Transitioning from a Developer to a Distributor of Mobile Games: Lon Otremba, CEO of Tylted (Part 2)

Sramana: Once you realized that the large corporate environment of a place like Procter and Gamble was not for you, what did you do next?

Lon Otremba: I was offered the opportunity to get into the media business with a company that published trade magazines. It was an opportunity to sell magazines and make more money than I otherwise would have. I was introduced to the technology industry that way. We launched a magazine called VarBusiness in the late 1980s for value-added resellers. Those were the days of emerging technologies, and it was fun because I became the publisher of the magazine. In many ways I got to exercise creativity. It was a terrific learning experience.

After that I moved to PC Magazine, where I was the associate publisher. I dealt with successful technology companies. I still knew that I wanted to do something more. One day some people approached me and told me that they had an idea for a media company in technology but it would be entirely in digital media. This was in late 1993. Earlier that year I had seen a demo of the Mosaic browser. I was captivated by the potential of a browser for the digital media.

They showed me their business plan, and I spent six months helping them kick ideas around for the business. In the middle of 1994, I left the best job in the media industry to join a startup called CNET as a founding VP. My job was to develop a revenue model for the business. I got a lot of stock and not much of a salary. I had no doubt that the business would do amazing things, but I also felt that if it did not work that I could go back and get a great publishing job again.

We launched some early cable TV shows towards the beginning of 1995. We did some distribution deals and got the website up that year as well. We went public in 1996 and all of my stock was fully vested in 1997. I was then approached by some investment bankers who had another idea for a business that was based on email. It was a tough choice because my stake at CNET was tapped out and it was a chance for me to spend some more time in New York.

I approached my partners and told them of my desire to take on this next business opportunity. They wished me luck and told me that if there was a chance to do some deals in the email space to let them know. We launched Mail.com, which became an outsourcer of webmail and we hosted mail for 25 of the top 50 ISPs. We ended up doing it for AltaVista, Lycos, Prodigy and a host of other players. It was an interesting business that grew fast. We went public in 1999. The crash hit and we sold the majority of that business to a division of AT&T, at which time I took my exit.

I thought that I might sit on the beach for a while. I did a few projects for VCs and then I got a call to go help out at AOL. I decided to put my big company hat on and go help out over there. It was a lot of cleanup and there were a lot of challenges. For a big company, it did feel entrepreneurial there. It was interesting and highly complex, and I was very proud of the work I did there.

When the leadership change happened, there was a lot of transitioning within key positions. At that time I received a call from a recruiter I knew regarding a business that had been acquired by some private investors. The recruiter would not tell me the name of the business because she felt that I would say no based solely on the name. We sat down and talked about the opportunity and I met the private equity owners. It was a company called Muzak, which is a subscription business for commercial music. It was an interesting opportunity that required very deep operational and branding changes. I loved every minute of it until the end. My goal of taking over the business was to position it for a sale. I was not able to do that. It turned into more of a turnaround situation than I anticipated.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Transitioning from a Developer to a Distributor of Mobile Games: Lon Otremba, CEO of Tylted
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