SM: Do you have a sense of where you want to go from here in terms of your career and businesses? SW: I’m in a period where I am trying to figure that out. I am in this place, business-wise and knowledge-wise, where I am on the cusp of doing something on the next level.
SM: Much of the comparison shopping industry on the Internet is reviewing products, whereas you are reviewing the retailers. That is the big differentiation? SW: It is. ResellerRatings has always been in this weird niche. Most merchant reviews are only found on shopping engines like Shopping.com. It positions us uniquely because we do not allow opt
SM: The site was shut down while you were negotiating the purchase? SW: It was only down for a couple of weeks, thankfully, so it was not damaged too much. There were a few articles written saying that ResellerRatings.com was gone. It was unique; I don’t know too many websites that just plain shut down.
SM: How old are you now? SW: Twenty-nine. SM: What happened between 20 and 29? SW: The high point was the sale to EarthWeb, and it went downhill from there.
For Indian entrepreneurs looking for scalable venture ideas, here is a list to work on. I have modeled one venture for each category, which you will be able to access from the Vision India 2020 series:
SM: How did the sellout craze affect you? Were people coming to you trying to buy your site? SW: I had been in Portland for a couple of months when out of the blue I got an email from Andover, which is the company that bought SlashDot and was later acquired by VA Linux. They
I have done numerous interviews with entrepreneurs on this forum. Here’s a list of 10 Web entrepreneur interviews that I think have the most interesting strategy discussions on how each of them are building their companies:
SM: Did you do SysOpt.com full time or was it just on the side? SW: I was doing it on the side. When I was in high school I worked on it after school as a hobby. When it started to pass the $30K, $40K, and $60K a year mark, I started to think there