Passing the torch

Succession stories are often associated with anxiety, trepidation and bewilderment; particularly when a founder passes over the reigns.  It’s the exception, rather than the norm, when succession happens naturally, which is why I’m so thrilled with the way Sphere/Surphace’s leadership has evolved. It will come as no surprise to our partners or anyone else following our progress that we’ve entrusted the reigns of the business to Josh Guttman as our next CEO.  Working with my co-founders Martin Remy and Steve Nieker, he’s made Sphere/Surphace hum and has earned the title.

Josh joined Sphere in the second half of 2007, after a lengthy and persistent appeal process. He fully believed in our business and value proposition from the start and it was apparent from the vigor with which he approached me. Once on the team, he applied that same vigor to business development, turning over every rock he could find and signing partnership after partnership, including several of our largest. When we were acquired by AOL in April 2008, we asked Josh to lead our expansion across the AOL universe and represent us on the ground in NYC.  He did so admirably, guiding our contribution to AOL while ensuring that our existing business continued to prosper. Without being asked, he assumed leadership of Product Development, Advertising Management and Design and each of these areas has improved significantly under his stewardship. In March, we named Josh COO and his command of the business has only improved since.   He oversaw some great hires in product development and business development in 2009, and led an inspiring retreat at our annual get together in September.  

My decision to step down was made easier knowing that Surphace is in excellent hands. Josh is the right leader for the business today. He’s a natural leader and a great guy to work with – earning consistent praise from all. Mapping out an exciting product pipeline for the next twelve months, Josh has provided Surphace with the ingredients to continue to prosper as a standalone business within AOL. I couldn’t be more pleased for Josh and excited for the Surphace team. Please join me in raising a virtual toast!

Next.

It’s been almost five years since Martin Remy, Steve Nieker, Toni Schneider and I started working on Sphere.  For me, it’s around 10% of a life. And it’s a time when I find myself thinking a lot about a particular question: What do I want to do next?

In 2005, I had the good fortune of being on the founding team of Sphere and joining True Ventures simultaneously. I always thought that I’d eventually focus all of my attention on one or the other, but both were too much fun and I guess I’m selfish in that way.  As time passed, I went deeper into each role and I never got around to choosing one or the other. It worked out nicely. True is on its second fund and Sphere had a successful sale to AOL in 2008. Most importantly, Sphere’s business and team are both thriving within AOL. While I’m proud of my contributions to both, the heroes in this equation are Martin, Steve, Toni, Shea DiDonna, Braughm Ricke, Om Malik, Puneet Agarwal, John Burke, Phil Black, Jon Callaghan, Marty Moe, Bill Wilson and AOL – they trusted and empowered me to pursue both. I am extremely grateful.

As I’ve thought through the question of what’s next, I’ve realized that I love the complementary perspectives acquired from building a company as an entrepreneur and investor. They are symbiotic roles and it’s really hard to say which has influenced me more. While my role at True as a Venture Partner will continue to deepen (because there is nothing more rewarding than working with people you admire and trust), I also find myself with a burning need to start another company. I’ve discovered my formula and doing both makes me happiest.

As for my next company, I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, but I’ve decided that I need to move on from Sphere (now Surphace) to figure it out.  This may feel like old news as I’ve been working to make myself obsolete as Josh Guttman transitioned into the CEO role. My decision is easy as I know that Surphace is in excellent hands. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving if I didn’t believe that Josh was the right leader for the business today.  He’s a natural leader and has a strategy for the future that I believe is going to accelerate growth for Surphace and AOL. I couldn’t be more pleased for Josh and excited for the Surphace team.

As for my thoughts about Surphace and AOL’s future, I’m more optimistic than ever. We joined AOL at an opportune time. AOL is doing what great, sustainable businesses do every so often – they’re reinventing themselves. As the business model of the oldest and one of the biggest Internet businesses evolves, Sphere/Surphace has become an important piece of their strategy to reach across and engage the web. In the past year, we’ve had an insiders’ view into how AOL’s new leadership team has moved aggressively to engage their audience (new vertical focused websites; a focus on engagement and not page-views for page-views sake; hiring leading journalistic talent when others downsized; acquisitions in the local content space; shorter development cycles with an emphasis on release, iterate and release). There is nothing like winning and the AOL publishing business is winning. As a result, I’m pleased to also announce that I’ve agreed to serve as a Special Advisor to AOL Ventures as they reinvent themselves. I am thrilled at this opportunity to evolve my relationship.

