Basel: So, I am sitting with the famous Mike Cassidy in the Google campus in Mountain View, and for the sake of time we'll just dive straight into the questions. You're currently working for Google as the Director of Search Product Management. Mike's a very successful entrepreneur with four high tech companies under his belt. How is working for Google working out for Mike Cassidy?
Mike: Well, Google is a very exciting place. One of the things that's great about it is the scale and scope of when you roll out a product. A billion people will see a product that we roll out in the first week. Which is very exciting and a lot bigger scale than many of the companies I've worked for before.
Basel: Phenomenal, and as far as these startups that you worked for before, as opposed to working for a corporation like Google, although it's very entrepreneurial. What's the difference? How do you evaluate the differences?
Mike: Well, one of the beauties of a startup is you can really move super fast, and the team all sits in the same room usually, and you can make decisions in a few minutes, and it's done, you just roll it out. You don't have the benefit of scale which you get at some place like Google, but you get very fast decision making and if you want to change to a new product direction, it's a very simple and quick process.
Basel: Excellent. Moving on to the quick process, one question I had in mind was: you're an advocate of speed, rapid product roll out. What's your comment on that? How do you expand on that?
Mike: I'm a true believer that speed is the ultimate start up weapon. I think there are a lot of advantages to being able to move fast. For example, it's very hard for competition to keep up with you, if you're rolling out a new version of your product. For Xfire, my third company, every two weeks we had a new version of the product. It's very, very hard for competitors to keep up with that pace. It's also a very good thing for team morale. The team is really excited as you move quickly and roll out new features, and conquer new goals. It's also good from an investor perspective. Investors love to see how quickly your company's growing, and it's easier to raise money and get additional resources.
Basel: So raising money, what do you think the right time is for a startup to raise capital?
Mike: One of the old rules is whenever you can, you should raise money. I believe in raising money as soon as you have an idea that you've been able to put some sort of prototype together. It doesn't have to be a very pretty prototype, or it doesn't have to be able to scale. Some sort of prototype where you can actually play with it, and people are like wow, that's great. Then I think you want to raise money at that point, because then you want to move quickly to hire a team to get facilities and resources that you need to sort of grow the infrastructure around that.
Basel: I know that you're versed with online searching. Where do you think the online search is headed to?
Mike: Well, putting my Google hat on for a minute. I think there's still many, many frontiers for us in search. A lot of times people say oh, well, isn't search kind of finished or old, and it's like no way. We're doing things with Google with social search, the results you see are no longer based on purely the content on the page, but the relationship between the searcher and the person who created or shared that content. Mobile is becoming more and more prevalent in terms of the way we do search, and that's impacting the way we do search.
We're doing some things at Google with authorship, where we're trying to put as often as possible the real name of the person who created the content on the page right next to the result. I think that gives a lot more sense of confidence by the viewer: oh, this was written by Steven Levy or somebody like that, so they can trust the content more.
Basel: With online and mobile, where do you think, as far as disruptive technologies go, any verticals within those two domains that you think the future is …
Mike: I tend not to focus on verticals as much. With something like mobile, there's just so many different verticals, whether it's financial or retail or entertainment. There's just so many ways that mobile is going to impact those fields, and even search itself, We do keep track of what happens to our search queries in various verticals, but they're all just experiencing really strong growth.
Basel: OK. Thank you. Your largest exit was Direct Hit for half a billion dollars. This is a really sizable transaction. Apart from a compelling product, with significant traction, how can an entrepreneur get there?
Mike: I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurship. Certainly, I've been lucky with some of my exits, but I think that's one of the great things about the world we live in today. From wherever you are in the world, more and more…I was in Jordan last summer, and I met some great entrepreneurs there. You now have the ability to raise a little bit of money, and because of the Internet you can put together a product and put it up on the Internet. The Arab world is 300 million people, that's a great market, that's the size of the United States market.
So, I think you just need to find an idea, something that you think you can improve by doing something. Again, you can set up these websites now today using LAMP architecture and then reach hundreds of millions of people. So, I encourage entrepreneurs to go for it.
Basel: So, jumping to the Arab world. Do you think that the guys in the Arab world have the same opportunities like people here in Silicon Valley, or even the U.S. at large?
Mike: I was asked the same question when I was there. I was there twice last year, and I'll actually be going back next month. Actually in many ways, I think the Arab world is a better place to be than Silicon Valley. That's because in Silicon Valley the competition is just ferocious right now.
No matter what you do, they'll be five other startups already doing it, or that will quickly get funded and follow you. Whereas I think you have a little more breathing room in the Arab world. If you come up with an idea, you get a little more runway. It's kind of exciting and intriguing to me to go start something there where you have some more room.
Basel: From the search and the diligence you've done in this market, where do you think the biggest opportunities are?
Mike: That's always a hard question. If I knew of a perfect opportunity I'd be ghost starting a company right now. I think there are opportunities in location-based services, using GPS services or triangulation to know if someone is here what services can we offer them. I think there are opportunities in retail, e-commerce where the more you know about someone the more you can tailor their offerings to them. And also a sort of social type retailing. If you know a set of their friends have all purchased a certain form of entertainment, or a certain sort of electronic goods, that's a pretty useful thing to market to certain people.
Basel: Phenomenal. In closing, what advice would you give to people in the Arab world in terms of, some folks they start companies in the Arab world and they register a company in Delaware, and use legal arbitrage and go about valuation exit in the U.S.? Is this a good route, or do you have any other suggestions or any pointers for these guys?
Mike: I'm not really an expert in the location of your corporate headquarters and the tax implications of where it's located. I think there are some people who you can find that know that stuff and you should seek that advice.
I think fundamentally you want to set up a structure where it's not too complicated. I think complexity can end up making things complex later on, whether it's the acquisition or raising additional money, or even hiring people. So, I believe in more simple structures, and I think the opportunities are there. Again, I'm not an expert, but to set you headquarters in a variety of different locations it can all still work.
Basel: Well, thank you for the valuable input, and we appreciate the opportunity to be here at Google and talk with you. We look forward to seeing you again.
Mike: Thanks for coming by.
Basel: Thank you.
About the Guest:
Mike Cassidy is an entrepreneur, and was CEO and co-founder of four previous Internet start-ups: Stylus Innovation, Direct Hit, Xfire, and Ruba. Currently, he is Director of Search Product Management at Google following Google`s acquisition of Ruba.
Mike Cassidy has co-founded, served as CEO, and led three consumer Internet companies to market leadership and successful acquisitions.
Prior to joining Benchmark, he was CEO of Xfire, the fastest-growing gaming community on the Internet. Xfire made it much easier to play online games with friends, pioneered in-game messaging, and spawned the market for global online gaming events. The company was purchased by Viacomâs MTV Networks in May 2006.
Before founding Xfire, Mike was CEO of Direct Hit, an award-winning Internet search engine acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2000. Before that he was CEO of Stylus Innovation, a creator of computer telephony tools and applications, which was purchased by Artisoft in 1996. Early in his career Mike was an aerospace engineer and also studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music.
Other Affiliations: Advisor to From the Top, which encourages and celebrates high school classical musicians, and is active in several other non-profit organizations.
Education: Mike earned a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.” (Source: Benchmark Capital)
Mike Cassidy is an entrepreneur, and was CEO and co-founder of four previous Internet start-ups, one of them is Ruba which was acquired by Google. Currently Mike serves as the Director of Search Product Management at Google.
