Online Audience Sampling Scaling Super Fast: uSamp CEO Matt Dusig (Part 4)

Sramana: What were the circumstances behind that acquisition? Did they approach you? What was the rationale behind selling? Matt Dusig: They came to us in the summer of 2004. They were going public in August and they wanted to make an acquisition. They made us an offer that we laughed at. At the time, we

Read Full Article »

Online Audience Sampling Scaling Super Fast: uSamp CEO Matt Dusig (Part 3)

Sramana: What was your process of collecting the individual data that your master database comprised? Matt Dusig: We would go to an affiliate and pay them a dollar for each person who signed up on our website. As the people signed up on our website, we had them fill out profiling surveys.

Online Audience Sampling Scaling Super Fast: uSamp CEO Matt Dusig (Part 2)

Sramana: What was the nature of the contract work that led to $30,000 of revenue and a new business model? Matt Dusig: We were talking to a research firm in LA about wireless polling. They wanted to let people coming out of a movie theater be able to provide their thoughts and opinions about the

Read Full Article »

Online Audience Sampling Scaling Super Fast: uSamp CEO Matt Dusig (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Matt Dusig, a serial entrepreneur, is the co-founder and CEO of uSamp™. Before jump-starting uSamp, Dusig logged into the [survey] industry with goZing, a pioneer in online sampling acquired by Greenfield Online in 2005. He was a finalist for the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of

Read Full Article »

Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 7)

Sramana: You have a good thesis on solving the challenges of premium ad inventory monetization. It won’t work for everybody, but it will work for a lot of publishers. John Ramey: We are not going to solve it for everyone. We have expanded the pool from 1,000 publishers to 50,000. You no longer have to

Read Full Article »

Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 6)

Sramana: In 2009 you received some angel funding and earned TechCrunch as a first customer. What came next? John Ramey: Initially I was very nervous about accepting that first deal from TechCrunch. They are a significant first customer. I working in their office for a bit and then it went live. [Michael] Arrington wrote a

Read Full Article »

Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 5)

Sramana: Are you saying that a small publisher could get on your platform and use your technology to sell directly without having a large sales force? John Ramey: Yes, that is correct. The majority of our publishers do not have salespeople. Our largest ones do, but the point is that publishers can participate without having

Read Full Article »

Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 4)

Sramana: Was the core idea that resonated with TechCrunch the concept of helping core publishers sell their inventory directly via your platform? John Ramey: That was a big part of it. Our audacious goal was to create a true platform, an infrastructure layer, for advertising. Direct sales for web banners is a microcosm on top

Read Full Article »