TWiST, Lockhart Steele of Curbed
Date: May 11, 2009
Guest: Lockhart Steele, CEO of Curbed
Since its launch in May 2004, Curbed has established itself as the center of the virtual conversation about real estate in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond. Sales and rental prices, celebrity deals, new developments, amusing broker stories, hot restaurants, and the latest neighborhood gossip—it’s all on Curbed. Updated a dozen or more times throughout the day, and liberally spiced with reporting and dish from readers, Curbed has become a daily fix for tens of thousands of NYC residents—and the most-trafficked neighborhood and real-estate weblog on the web.
Curbed is the flagship of the Curbed Network, a collection of neighborhood blogs. Our other sites are Curbed SF and Curbed LA; the restaurant blog Eater; the retail and fashion blog Racked; and, during the summer season, The Beach, which covers the Hamptons.
Ask Jason: (01 min.)
- Jason Roberts, web based version of PowerPoint company, took longer to create and Google released similar product, what does he do now? Lesson release early and often, Why do people like it? Not really sure, best thing to do is start on a new project, open source his current project and maybe keep 20% of ownership. How do I keep ownership if it is opensource (freezo (sp?))? Own domain name and hosted version and maybe ask for donations and explain your situation to the public if it doesn’t work move on.
Discussion: (10 min.)
- Lockhart’s background (not his porn name, his real name)
- He’s been blogging for a very long time
- Had a drink with Nick Denton (Gawker, founder) in reality it was an interview
- Blogged about life, neighborhood, Red Sox
- Home and Garden for the Hamptons magazine was able to experience the backbone of it’s working ended up as Managing editor
- Nick approached him again for experience with print side and blog experience and worked on the editorial side of Gawker
- Prefers to hire bloggers if you like their blog.
- Mis-hires were when he thought bloggers were accomplished
- Blew his first big blog addition, gambling (OddJack)
- Smart thing about Nick was he does admit when something isn’t working he shuts it down right away and moves on.
- Curbed success is highly localized.
- Paid $500 for Curbed.com domain name
- Curbed grew while he was at Gawker
- Real Estate developed noticed Curbed and started to make some money
- The money started to become the reality but he still loved Gawker, thought he would lose his mind running 2 blogging companies and decided it he would leave Gawker
- Discuss Curbed.com
- Pay for placement for ads in Curbed wanted to have better content for user.
- Funding was an Angel Round 1.5 mil.
Questions: (1:15)
To Lockhart:
- What is the minimum you will sell Curbed for? 6 million
- How does Lockhart feel about the rumor he is trying to buy 4chan? lol
The News: (43 min) Andrew Warner, Mixergy
- Facebook no mother breast feeding but will allow Nazi content – Old story (AOL) had same problem, Stupid move on Facebook’s part to not understand the difference between motherhood and pornorgraphy should have had a warning instead. Hate speech tough issue people have the right to be an idiot, should create an official forum where x is allows and if you want to talk about it you go here. Believes in having an official versus unofficial company sponsored area.
- Tumblr success may be porn sites, intentional or not – intentional to grow the site however when you get bigger you either hide it or get rid of it for advertising
- Sproutbox says go after the revenue first instead of build it and they will come, not really a new idea depends where you are as an entrepreneur if you don’t have VC funding you need to be making money now VC funded companies have a bit more money and may not be as efficient. Key issues are who is the entrepreneur, the team and what is the market.
- Sirius XM loosing audience to Iphone apps. – Pandora kicks butt, as a car tech. Sirius XM works until autos get internet connection.
- Google getting close monopoly issue, do they have an unfair advantage? No, cost to switch search is free, up to entrepreneurs to make a more compelling product. Google advertising space may be close, Apple is very anticompetitive, Apple should open up their product and they will sell more in the long run
- Twitter getting into search, will they be a threat to Google? No, you get sentiment from twitter but it will not solve your problems. Search will be their business.
- Facebook platform developers may get 500 mil. in revenue about same as Facebook a lot from virtual goods – virtual goods are real and not crazy.
- Unemployment may climb to 11% – a lot of people out their expectations are lower more interested in learning, good for entrepreneurs can hire better people.
- Venture Capital down, will we start losing good companies – no, we will lose bad companies they will still invest in good companies.
Dead Pool:
- None added
Notable Quotes:
- (18min.) Jason, “When hiring here a tip the reason you guys are tuning into This Week in Startups if you want to know if someone can actually dig a ditch watch them actually dig a ditch if they actually can dig a ditch you maybe you would want them to dig a ditch for you”
- (41: min.) Jason “If I can’t have them I’ll make you pay more for them”
- (41 min.) Lockhart “We always hated that strategy”
- (1:21) Jason “That swing is one of the great things about US entrepreneurship if we didn’t bet so heavy we wouldn’t win so heavy” that is why we have all the global companies Ebay, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft only one brand built outside US that is dominant in the US is Skype.
- (1:22) Jason “If you play safe poker guess what you make into the it to the top 20% everytime but you never win”
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