James Currier came up with the idea for Tickle (founded in 1999 and originally called Emode) after taking a personality test in one of his Harvard Business School classes. A former venture capitalist with a passion for digital media and social sciences, Currier believed that the Internet could be used to help people learn more about themselves. People could visit www.tickle.com to take several different kinds of personality and selfassessment tests, most backed by scientific research, to understand areas of human behavior (and also to find out what breed of dog they most closely resembled). Tickle was acquired by Monster in 2004 for about $100 million. Shortly after this interview, Currier founded Ooga Labs, a digital media studio that develops consumer Internet applications. Livingston: How did you come up with the idea for an online testing company? Currier: After college, I got an early introduction to digital media before there was Internet: I worked in Hollywood for a venture group that invested in companies involved in digital media for the movie industry. A lot of digital content was getting pushed over AT&T's broadband network, which was proprietary at the time. I worked at Star TV in Hong Kong and did more digital media, and got back to venture capital in Boston where the company was investing in the early-stage Internet companies like Infoseek. When I was at business school, I would think about the media companies that were popular at the time--like Broadcast.com, Women.com, and iVillage-- and they didn't make any sense to me. They were basically trying to put old media experiences online. For example, Spinner.com was putting radio online, and they got sold for $340 million. I thought that was crazy. 387 James Currier Founder,Tickle 28 CHAPTER I knew the Internet was going to bubble up its own unique media form. It was probably going to be user-generated, and it wasn't going to be like anything that we see on the other mediums. So I was looking and looking for what that was going to be at the same time I was getting my degree at business school. At class one night, they gave us a few pieces of paper and a number 2 pencil, and we filled out circles for a Myers-Briggs corporate personality test, which is something they administer to Harvard Business School students. Eleven days later, we got our results in manila envelopes--all in black-and-white text with a little graph--and soon we exploded into conversation. People in that community talked about the test for about 2 weeks--at dinner conversations, on the basketball court. I watched this and thought, "I've never seen anyone talk about a movie for this long. That's powerful media. Why?" So I discussed this with my family, who were involved in psychology, and asked, "Are we our own favorite subjects?" We're very concerned about ourselves and the people we know. I realized that no other technology allowed us to get media about ourselves. All the other media technologies allow us to learn only about people we will never know. Tom Cruise, Tom Brokaw--we know a ton about those people and yet we'll never know them. I believed that the Internet would allow you to have a media experience about you and the people you know--though it wasn't going to be the best video, audio, or magazine--and that was going to take a lot of different forms. And I thought this testing could be incredibly powerful because people love talking about themselves, love talking about the people they know, and it could be viral. At the venture firm, I saw how most online media companies were getting killed by acquisition costs, and I realized that to build a successful company, you had to have very low--if not zero--expenses for acquiring users. So I thought that these tests could be a very promising area to start a digital media company through. A lot of these tests were trapped in the ivory tower. Why couldn't we just release them online, make them inexpensive, and just benefit humanity? It could be a good foundation for a media business, and even if it failed it would be doing something good for the world. Livingston: How did you get started once you had this idea? Currier: I had to come up with what the product would actually do. And then I had to start talking to people about it and getting their ideas. There's a balance between thinking that you have this fantastic idea that you don't want anyone else to know about and the need to talk about it and get broad-ranging opinions so that you make as few mistakes as possible. I was really paranoid because I thought this idea was incredibly obvious. It seemed like this was the best thing to do online--it would be incredibly viral and it would be deep because you'd get so much data on people. You could help them find the right job, get a great date, decide whether to get an SUV or a minivan, help facilitate conversations within the family. And people would answer honestly, because the test was about them and they'd want accurate 388 Founders at Work results. It was just obvious to me that you could build a huge media company on the back of this thing. So I was relatively paranoid about that and only talked to people that I trusted. But what I got back was, "I don't understand what the heck you're talking about." All the people that I had been talking with about digital media, selfhelp, and psychology with, they still didn't understand what the hell I was trying to do. I couldn't find the words to describe the vision. Livingston: Why did they not get it? What did they misunderstand? Currier: I think there are very few people who have a capacity to see the future. So it can be difficult when you are talking about something where nothing about it exists yet. At the time, everyone was caught up in the success of Broadcast.com, iVillage, and Women.com, so they believed in their value. Instead of saying, "The people who are buying those companies are stupid," they were saying, "Those guys must know something I don't know." Since most humans have a much easier time understanding what is, if you suggest that what they see is wrong, it's very disconcerting and they hate it. Because they are trying to understand their world and predict their future-- that's the main function of the cerebrum, to find the patterns and predict what is going to happen next--and insofar as they realize that the future to them is somewhat gray, or even black, it's scary. So then they go and have another conversation and everyone says, "Broadcast.com, oh that's so cool." Everyone nods and smiles and that's the type of pack animal collective creating reality. And when you go against that, it's painful. Livingston: What else was challenging? Currier: Where you are is never enough for the people around you. Because starting a company is the act of collecting and organizing the human energy that is in the ether. You are trying to take all this matter that's around you and shape it into something that fits with what's in your head. And all these people who are being shaped want to know where you are now and want you to take another step along the path so that they can feel more confident. They are always searching for more confidence points. For example: "What are you calling it? Give it a name so we can talk about it." So you decide on a name--Emode. "Do you have a business plan?" So I would give them a one-page business summary. "No, I want a real business plan." So I wrote a business plan. "Do you have any employees?" "No, I don't have any employees. I need to go get some." "Do you have any money?" And you go talk to some angels. "Do you have an office?" James Currier 389 