Jay Parkhill October 17th, 2007
I wrote a case study on Jumpstart Automotive Media for Startup Review that published last night. Jumpstart is a vertical ad network focused on the automotive segment. It was founded in 2000 and sold this year, so it’s a timely piece given the proliferation of vertical ad networks over the past couple of years.
Mitch is also an extremely savvy and articulate guy. He knows well why his business worked and has some good thoughts for entrepreneurs, especially in regard to finding one’s niche, staying true to a goal and the importance of hiring top-nothc people.
Jay Parkhill October 1st, 2007
I like nothing better than when my worlds come together. I just finished listening to a very insightful podcast conversation between Jim Holland, CEO of Backcountry.com, and Chris Grover, Director of Sales and Marketing at Black Diamond. Startups, web services and outdoor gear are three of my favorite things.
The former company is an outdoor gear e-tailer and poster child for success by bootstrapping. It was founded in the 1990s, but unlike many of its crash-and-burn contemporaries it never raised outside money. I believe this let them chip away at the online marketing puzzle. Had they raised money, hired lots of people and jumped into lots of things before the revenue path became clear, they might never have made it.
Black Diamond is an interesting example of lemons-from-lemonade. Patagonia used to make rock climbing hardware until someone fell out of a harness, died and his family sued the company. Patagonia decided to get out of the hardware business and divested it- creating Black Diamond. The company has risen from that tricky start to become the major US brand in the Euro-dominated climbing/technical backcountry equipment market.
The podcast has a lot of interesting tidbits about marketing, leadership (esp. the difference between leading and managing), compensation (don’t trust the public statistics) and other important business questions. I wanted to to interview Backcountry.com co-founder John Bresee for a Startup Review interview a few months back, but we both got busy and never quite connected. The interview covers a lot of the same ground and it’s well worth the 40 minutes spent listening.