Meebo, which connects users with their friends across social platforms, emerged from the ashes of an idea Seth Sternberg and his team had for “file sharing between friends that had IM in it.” Those early days of development saw more misses than hits—“kind of depressing” says Sternberg in this episode of Founder Stories.
After more than a year of tinkering, Meebo finally found its magic formula and launched in 2005. Right from the get-go they heard from their users, but admittedly didn’t totally grasp the scope of what they created. As Sternberg admits, “a lot of commerce sites were calling, bloggers were calling and we did not get it.”
In the above clip, Sternberg explains why.
In part II of the interview below, Sternberg and host Chris Dixon discuss the importance of understanding the respective roles of the team—and keyed in on the evolving role of the businessperson.
“I was the one who couldn’t code, therefore I was the CEO,” says Sternberg. “As the businessperson pre-launch I was buying the sandwiches… frankly the businessperson for a start up doesn’t do a lot pre-launch,” he says. Dixon comments on this thought by saying, “I have seen teams breakup before they got to that point because of that feeling of imbalance.”
However, such perceived imbalance can quickly turn into an invaluable asset. As Dixon and Sternberg note, it is the businessperson who can help strike deals and raise money for the team once the engineers actually have something worth selling.
Part II of the interview is below.
Past episodes of Founder Stories can be found here.
Seth Sternberg co-founded Meebo. Seth, a Connecticut native, worked in IBM’s mergers and acquisitions department, while also working on corporate strategy and venture capital initiatives prior to starting Meebo.
Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder’s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that...
Meebo is a consumer internet company focused on driving user engagement across the web, reaching approximately half of the U.S. internet population. Our flagship product, the Meebo Bar, provides publishers and advertisers a surprisingly simple way to leverage this massive audience by organically weaving content engagement and brand experiences into the consumer’s web experience. The Meebo Bar is currently integrated into hundreds of premium websites and hosts rich, engaging advertising from many of the top Fortune 500 brands. Meebo...
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