Archive for October, 2007

This post by Ed Sutherland reminded me that I hadn’t blogged about b5media’s latest addition, our Advisory Board, yet!

Rick announced the change last week while I was in NYC propositioning midgets.

Why an Advisory Board?

Before I go into the specific members of our AB, I thought I’d talk a bit about why I wanted an AB in the first place. During b5media’s first year, myself, Darren, Duncan and Shai functioned largely as our own collective.

Most decisions were made as a group and that worked pretty well. Post funding it was clear that the headquarters would be in Toronto, and that we needed a single person to be responsible for stuff – and that person became me (since I was in Toronto and had raised the round, the decision was fairly obvious).

Our second year was really a growth year for b5. We went from just me and Duncan being full-time to the current team of about 15. We went from 3 clunky servers to a cluster of nearly 20 great boxes. We went from 4-5MM real pages served to real people to more than 30MM/month now. We drove revenue from 20K/month to more than 100K/month. We matured our processes, added great content areas like our new Music Channel, launched our first Gateway (Spekked.com, the best way to find all of our best Entertainment and TV Show content). We went to Gnomedex and laid it down hard. We got an office (which is now nearly packed!).

All in all, it was an incredibly busy year. But, it was basically the year I’d planned out (though we blew through my expectations in terms of growth!). Very little of what happened wasn’t in the scope of the business plan we prepared for our VC’s. And very little that was in the BPlan didn’t get done.

So a great year.

But we’re now entering b5media’s 3rd year as a company! And this year there will be fairly massive changes afoot. All good. All fun. All incredible, but they require talents, knowledge, connections, wisdom and experience that I simply don’t have.

There were a bunch of options for filling this knowledge and experience gap, but the most attractive (by far) was to work with people I knew, trusted and admired to build a group of folk I could regularly bounce ideas, progress and concepts off of. And not a group of folk who were just going to agree with everything, but a group of people with a history of drawing their lines in the sand and really standing up for what they believed in. A group who were going to challenge me and push me to think bigger, think harder and think deeper.

Ahem.

So we formed our AB.

Why These Participants in the Advisory Board?

As Rick and Ed noted, the Advisory Board is made up of the following folk:

• Robert Scoble
• Hugh MacLeod
• Renee Blodgett
• Stowe Boyd
• Doc Searls

With the exception of Hugh, I’ve met and had chats with all of these folk. And I’d consider Robert, Renee and Stowe “friends” (in the business, travelling in the same circles, try and hang out when we can kind of style). Doc I don’t know a tonne, but we’ve done a few podcasts together and met once, so he isn’t a total stranger.

So why these folk, and what did I feel they brought to the table (that was uniquely theirs)?

One by one, here’s what I like about these folk (for Rick’s take, read his post):

• Robert Scoble: Robert is one of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. He lays everything out there in a way I’ve always admired. He never holds back (even with his laugh, heh) and has taught me a tonne through his example. This passion for community, transparency and people will be critical in the next year or two. In addition, Robert knows video. I love video. Video is something we here at b5 want to do more of. Robert can bring knowledge that myself and the team simply don’t have. There are a bunch of other areas I want to pick Robert’s brain on, but mentioning them would reveal our plans a bit too soon ;-)
• Hugh MacLeod: I haven’t met Hugh, so this is a bit harder to do. But, from reading his blog and listening to some of his talks a few things strike me about Hugh (whether they’re true or not): He doesn’t assume anything, thinks outside the box, and pushes you to not only think things through but to think them through from an entirely different perspective. Hugh strikes me as a bit of a gemologist (if that’s the right word). He takes an idea, spins it around and looking at it from just the right direction under just the right light he can see very tiny blemishes – blemishes that could do long-term damage to the company if the CEO weren’t aware of them. No pressure Hugh, heh!
• Renee Blodgett: I love Renee. Renee is cooler than Colber, by a country mile. She’s totally passionate, loves the people she loves, loves making intros and is the best PR person I’ve ever known. And she’s great at pulling a smile out of me on camera, which isn’t easy to do. Professionally, Renee nows everyone in the valley (and beyond). And the people who matter love her. Not that I’ll only be using Renee for her connections, of course. Her experience in the last (insert an appropriate number of years that shows she has experience but isn’t in any way “old”!) years has helped her see things that others have missed. As the PR person for companies that have been wildly successful and others that have flamed out spectacularly, I believe she has an innate sense for things that work and things that don’t, and I can only hope she’ll share those with me and the team this next year or two unfolds!
• Stowe Boyd: I’ve worked with Stowe on a couple of projects over the last few years. While none of them ended very well, we’ve managed to stay in touch and stay friendly. I met Stowe a few years ago on the conference speaking circuit, where we’d often grab drinks and bitch about how awful and tiring the whole thing was and how we’d never do another conference. And then the next month we’d do the same thing. And the next ;-) Beyond that, though, Stowe has forgotten more about building successful companies, communications plans and growth strategies than I’ll ever learn. I’ve wanted to get Stowe officially involved with b5 since the launch, and I’m tickled that I can finally toss ideas at him and see what he thinks!
• Doc Searls: Like Hugh I don’t know Doc incredibly well. But I know he’s one of the most wickedly smart people of this generation, that he knows media the way Stowe knows business (ie: has forgotten more than I’ll ever know) and has seen so much that it’s hard to imagine anything truly surprising him. As much as I hope we can (pleasantly) surprise him with some of the things we’ll be doing in the future, I’d be just as happy for him to lend his wisdom and experience to help figure out which rabbit trails lead to gold mines and which just lead to brambles.

So, to those who (like Ed) were wondering why the AB, and why this AB, I hope this provides some insight into my though processes on this.

It’ll be a change for me to interact with an AB, and I’ll need to learn (hopefully quickly) how to do that. I’m not used to having one, so building the habit of communicating with them regularly will likely be my biggest challenge.

But I’m absolutely looking forward to working with this group of luminaries, acquaintances and friends and I can’t wait to not only bounce this year’s plan off of them in Vegas at CES, but to continue bouncing ideas off of them and getting their individual and group feedback throughout the year. A huge thanks to each of them for agreeing to join, to Rick for kicking me in the butt for getting this done and to my team for 2 fantastic years already!