I want to give a huge thanks to the people who’ve made the last few years what they were: my family tops the list, an entrepreneur is only as good as their support system and this is my secret sauce. My co-founders, Martin and Steve, who trusted me to play a role in helping them get the tech they invented the exposure it deserved. Toni and Phil who taught me about generosity at a moment when I was able to learn. Matt Mullenweg who opened up my thinking of how a start-up operates.  Marty and Bill who have been consistently supportive since Day One – I can’t underscore enough how much I appreciate the manner in which they’ve empowered us to thrive in an appropriately independent environment. They have treated me (and the Sphere team) with enormous respect for which I am both thankful and flattered.  The original Sphere team, the current Surphace team who have embraced AOL. Our investors and advisors who supported and helped shape our vision. The True team and entrepreneurs who have taught me about sacrifice, vision, execution and the value of pursuing your dreams — and, of course, Lewis Dvorkin, Kevin Lockland and Bill who paid us the nicest compliment of all in offering to acquire our company and then doing so.

It’s been a thrilling, at times difficult, always rewarding and lucky ride I’ve been on. Thanks to all.

Doing business the Sphere way….

This is a good shot of the Sphere business team during a strategy session, courtesy of Lu at COD Ranch. This is, quite naturally, our preferred mode of operation…in front of a roaring fire, laptops at the ready, coffee/tea in hand. In this photo (counter-clockwise starting from left): Josh Guttman, Adam Embick, Jeff Yolen and Tony Conrad.

Sphere – On The Rocks?

Smoky and the team are on a ranch in Southeastern Arizona (we’re staying at the COD Ranch – hat tip to the gang at Automattic who found the place) for an on-site get together – most companies call that an off-site but for us, it’s a rare opportunity to all be in the same place for a few days of hanging out, coding up a few new features (look for announcements soon) and to consume just a few beers

Salon ’sphere

Welcome aboard Salon!! Salon is the latest publisher to join the Sphere universe. They join Reuters, Time, WSJ, AOL, CBS, Washington Post, Newsweek, Major League Baseball and many others already in the Sphere. Salon is an online-only publisher that produces seven original content sections as well as two online communities — Table Talk and The WELL. The content sites, updated daily, include News and Politics, Opinion, Technology & Business, Arts & Entertainment, Books, Life and Comics. Founded in July 1995 by David Talbot, Salon has been widely acclaimed and recognized in the media for its compelling and provocative reporting.

They were equally innovative with their use of Sphere’s technology, designing a further reading box that sits beneath the main content section of every story. Sphere powers related articles from Salon, related blog posts from the Salon blog network and related stories from third party mainstream news outlets – as you can see if you scroll down the page on this recent Barack Obama article. The feature has been a big hit, generating very high initial click-thru-rates, which tickles us all…..another example of great execution and teamwork by Adam’s team working with the Jim Ruga and Brent Whitney from Salon. Well done all!!

Some PR

Josh in the spotlight on Jason Falls’ Social Media Explorer…..he also updated our blog this week

Cigars Everyone

Troy and his wife Kate have a brand new baby girl. Troy joined us in 2007, a great addition to our talented client services team.

Congratulations, Kate and Troy.

Bienvenue Josh…

Josh on December 18th, discussing the best value proposition in widget-ology…..

 

Virtual Champagne

Our co-founder, Martin, celebrated his birthday today. Working in a company with a virtual office, the best we can do is offer a Virtual Champagne toast – here’s to you Martin, Joyeaux Anniversaire!

Virtual Pizza, Anyone?

