO, to sit in a board
meeting, our first board meetingwhere there was a real test of
(43:06):
the confidence the board had inme, for me to say, no, we're not
going to spend the money ontelevision, we're going to buy
this URL, when at that timethere was really no proof
statement that that was going tobe such an important factor in
the success of the business.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, I mean, but you obviously did it with such
conviction and they believed inyou to get you to that point
anyway, so you deserve to bethere.
You earned their respect and,obviously, their money to do it.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, but I think the only reason it really happened
this is for those of you thatare founders it was because I
negotiated in the investment forthe Series A that I had two
votes instead of one vote onmatters like this until we got
to the B round, and I think thatmy sticking to my guns with the
(43:57):
attorney for the lead VC onthis topic I think turned out to
be a really important thing.
I feel like sometimes thesource of the money is not
always right.
Sometimes the guy who's closestto running the business may
have insight that others don't.
(44:17):
Closest to running the businessmay have insight that others
don't and I felt like, hey, Ibetter hold that vote, just in
case I may need that vote so Ican compromise on other things,
but I can't compromise on that.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, let's back up slightly.
You mentioned the beginning ofthe interview that people were
having a hard time using theircredit card on your site.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right, or any site or any site?
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, did you see conversions change immensely?
I mean, if you're looking atyour website and trying to make
the customers ecstatically happyfor 18 hours a day, one of the
metrics you must be looking atis abandonment.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Correct.
So in that particular website,I was really looking at two
things.
So definitely abandonmentCorrect.
So in that particular website,I was really looking at two
things.
So definitely abandonment isone, but the other is did they
leave any breadcrumbs behind inthe form of saving the framed
piece of art or the images thatthey were interested in in the
gallery?
So one of the things that Isort of created and invented
(45:15):
with that business was that youcould select your picture, pick
your framing options, you couldsave it and come back to it
later, and what we saw waspeople were abandoning for sure,
but they were setting up apassword-protected gallery which
(45:37):
they were coming back to andcoming back to, and one of the
challenges with getting theventure capital money was they
said what's wrong with you?
You have all these people whoare saving things and they're
coming back, but they're notbuying.
I mean, like, why do you notknow how to do your job better?
Because and I said I think it'sconsumer psychology, I think
(45:58):
there's actually they need toshow it to their spouses or
friends and that they want otherpeople to see.
And I'm thinking about it.
It's a considered purchase, andmany of these people have never
bought online or maybe theybought a book or something.
And I said I think it'sactually just we're building up
(46:20):
kind of a deferred momentum thatit's gonna happen.
And during that time I came upwith a phrase that it was rubber
band, airplane economics.
And they said what does thatmean?
And I said, well, you know,when you hold like one of these
(46:41):
balsa wood airplanes, it's got arubber band in the chassis and
it's connected to the propellerand you're turning the propeller
over and over and you'reholding that chassis and the
rubber band is twisting andtwisting and it's building up
this kinetic energy.
It's sitting still, but what ishappening is it's building up
this energy that gets convertedinto thrust.
(47:02):
When you take your hand off thechassis and you let go of the
propeller, that thing is goingto take off.
You know, it's not apparent toanybody other than maybe the
person who's watching andholding this thing that that's
what's going on, but this energyis getting converted.
I think that's what happenssometimes with consumers.
It's people who are not yetready to buy.
(47:24):
They're getting ready to buyand the challenge for all of us
as entrepreneurs is sort of whatdoes it take to encourage them?
How do you induce the behaviorthat you're seeking, and
sometimes it's a social thing,sometimes it's a budget thing,
circumstances, absolute need.
There are all kinds ofmotivators, but in this
(47:45):
particular case it turned outthat what we know, with the
benefit of hindsight, in thefourth quarter of 1998, that was
the e-commerce introduction.
That was the first time whenbusiness-to-consumer e-commerce
really took off.
It became a thing.
So it turns out, all that hardwork that I had put in in the
(48:06):
previous year and a half, thenegative cash flow, the
challenges, the internalsecond-guessing, all that nudges
I got from people that, oh Bill, you know he's crazy that
payoff came, and usually ittakes quite a long time for that
to happen.
