On The Upward Slide

With PayPal you handled people's money, and with Slide your widgets do things like rate friends. The stakes seem less dire.
In a certain sense, it's more dire than money. People get angry when their top friends get misidentified. Maybe emotions are more important than dollars.

Will you stay with Slide until an IPO?
I'm determined to stick it out. I don't like to think about an IPO except in the context of creating liquidity for my employees and investors. The only reason to have an exit event or a "liquidity event" is because people need their nice cars and houses.

You're locked into that, aren't you, by taking the investors' money?
I'm locked into having to build something very big. But this is a rare case where the entrepreneur is very aligned with his investors. I'm extremely keen on pushing this thing as big as it can possibly go, and I'm fortunate to have the backers who believe in me.

How big do you think Slide could be?
I consider really big to be impacting about 100 million people on a daily basis, as an essential part of their lives. I think we're pretty nicely on track towards that. I've seen a sticker that says, YOUR MOM IS IN MY TOP FRIENDS. I think you've made it once your brand is on a sticker.

© 2008