JOBS: #14: my start ups

I had an opportunity to work with some startups that came from my Delrina/Symantec stint.

• peoplescape: a play on words with Netscape. My long time friend Ben was ceo of this startup to build a database of candidates and then sell subscriptions to corporations. It was funded by an executive search firm… another example of how you can’t create a disruptive solution when you are vested in the status quo. The mission morphed into our becoming a retainer search for mid level candidates…I got fired because I wasn’t a good recruiter… fair enough. When the mission “pivots” that much to protect the old guard, you are doomed.
• Balisoft: an ip internet voip cust service solution…circa 1996. Ahem, computers did not ship with mics ( we actually gave mics away to help customers get min requirements), the download was over 14mb and took forever… and of course this requires set up before being used….this was a good idea but too much before it’s time;
• Lanacom: a web site screenscraper that would visit news sites and your competitors sites and lanacom would display the data in A crawler. It was a bit fragile as websites evolved it became harder to accommodate all the html tags so it required a fair bit of daily rebuilds. Then there was the pricing issue: no one wanted to pay much and it was being set up for a retail channel… we went to internet world in la and on the first day Netscape (prominent browser at the time) and Microsoft introduced rss feeds for free: pick tbe ones you want. Lanacom was pre emoted.
• netiva: a Java based database designer invented by rob shostak of dBase fame. It was a cool wysiwyg dept database took… that they wanted to sell direct. They wanted to focus on finance but had no testing or other data to address security concerns.

These come under the heading of “this dog won’t hunt”.

I then got a call from a recruiter: established product I had used, a market focus I liked, a recognizable brand… done. I joined in June of 1999.