It just happened in that periodof time.
(48:29):
It all came together and itwould be easy to say that it's
just the name, just the domain.
But the domain was the fertileground on which everything else
was built.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
It also takes the management team to execute and
make it happen.
So when you talked aboutspending the $450,000 for ARKcom
right, and then you did theraise, how much was the raise
and what percentage of thebudget budget did artcom take up
?
Because I think that sometimesdomain investors, who we're
(49:03):
trying to acquire domain fromyou know, will see that this
company has raised five milliondollars and so they're saying,
oh well, they could easily spend20 percent on domain that they
want from me and it's like well,no, they can't you know, or you
know what, what is a fair?
what was the proportion for youguys?
Speaker 2 (49:21):
so I'm doing this from memory, but I think um
we're looking at uh pre-moneyvalue was probably around eight
and a half million.
We raised maybe eleven and ahalf million.
Um, let's assume that we spentuh four,000 for the domain.
So of the 11 and a half million, we're spending 450,000 on the
(49:50):
domain Five percent or so okay.
Yeah, five percent, or anotherway of looking at it.
In terms of the traffic itwould be.
Back then, the big thing thatpeople were doing were spending
money with AOL.
You were becoming a partner ofAOL.
Maybe you'd be like a leaderwithin a particular channel or
(50:11):
merchandise category.
What I spent was the equivalentof being a one-year partner of
AOL in the if there was an art,art and framing channel, which
there wasn't at the time.
But if there was art andframing channel would be like
spending a year of that moneywith AOL.
Oh wow, so it was a.
(50:31):
It was a relative bargain.
I think the key thing is it wasthe right name at the right time
and where the name was thecategory.
There's a lot of alignmentthere.
I mentioned this because we'regonna talk about another area
(50:57):
within the internet, which isartificial intelligence, and
there are moments in time whenthere's very fertile ground
available.
It may not have been availablein interesting and valuable
before, and maybe not even twoyears later, but sometimes
(51:17):
there's a moment and I thinkthat you can agree that we're
living in that moment with AI.
Absolutely, we'll talk aboutthat, but I think at that
particular moment that was a B2Ce-commerce era when everyone,
both consumers and investors,were looking for who's the
(51:39):
leader in the space, and we werefortunate.
We were very fortunate andlucky to be alive during that
period of time.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Looking back at it now through clear eyes and the
dust has settled and you're notpart of that business any longer
.
Do you own any other stock inGetty anymore, or have you sold
all of that as well?
No, I'm completely out,Completely clear.
Other than you're sayingpotentially doing a 99-year
lease of Artcom.
Looking back at it, what do youthink you could have done
(52:13):
differently?
Is there any regrets behind itor are you just happy with how
it all turned out?
Is there any regrets behind itor are you just happy with how
it all turned?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
out Well.
I have a larger regret that Iwould share with Walmart, who's
the owner of Artcom today, andthat is, if God is good to you
and you're lucky enough to haveArtcom as a URL and you are the
leader in this space, I thinkthat the world deserves more
(52:44):
than prints and posters andinexpensive art gifts.
I think the art world is a bigplace and it would be great to
leverage the potential power ofthe domain to be able to offer a
gateway into other kinds ofproducts and experiences.
I didn't start the business onthe basis that it was forever
going to be a poster company.
(53:04):
Artcom, relative to what wewere, was aspirational.
We're selling posters and wecalled it art, which is fine, it
is, there's no problem but it'snow more than well's.
Now, more than 25 years later,I think it's time to embrace the
(53:27):
bigger opportunity that thatdomain represents or could
represent.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Do you think it's limited by Walmart?
Because of the exact sameissues you mentioned with
suppliers and supply chain.
If you're going to have aproduct on the shelves of
Walmart, you better be able tokeep up with the volume of the
product they're probably goingto sell, right?
Speaker 2 (53:54):
And the distribution that they deal with.
I think it's limited by theimagination and vision of the
people that lead the business,vision of the people that lead
the business.
I don't think you could makearguments about how grounded is
that broader vision in thenarrower needs and interests of
Walmart.
