TWiST, Brian Alvey of Crowd Fusion
Date: May 2, 2009
Guest: Brian Alvey, CEO of Crowd Fusion
Crowd Fusion is the ultimate vertical publishing platform , combining the best features of existing applications like blogs, wikis, feed readers, vertical search, workflow tools, revision control and tagging into a uniquely capable solution. Simply put, Crowd Fusion is more than just an engine for creating and easily updating a Wikipedia, CNET or IMDB in every vertical — we also add relevant news and information from around the web and powerful applications for interacting with your data.
Crowd Fusion changes the way vertical news is gathered and experienced — eliminating pain points for publishing teams and building sites that are remarkably more useful for your audience. Crowd Fusion puts you in control of your content, your brand and your destiny.
Discussion:
- What is Crowd Fusion
- Their History together and how Brian got to where he is at Crowd Fusion
- How Money raising went
- What’s it like to be CEO
- Brian’s management style
Questions: (33:00 min.)
To Brian:
- JustinVincent: How much of the product did you develop before you were funded? Half, he had a lot built before he left AOL
- SteveMCStud: Great product how much does it cost? Hosted solution it’s for enterprises
- RJBudke: What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? Weblogs Inc. took out a second mortgage on house
- Lons: What is the one business decision you wish you could take back? Hiring too fast
- JustinVinscent: Could you have gotten the funding with a PowerPoint? Depends who you are
- DaleDietrich: What is it really like having Jason as a business partner pros and cons? He is like a big and little brother to him kind of love/hate their relationship is unique due to their long relationship.
The News: (53:30 min.) Rich Demuro
- Disney joining Hulu, leaves CBS as odd man out, what does it mean for YouTube? They are screwed
- Kickstarter.com raising capital for artist – Great idea
- IAC buying Interactive Urben spoon – depend why they bought the application
- Tagito buy and sell usergenerated items – not going to work.
- Mint new feature financial fitness – great idea
- Facebook will never get to Twitters openness and Twitter will eventually be a bigger company.
- MySpace 3 new executives, not advancing quickly, fresh set of eyes might be helpful
- I’m Shopping human assisted shopping from community experts – yes it could work, likes the name, nice design.
- 5to1.com unique advertising website – Brian thinks it is compelling
Dead Pool: (1:22)
- Geocities
Notable Quotes:
- (23:00 min.) Jason, “Typically the people who say other people are lucky are the people who have never even swung the bat”
- (27:00 min.) Brian Channeling Jason, “Just get it out the door”
- (27:30 min.) Jason, “Perfection is I guess the enemy of progress”
- (38:00 min.) Jason, “People who are like I can’t do something because I don’t have money are crybabies”
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