Sticking to The Business

I think we did exceptionally well for our generation of companies. We had Jamdat [a mobile games company], which went public and sold to Electronic Arts for $700-plus million. We were the lead investor in LowerMyBills, which sold to Experian for $400 million. We own a significant percentage of business.com, which is successful and profitable; Boingo, which is successful and profitable, and USBX, which is successful and profitable. That's a pretty good track record. There were also four companies started within the incubator that didn't make it. They were all good ideas, but there wasn't the capital and the resources to keep them going at the time.

Why did the incubator concept fail?

You can't implant a CEO into an idea. Creating an idea, funding a company and keeping it going takes incredible passion and belief. It wasn't until I went back into business.com as the CEO, Sky went into Boingo as the CEO, Mitch Lasky went into Jamdat as the CEO that these companies really took hold and succeeded.

© 2006