But what I would argue is, ifyou sit back and think about
(54:15):
this, how much better off wouldWalmart be if they open this
thing up?
They're only touching a smallpart of the potential.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, always there's a lot of assets that I see
around that companies aren'tusing.
I look at, loanscom is owned byBank of America and I check it
from time to time, usually aboutonce a year.
I've contacted them saying Ihave clients who would love to
own this name or recent from you.
It's just a dead page and it'samazing that they don't didn't
even put through the biggestrefinance boom, the lowest
(54:47):
interest rates ever, sure,didn't put even just a lead
generation page that was sent totheir loan officers.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
So it would seem that they should have a marketplace
that's more like progressive YepRight that opens it up and says
, hey, we're going to competewith everybody else.
Come here, right.
This is the destination.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
Come here, first Do something you know anything.
It's strange, I think, if westart from the premise that all
the wrong people in life havethe power.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Unfortunately, it's usually not us.
Yeah, We'll save ourselves alot of stomach lining if we just
recognize that things don'talways work the way they should.
Yeah, but for me, as anentrepreneur, I've always had
this sense of.
I've had this very strongreality, distortion field of how
.
But how should the world be?
(55:41):
How could it be?
And I've spent now the betterpart of my life pursuing what
could be and trying to get somevalidation by the outside world
that I'm right about things.
And when it happens, that'sgreat.
It feels really good.
It's like a comedian that'sbeen killing connecting with his
(56:05):
audience.
But it sure takes a lot of hardwork as an entrepreneur to make
that happen.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
Absolutely.
You know.
People see the success but theydon't know how many times you
failed to get there Correct andthere's little failures.
Yeah, there's big mistakes, bigfailures, big failures, and you
know that gets you there.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
I think clearly, for me the single best thing that
ever happened was meeting mywife, and I've had the benefit
of a long marriage to a lovingwoman who's put up with me and
is, you know, in this thing as aco-venturer, as a you know
she's been along for the ride,the ups and the downs and
whatever challenges that I'vehad.
(56:44):
A she's been there.
And I think it's much harderfor the spouse.
I think you know there's a lotof endorphins and emotions and
psychological stuff that carriesme through.
It's not so easy to share withother people and anyway,
(57:06):
entrepreneurship is tough but ifyou don't have a partner, a
life partner that's in it withyou would make my life a hell of
a lot harder and I never couldhave done any of these things
without that support.
So I'm lucky that I had theright mother who said go for it
and don't count on my money.
So it made me be a little morecapital efficient, maybe because
(57:30):
of that Of course.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
And then a wife who didn't quit on me every time I
faced some kind of significantchallenge, and it's funny that
you say that, because a lot ofthe other entrepreneurs that
I've interviewed and then otherpeople that I've spoken to in my
life say the same thing.
It's a pretty common answer issaying that their wife is a
major part of their success andthat having a supportive family
(57:55):
is just as close and asimportant as well.
And I think in my experience mywife sees how and I'm sure he
does too is just the bodylanguage and see how you're
feeling after coming home aftera long day, and just seeing the
way you're acting and knowingthat it isn't just you're tired
from work, like something reallybad's going on, or you didn't
(58:16):
get that account, or yourdeveloper quit on you, or your
website is hacked or somethingbad, or the good stuff comes
home and surgery couldn't removethe smile from your face, and
it's the highs and lows ofentrepreneurship.
And she's there celebrating itwith you and crying with you too
, at the same time, and feelingbad about it.
And you're right, you can'thaving a supportive wife.
(58:37):
She's there that you can tellher your true feelings about
everything.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
I think the other thing is having a sense of
equanimity about things, notletting the highs get too high
or the lows get too low.
I've been doing this a longtime now and you know when
things are tough.
I've been at this long enoughto know that there's a light at
the end of the rainbow, yeah.
And when things are going greatand everybody's telling you how
(59:03):
wonderful you are andeverything appears to be so
wonderful, bad times are coming.
Yeah.
God is great about that.
It's just you know you shouldnot extrapolate on success.
Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah, it's like things are too good right now.
I need to prepare.
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