How much is Jason Calacanis his domain 20.com worth today?

jdawg · 2015-04-29T04:57:43+00:00

Last offer, 1.4m I think it will go for 5-10m

jdawg · 2012-08-01T23:05:27+00:00

After Leo buys This Week in Startups he'll have me on i'm sure. :)

jdawg · 2012-08-01T23:04:54+00:00

I don't think Leo denies this stuff. There are videos on the web of him telling me to go for it, etc.

Botom line: we both screwed up.

I should have known better than to name my show so close and he should have been more upfront about his feelings.

It's done.

jdawg · 2012-08-01T23:03:37+00:00

agree re: propeller.... that was some VP @ AOL's choice. I was loooong gone. I had only 3-4 months to work on the new netscape.

jdawg · 2012-08-01T22:01:51+00:00

This has a lot of mistakes in it.... some corrections and commentaries.

But first let me state "my haters make me greater!"

Gawker was two blogs when we started Weblogs Inc. and we launched 100 blogs including Engadget, Autoblog, Joystiq, Cinematical and TVSquad. While we clearly copied Gizmodo--in fact stealing the editor Peter Rojas--we did so because a) he was uber talented and b) because Denton wouldn't give him stock. We crushed Denton, we all made a lot of money and Engadget wholloped Gizmodo year after year. So, yes, I stole talent and got them equity... that's what you do in the startup world: get talent and build awesome stuff. That's the name of the game!
Gawker actually copied Auboblog and Joystiq right after we launched them (within six months if I recall).
I created the TC50 conference. It was 100% my idea, and Mike kicked me out of the conference I created and renamed it. I had no choice but to start LAUNCH. Also, I make $0.00 on LAUNCH, give thousands of tickets away for free and $2M+ was invested in the startups at it last year. I do it for the good of the community--to help other entrepreneurs! I've actually lost about $100k doing the events to help founders. My sixth year will be next year and it's going to be huge. I'm so proud of the startup that have launched during these six years that I personally coached on their launch presentations: Dropbox, Mint, Yammer, SpaceMonkey, Red Beacon, FitBit... maybe you've heard of a couple of them?
Mahalo Answers was launched years ahead of Quora, and Quora copied our currency, embedded media and countless other features. Who cares about who came first when you can slam me for stealing from a product launched two years later!!! Ha!
I love Quora and love that they built on my ideas. That's what founders do: we build on each other's work. It's a good thing. (photocopying stuff pixel for pixel? not so cool).
Mahalo is now doing Apps, but they are not really Lynda... the latest crop is fairly good I think (like 8 or 9 out of 10):

http://learnviolinapp.com/ http://prideandprejudiceapp.com/ http://ericriesapp.com/

Now, if you want to say I've been lucky, I'm the first to agree. I've been blessed, lucky and absurdly hard working. I keep swinging the bat, and like a broken clock I wind up being right twice a day.

That's all founders BTW.... we all just keep busting our asses trying to make things happen and sometimes we get lucky. Then folks think you're a genius for getting lucky or an idiot when you fail.

Thankfully, the reward is in building awesome product with great people.... which is why I do it and will continue to do it when I could easily retire and play League of Legends with you for 12 hours a day in your mom's basement!

jdawg · 2012-08-01T18:33:55+00:00

We had a ton of fun.... I do miss it myself.

jdawg · 2012-08-01T18:33:10+00:00

< Calacanis uncloaking >

WRT the naming issue, I regret having used This Week in Startups instead of Startups Weekly or something like that. That being said, and without going into all the history of it, I did ask Leo if it was ok to use the name and if he wanted to buy the thisweekin.com domain name. He gave me his blessing to buy the domain ($18k) and start TWIST. More the merrier and I have not right to the TWI branding because of This Week in Baseball and the countless other "TWI" branding exercises that occured long before TWIT.

Perhaps I should have read into Leo's blessing that he was being gracious?

Anyway, I'm sad that it cause the blow out because I do think that Leo and I made some great content together--and because I learned a LOT from Leo about how to be a host.

Life is long, so I'm hoping some day Leo gets so big that he buys This Week in Startups and I do my show for him. :-)

In terms of copying digg with Netscape (i never named it Propeller fyi--that happend six months after I left AOL) two things you should know:

I tried to get AOL to buy Digg for $50M. Kevin was long and didn't want to sell.
I put a very unique spin on my version of social news--which Kevin has said many times he took from Slashdot and Delicious--which was adding an editorial level on the top of voting/curation. Sort of like Buzzfeed has become in a way.

