A serial entrepreneur, Kevin O’Connor’s latest venture is FindTheBest, a company that offers comparisons on everything from credit cards to golf courses. Prior to FindTheBest Kevin was a founder of DoubleClick, which Google ended up buying for $3 billion.
In this episode of Founder Stories, O’Connor takes us back before his DoubleClick days to when he joined Atlanta’s Internet Security Systems during its infancy. He tells host Chris Dixon what a 20-year old college dropout had to do with him signing with the startup. Speaking of those early days, O’Connor says, “I don’t think any of us realized it would be a billion dollar company.”
Below, O’Connor discusses life after ISS and the path he and Dwight Merriman took en route to creating DoubleClick. He says the two quit their jobs, spent six months brainstorming products and initially struck out with a job service site. As O’Connor tells Dixon, the two “made a fundamental mistake” while pitching potential clients.
Dusting themselves off, they struck gold while conceiving scores of ideas out of O’Connor’s basement. The idea for DoubleClick was crowned the winner and after taking center stage O’Connor says, “I went upstairs and I told my wife… the search is over, tomorrow we start the business.”
Make sure to watch both videos for additional insights along with past episodes of Founder Stories which can be found here, especially this one with former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan.
Kevin O’Connor serves as the CEO of FindTheBest.com, a website designed to aid consumer decision-making online. Previous to FindTheBest, Kevin founded O’Connor Ventures, a VC firm that specializes in technology startups. Kevin was also CEO, Founder, and Chairman of DoubleClick. In March of 2008, Doubleclick sold to Google in for US$3.1 billion. O’Connor also helped launch other software entities including ICC and Internet Security Systems (Nasdaq: ISSX). He started ICC with Bill Miller and Michael Schier in 1983...
DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. Companies come to DoubleClick for expertise in ad serving, media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium.
Internet Security Systems, Inc. is the security advisor to thousands of the world’s leading businesses and governments, providing preemptive protection for networks, desktops and servers. An established leader in security since 1994, the ISS integrated security platform is designed to automatically protect against both known and unknown threats, and helps to keep networks up and running and shields customers from online attacks before they impact business assets. ISS products and services are based on the proactive security intelligence of...
FindTheBest is an unbiased, data comparison engine that collects and organizes objective information about hundreds of products and services. From dog breeds to smartphones to financial advisors, FindTheBest defines custom taxonomies through which to understand hundreds of products and services. FindTheBest presents data in easy to use tables, comparison pages, and detailed views. All data is human curated, and stripped of marketing influence. In addition to FindTheBest.com, FindTheBest owns and operates FindTheData.org. Founded by Kevin O’Connor, previous CEO/Founder of DoubleClick....
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