End of September, Om Malik asked me to share Sphere’s experiences (on his new, very popular blog Web Worker Daily) of what it’s like to build a virtual company. Everyone of our key team members are living in different areas – the four founders are based in San Francisco, Seattle & Denver. We have team members living in Vancouver, Portland, Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Our Advisors are based in San Francisco, Connecticut, New York, Boston and Atlanta. In the post, we talked about the tools we use to keep everyone on the same page, working toward the same goals.

We also talked a little bit about the challenge creating a culture that serves as a foundation for success. The culture piece is a little less straightforward. In fact, I’ve never met five of our key team members. Here are a few obvious things we do to develop a feel for each other:

• we make sure we talk multiple times each day, EVERYDAY
• we do a group call every Tuesday (Tech team) and Friday (Business Team)
• we engage people on a series of projects before signing them on as team members
• the founders meet physically at least once a quarter

We’re also trying a few new things. We’re opening our internal blog up to our Advisors and Investors who have a vested interest in Sphere – we hope this will foster a stronger bond between our team and the people most supportive in helping us pursue our dream. Another example, last month we had a pizza party – the idea was that each team member would receive a pizza at their homes for a group call and mini celebration of our accomplishments to date – it kinda worked and kinda didn’t. Everyone was excited about it but it was logistically a bit hard to pull off. A couple of our team members did get their pizza (see below photo from our SysAdmin Mike) while the rest of us were jealous to hear their greasy hands on their keyboards. I think we’ll try it again as everyone liked the idea.

If you’re building a virtual company, we’d love to hear your thoughts on what does/ doesn’t work in your virtual environment.

Finally – An Advisor For Each One of Us On The Team!

It’s hard to put a value on a winning team. It’s like the commercials touting quality time and precious moments. It’s priceless.

It’s one thing to know you have a good product or to feel instinctually that what you’re doing is right, groundbreaking even.
It’s quite another thing to attract the caliber of talent that’s been drawn to the Sphere Operating Advisory Board.

Simple yet sophisticated, Sphere has already won accolades from the technical press and blog community, which is no small feat in the Web 2.0 era of daily launches of new app’s. The applications for Sphere’s technology are brimming with promise. We announced yesterday that Josh Macht and Ron McCoy are joining our Operating Advisory Board (see announcement). Adding the editorial production expertise of Josh and technical acumen of Ron can only signal wise and important developments to come.

The Sphere board of Operating Advisors is already a stellar group. Toni Schneider, the type of guy you hope you get to work with on a number of fun problems. He led Oddpost, helping Iain (Lamb) and Ethan (Diamond) to change the web mail space and now he’s working with Matt Mullenweg (also a Sphere Advisor) and the Wordpress community to create an intuitive, community driven blog experience. Matt, wise beyond his years and just plain brilliant brings a wealth of knowledge about blogs and bloggers. Wordpress gets some of the best buzz in the blogosphere for simple tools, openness and responsiveness. Mary Hodder was thinking, writing and talking about blogs before the term was a hot button. Her instincts about the user experience and community are noteworthy. And, if you know anything about Scott Kurnit, you know he’s one of the quickest and sharpest minds working behind the scenes for the companies he thinks are both interesting and valuable to the net community.

So with Josh and Ron, we now have six Operating Advisors to work alongside our six team members – one for each of us – . More importantly, we’ve added depth to our team to help us think through scaling and how editors and algorithms can work together to create a great discovery experience. These guys are already making a big difference in how we think about both of these areas and I’m excited to see if you like some of the upcoming changes we’re making to the service. A great product, a warm reception, a winning team. Priceless. Stay tuned.

Calling All Rock Star Engineers

Sphere is Hiring

Sphere is getting too popular, so we’re hiring! We’re looking for some talented, passionate self-starters to join our team and help us keep up with Sphere’s growth. We’re looking for:

• a Partner Engineer to help us create and deploy solutions for our publisher partners;
• a Software Engineer – Search to help us grow our infrastructure;
• a Crawling Team Member to help keep content acquisition humming along; and
• some talented QA people to help us ensure quality across all of our processes.

If you’re a talented, motivated, Web 2.0 enthusiast who can maintain superlative productivity in a distributed environment, check out http://www.surphace.com/jobs to get more detail.