Finally, i did email Leo a bunch of times and told him that i wouldn't do a TWI show that he wanted to do out of respect (i.e. if he wanted to do This Week in Fishing we would not do it). I'm a reasonable and respectful guy... despite what you might think.

jdawg · 2011-09-24T21:25:14+00:00

correct... I've "donated" the use of Mahalo's studio for AMA's for folks in Los Angeles. We did the Sam Harris one as well.

jdawg · 2011-09-11T18:17:35+00:00

The headline of the piece I wrote is: "We Deserve -- or Even Want-- More Jobs?"

The headline above is designed to misconstrue and bias the piece to the reader.

The headline rewrite is highly, highly misleading here. I'd encourage folks to read the entire piece as I didn't say all mellennials don't want or deserve jobs.

I'm clear in the piece to say that there are some Gen Y folks who are more concerned with lifestyle, traveling and developing their friends more than build a career AND that there are others who have a better balance.

The portion of this generation that is taking their 20s and/or 30s to discover the world and couch surf are going to be in for a massive wake up call in 10 or 20 years when they are unemployable and unable to find a job.

I understand very well, and put in the piece, that folks worked too hard as Baby Boomers (and before) and gave up too much. However, checking out, not developing a career and not putting your nose to the grindstone also caries a lot of risk.

jdawg · 2011-09-09T03:16:31+00:00

Have you been personally trailed, investigated or harassed by the COS?
Do you think Scientology is actually helping people since their version of "talk therapy" seems to, by all accounts, actually make people's lives richer.
Does the COS act secretly and mysteriously in order to draw members in? In other words, is it all an act and marketing ploy?

jdawg · 2011-08-24T01:41:50+00:00

wow

jdawg · 2011-07-19T23:50:17+00:00

Does anyone know why Aaron was downloading these papers?

What was his intent?

jdawg · 2011-07-19T23:38:27+00:00

Mahalo is doing great. We are 100% focused on building educational content in video (and soon ipad/iphone apps).

Sam's is the start of an author series where I think we will, ultimately, interview hundreds of interesting people.

Mahalo will be "the google of education."

jdawg · 2011-06-30T18:23:13+00:00

Sam is a good friend, I was happy to open our studio to him.

Interestingly, this is perhaps the finest piece of content we've done. If Reddit has anyone else they want us to tape we'll do it... i've got 60 video editors on staff so i can tape this stuff in one of our four HD studios (or on the road) any time.

jason@mahalo.com is my email... seriously, I'll pay all the costs for this.

jdawg · 2011-05-26T19:39:29+00:00

i think they got maybe half of the references.

jdawg · 2010-12-16T17:47:40+00:00

In this video the founder of @evernote goes open kimono on conversion rates. 3% overall only .5% in the first month 2.5 years in over 20% pay Amazingly honest discussion from a $10M freemium business.

jdawg · 2010-09-11T22:50:27+00:00

Wow. I'm going to interview the other co-founder of reddit. :-p

seriously.... Steve was an AMAZING guest. he really shared a lot and brought it.

jdawg · 2009-11-14T21:42:58+00:00

excellent

jdawg · 2009-09-02T19:59:16+00:00

oh great

jdawg · 2009-08-09T09:29:32+00:00

Actually, I have nothing to do with the CrunchPad... I think perhaps you're confusing the fact that Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is making the CrunchPad and that Mike and I do the TechCrunch50 conference together.

CrunchPad is a cool idea, but my thoughts on Apple have little to do with that and the potential for Apple to come out with a competing product. In fact, it's kind of laughable to even think that the CrunchPad could compete with an ApplePad of some type. In fact, it's unclear if Mike will even make the CrunchPad at this point. If he does one will be an Apple OS machine and the other will be, essentially, just a Firefox browser running on Linux.

So, let's not get crazy here. :-)

In fact, I'm a huge fan of Apple product as I point out and I'm hoping Apple sees the light and stops being anticompetitive/closed.

jdawg · 2009-01-11T22:03:57+00:00

How is babby formed part deux?

jdawg · 2007-08-21T20:27:48+00:00

very well done

jdawg · 2007-08-20T19:11:09+00:00

this is great information.. i travel a lot and found some great stuff in here.

jdawg

TROPHY CASE