Hornik on Blippy: “Apparently I Was More Interested in Sharing Credit Card Purchases than the Average Person” (TCTV)

June 4, 2011

Let’s be honest: One of the reasons David Hornik actually agreed to be on camera at All Things D is that he didn’t have a startup about to file to go public any second. So we talked about some of his more high profile investments that haven’t always lived up to the hype.

Hornik explains why reports of Blippy’s death have been greatly exaggerated, and why he says the investment still wasn’t a mistake. What’s more he dishes (sort of) of the nine-figure annual revenues of another portfolio company Say Media– the love child of VideoEgg and SixApart. And he tells us about an enterprise software company that’s a budding sleeper hit.

More broadly, he argues the immediate-hit-or-it’s-a-failure misses the point of venture investing. (A philosophy Reid Hoffman might agree with after a decade-long slog at LinkedIn.)

Let’s talk about you as a venture capitalist.
I’m just kind of
thinking off the top of
my head, deals that I associate you with.


Yes.


Video X is expired, they’re now one.


Same media.


Blippy, now it’s gone.


No, no.
Not at all.


Well, it pivoted?


Not at all.
Here’s the thing.
The thing that
people associate with Blippy may
not be the billion dollar idea.
But Blippy, this group
of incredibly smart entrepreneurs, is anything but gone.
Actually it turns out that… So
Chris and Ashvin, who were
the founders of Blippy, are
some of the greatest… If you’re
talking about entrepreneurial athletes, like
these guys are unbelievable and you would back them.


And it’s sort of like saying that
it’s too bad that they
didn’t win that particular world
series, but we’ll see you next year.”


So they’re working on some really interesting stuff.
They have a great team that
no one is leaving.
They’re really excited to be working these guys.
And they have enough money
for the next 10 years or something.
So, this idea
that… Gee, it either
works or when it
doesn’t work, then it’s a failure whatever.


Kind of misunderstand the history of startups, right?
And it’s a lot… And
I going to see this
a lot and I can’t… You
have to bet on the
ones that are the winners and the losers are the losers.


Right.


Look, there will be some
that are big winners and it’s
exciting and if you’re
an early investor that’s amazing and congratulations.
But it turns out that there
will be companies that are
built over a period of
time by really smart, hardworking
entrepreneurs that build important
stuff that people value.


So look, I will
admit that our apparently I
was more interested in sharing my
credit card purchases than the average person.
I’m still sort of shocked by
that, to tell you the truth because I
thought it was super fun.


Yeah.but
it’s maybe a good example of
“don’t invest in the things
that you love”, because what
you need to do is find out
the things that are compelling more broadly.
That’s fine.
The good news is that I really…


But I think someone needed to test that assumption.


Yeah.


We wouldn’t have known.


No, it was great.


Like I actually… I mean [unintelligible] TechCrunch about.
Oh, we were too [unintelligible], I don’t think we were.
I mean looking back at coverage…
Again really, really smart entrepreneurs, trying
something that is completely crazy just because of the outcome?


Yeah.


That doesn’t make any sense.


Yeah, thank you.


That’s exactly right.
Because there have been lots
of Twitter-like things that people tried and didn’t work.
And so what?


I mean, how many times did social networks not work.


Yeah, exactly.
Look at Mark Pincus, he had one of those.
So clearly he’s not
a failure by virtue of
the fact that Tribe.net didn’t succeed
and social networking wasn’t
a bad idea because Friendster
didn’t end up succeeding.


Right!.


And that; so the good
news is that, as a general
matter, you know, at
August Capital, our focus has
been on people we really like
who are gonna, you know,
who are gonna build great stuff and then hopefully they do, right?


Right.


And in a disproportionate amount of
time, they actually end up building pretty interesting stuff.
And so that’s, I mean, that’s a VC that’s all you can do.
So you like, you mentioned Six
Apart and Video Egg; they’re now together.
Well, you know, it’s a huge company.
Same media ; many
tens of millions of dollars of business.


I heard how big their revenues are.
Would you like to share that with our readers?
It’s like fifty million.


No, it’s well more than that.


Like a hundred million?


It is well more that that.


It is my conservative estimate
that this company is worth.
hundreds of millions of dollars.


Yes, there isn’t any question.
It is, it is orders of
magnitude larger than the
things that think they’re
competing with say media, right?


Yeah.


So, people are
focused on other things and
if they want to under value that or whatever, that’s fine.
But the reality is, these were
teams of people who are
focused on very clear things.
So, Video Egg was
about bringing real value to brand advertisers?


Mm-hm.


How do you create a better
brand experience across the social media infrastructure?
And then Six Apart was
about how do you build the
best possible engagement experience
for bloggers, for, and
ultimately for passion based media across.


Right.


160 million units or whatever.
And when you put those things
together, you have a
very big interesting business that
ends up being, I think,
the paradigm for the next
It’s a generation of digital media companies.
So you know, eventually people will look and go “Holy cow!,
how did that get to be such a big business”?


So, are they your most exciting company now?
Who gets you out of bed in the morning?


I don’t know.
I mean they’re great.
They’re a fabulous company and I love the people involved.
You know, I have this enterprise
software company called Splunk that I funded.
That where three really smart
engineers who said, “you should
take log files and figure
out how to correlate them and manage systems”.


And it’s, again, I don’t
know, is it a hundred-and-something million dollar business this year?


Right.


I guess we’ll see.
It is a big business.
Companies are getting a ton
of value and the people
building it are worried about
creating value for their companies
and doing a better job of system debugging.
And all these things you go, “well, what is that”?
Who cares about that stuff?
Well, you know, they’re just doing a good job.


So, I love
all of my children the same
But you know, the ones that
are gonna make more than a hundred million.


He will become your favorite?


Did I?
My kid?
Yeah, that was my daughter.
Yes, of course she’s still
my favorite.
But I’ll tell you
what, if my son, Julian
wins a Tony, he gets to be my favorite for that week.


It’s just up to the Tony jury.


Yeah exactly!
When Noah starts the next
Facebook, he can be my favorite for a week.


So, only for a week though?


Yeah.

Article source: TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/mo9d7kISoLU/

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