Internet Advertising Pioneer: Kevin O’Connor, Founder of DoubleClick and FindTheBest (Part 5)

Sramana: Part of the advantage in vertical search is the ability to zero in on a market segment using a precise taxonomy.

Kevin O’Connor: Absolutely. That is why we built a platform that lets us handle virtually any taxonomy. If you look at shopping comparison engines, you will see they are a price comparison engine, which makes them weak. We pull out a taxonomy for a product or service that goes beyond price.

Sramana: Do you run different sites for different verticals?

Kevin O’Connor: We do. FindTheBest is for products and services. FindTheCompany is for accessing and sharing information about companies. FindTheBest is our flagship.

When you use FindTheBest, you simple choose a category and you are then taken to the taxonomy. We start with a category, for example, education. Within that category we have topics that are comparisons. A comparison could be colleges, or medical schools, or law schools. Once you drop into a comparison, the taxonomy is completely different.

Sramana: Who comes to your site compared to something like Kayak?

Kevin O’Connor: We do very little in travel. Our top category is business and finance. Within that category, we do products such as venture capital firms, credit cards, investment banks, and a lot of other broad features.

Sramana: What is your business model? Do you have any paid search?

Kevin O’Conn0r: Primarily it is advertising. Our goal is to be completely unbiased and broad. We do have sponsored searches, similar to Google. We will drive leads, and we will get paid when someone buys a product or service. We have a lot of comparisons that don’t have paid leads.

Sramana: What is the biggest money-generating category?

Kevin O’Connor: Enterprise software. We have a lot of people paying for leads in these categories.

Sramana: What level of traffic are you doing now?

Kevin O’Connor: We are pushing 25 million unique visitors a month now.

Sramana: In terms of revenue where are you at?

Kevin O’Connor: We just started building revenue eight months ago and are doing very well. We have raised some more money to invest aggressively. We are at more than $5 million of revenue.

I wrote a book, “Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out Of Nothing,” which was published in 2003. That is where I wrote my ideas of tying everything together. How do you start from nothing and come up with a great business? There are three things I stress as important. First, what is the primary purpose of a business? It’s solving a problem better than anybody else. If you do that all the customers will come to you and you generate profit. When I see companies saying their goal is to grow revenues by 10%, I see that as a wish. How are you going to do it?

Second, the team is crucial. You have to build the team that can make it all happen. I like to hire smart, competitive people. I want to hire people who hate to lose. I want people who have worked on teams. You need people who are smart, not book smart. There are people who have done great in school but they can’t solve problems. Regurgitating facts is nothing. That’s a dog trick. The most interesting problems are the ones that you cannot find on Google.

Sramana: So your goal is to hire competitive, capable people who like to solve problems? Do you worry about whether they can get along?

Kevin O’Conner: Absolutely. People who have worked on teams before, especially those who have led teams, are great additions. When people come on board, we realize that they are always going to pursue their self-interests. We don’t try to suppress self-interest. Self-interest is good. We try to align their self-interest with the company interests. A good person can move to any group he or she wants. Their managers cannot hold them back. Our managers get measured by how many people they bring in, cultivate, and move out of their group. Career paths are not linear.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Internet Advertising Pioneer: Kevin O'Connor, Founder of DoubleClick and FindTheBest
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