Interview with Alex Bard, Co-founder and CEO of Goowy Media

On Monday Paul G. published a post about Yourminis. Now I am pleased to offer you an interview with Alex Bard, co-founder of goowy media ??? the company behind Yourminis.

First, please introduce yourself and tell us about the history of Goowy Media.

My name is Alex Bard and I am a co-founder and CEO of goowy media. Goowy was founded in October, 2004 and is currently backed by Mark Cuban.

I know that the founding team of Goowy was involved in two other Internet startups before Goowy. Please tell us about them and how successful they were.

Prior to starting goowy we were part of the early / founding team of two other internet startups. In 1996 we were part of eShare technologies where we developed chat, bulletin board and customer service software for some of the internet???s largest portals including Lycos, Geocities and AOL. The company grew from 6 people to over 100 in a few years and ultimately sold in 1999 to a public company.

After eShare, we co-founded a company called eAssist Global Solutions, where we developed internet based customers service solutions. The company grew from 6 people to over 300 but unfortunately ran into difficult times with the dot bomb era. eAssist was sold in 2004. We then took some time off to think about what to do next and came up with the idea for goowy.

What are other projects of Goowy Media? Which of them was the most difficult to develop and the most popular?

We currently offer 2 products, the goowy webtop and yourminis.

The goowy webtop offers you a set of fresh tools for managing your digital lifestyle, including email, contacts, calendar, file storage, integrated instant messaging, minis and games. Yourminis is a personalized start page that lets you check your email, see the weather, read news, subscribe to rss, watch youtube videos, search the web, look at flickr photos, save bookmarks and more all from one place.

We launched yourminis a few weeks ago so it is a relatively new product for us however it is getting a lot of early traction and support.

How have you come up with the idea of YourMinis? And how have you actually realized it (development, financing, etc.)? How have you chosen the name for this new project? What is new and unique about YourMinis?

We added minis or mini applications into the goowy webtop late last year. We received very positive feedback on the product and decided to roll it out as a stand alone application called yourminis ??? referring to ???your minis???. We then extended the minis from the goowy webtop and created a stand alone platform for yourminis. It is developed and financed by the same team that developed the goowy webtop.

Yourminis is unique 3 ways, experience, access and publishing.

1. Experience ??? we provide a much more multimedia, experience for managing your dashboard of minis. We offer you an immersive environment where you can personalize the experience to any degree.
2. Access - Users can choose how to access your minis. You can access it as a personalized start page inside of the browser, or as a browser plugin for firefox, Internet Explorer and Flock, which gives you added 1-click features and a heads up display, and in the near future as a desktop client.
3. Publishing - We believe we have a much better way to publish content. You can publish it as an entire tab or as individual minis that you can add to your personal pages. Take a look at a few examples of published pages - www.yourminis.com/coldplay and www.yourminis.com/50. We are also releasing a community around published tabs so that you can rate, find and comment on tabs.

What features of YourMinis are the favorite for your users?

The flexibility of what you can do with each individual mini and the overall experience. You really can create a very personalized environment from a news heavy tab ??? http://www.yourminis.com/web2news to a very multimedia experience ??? http://www.yourminis.com/gearsofwar

How many users do you already have (if that???s not top secret, of course)? And how do you draw in new users? Do you arrange advertising and PR campaigns or rely mostly on the word-of-mouth?

We just launched last week but we have had really positive feedback and hockey stick user growth all primarily on word of mouth. We are going to start doing some PR and marketing around yourminis as well as forming relationships with some of the big portals, and other distribution channel to get yourminis into the main stream.

Is the YourMinis project intended to be sold or is your team going to run it yourself?

We are going to run it ourselves although we can’t discount partnering with a large company if the opportunity presents itself to get yourminis in front of as many people as possible and to make it part of their daily lives.

Do you think you???ll ever have to go to some restaurant business again or you expect to stay in the internet business?

Maybe if we make a lot of money in the Internet business we will do another bar / restaurant as a hobby or place to go with friends.

Judging by your previous experience how do you think, what is the key success factor for an internet startup?

Believe in yourself, when others might not. Do something you are passionate about. Stay committed even when things aren???t going your way ??? it is easy to walk away when things aren???t going well, it is much harder to stick with it, believe and perserve ??? but only if the you have the same fundamental beliefs you had when you first started the business. A failure isn???t a setback as long as you learn from it and come back stronger the next time. Hire people smarter than you to help you ??? no one can do it alone.

What are your five key elements for starting and running a successful business?

1. Passion
2. Commitment
3. Great people
4. Great idea
5. Market timing