And you go sign a lease somewhere. "Do you have business cards?" "No, let me go get business cards." "Do you have a website?" "We just launched it." "Well, is anyone coming?" "No one's coming yet, but I'll get back to you when people are coming." "When you hit this level, then I'll be interested." Everyone is looking for the next step. And so as you go along with each of these confidence steps, you can pick up more and more people into what's going on. So then you go talk to a venture capitalist, and they ask if any other venture capitalist is interested. And then once you get other VCs interested, you say, "Yes, they're interested and maybe you guys could syndicate them and do the round." They say, "Well, have you received a term sheet from them?" Then once you've received a term sheet, then the VCs get interested, and then acquirers get interested. Women.com offered to buy us out for $32 million once we got our term sheets. You have to get to these levels to attract more people, and then you hit these spark points, and in my process the spark point was getting the term sheets from the VC. People suddenly want to work with you, loan you money; PR firms want to spend your money, investment bankers want to meet you. Livingston: Which spark point would you consider most significant for Tickle? Currier: The launching of the dog test. When we started the company, we wanted to change the world, and we had all these tests on the site to help people in their lives. We had the anxiety test; the parenting, relationship, and communication tests. And no one came. I remembered that advertising agencies say if you want people to remember an ad, include babies and puppies. So I thought, "We should make a fun test. Let's do a test for what kind of breed of dog are you." So they came up with a 15-question test that wasn't scientific at all. We put it online, and 8 days later we had a million people trying to enter our site. Our server was going down every 10 minutes. We had to emergency unplug it from the wall, throw it in the back of the car, and plug it into a T3 at an ISP in Lynn, Mass. Once we got crazy traffic, we were able to then show the graphs to the venture guys, and we were on our way. They said, "Anyone with traffic can make a lot of money on the Internet, so I'm in." Livingston: Were there other hair-raising moments in the early years? Currier: Most of them had to do with people. We had a VP of engineering who wasn't working out, and we had to let him go. But because he seemed unstable, we arranged for a marshal to be ready to create peace once we let this guy go if he really blew up and went crazy. Livingston: Could you have recognized that this employee was bad news from the beginning? 390 Founders at Work Currier: You might have, but I wasn't experienced enough at the time, since I had never done one of these before. I was 30 and I knew a lot about the industry and the technology, but I was very green on people. And that is a painful way to start a company. I also hired a head of HR, and she was pregnant at the time but didn't tell us. When I asked her to create the maternity leave policy, she suggested 5 months with full pay. Since I was so busy, I said, "I want to trust you and empower you to do everything we need on this side, so if you think that's right, great." So a few weeks later she told me she would be leaving soon for maternity leave. By that time, several of us were off salary because we were running out of money, and here she was going home to spend 5 months at full pay, and we were practically out of money. Never having built a company, I didn't know where I wanted the lines drawn. It was like a big, white piece of paper. And I got taken on that. Livingston: Was there ever a time when a competitor did something that made you fearful? Currier: iVillage started copying us, and I was very worried about it for probably a year, and then it all just faded away. Probably because it's hard to get the engineers, the psychologists, and the writers to talk to one another. You've got to build a culture and communication amongst a small group of people so that they can get things done. Livingston: What was different about the way you motivated them? Currier: My willingness to communicate with people and my understanding of their need to form their brains and their language around their relationships with each other and the product we needed to create. I genuinely cared about my people, and I built a culture where you communicate--you don't blame-- and you learn what the heck the other person's talking about. You, psychologist, you need to learn a little about engineering. You, engineer, you need to learn a little about what the user actually experiences. You have to understand why they like the question this way so that the writers can do their job. So it was really just a matter of empathy that I had for the team, and communication style. You have to figure out how to hire people who are nice, communicative, smart, and capable. If you're missing one of those four things, you can't stay. And so you have to churn people out and be willing to let them go. It was painful, but I knew from the beginning we were going to have to do that. Livingston: What was most surprising to you about starting a startup? Currier: How painful it was. I woke up on October 3, 1999, at around 4 a.m. with my chest burning from fear and pain about not knowing what to do, and worrying that I had taken my friends' and mentors' money. I had realized that what I was trying to do was not working, and that I didn't know how to fix it and I was in way over my head. Livingston: How did you keep going? James Currier 391 Currier: I put one foot in front of the other. I was sleeping 4 hours a night with the help of NyQuil, and then I'd just keep thinking, keep trying to find the language and find new employees, trying to meet the VC who would understand my vision and back me. I met with 43 VCs. Livingston: Since you were a VC, could you speak their language better than most technology founders? Currier: I remember saying to them, "Look, in 4 years, we'll be doing $18 million in revenue with $4.5 million of profit. After that the sky's the limit. I'm an ex-venture guy; I'm telling you the truth. We can get to $18 million in year 4, and 30 times $4 million is a $120 million valuation for the company at that time. You'll get 20 times your money." They all told me $18 million wasn't interesting. And I'd say, "But most people will tell you $50 million, and you know they're lying. I'm already discounting it because I'm a venture guy just like you are." And they'd say, "Yeah, but $18 million just isn't interesting." So I changed my spreadsheet to say $50 million. And they said, "OK, that's pretty interesting." Livingston: Can you think of another example where you had to pull off a trick to advance? Currier: Well, of course you sometimes have to exaggerate. If you think there are three places where you can get a lease, then you just say you have a lease so you can move to the next step. You've got to say you are a step ahead of where you actually are to move to the step that you want to be at. To move to step two, people have to believe that you're already at step two so there's no risk for them. Because they don't want to take on your risk--you have to take it all on. And then you have to take on the risk of fibbing. Livingston: What would you tell someone who was considering starting a startup? Currier: That it is incredibly painful and it will take over your life. If you care about it and if you have any chance of succeeding, you will stop being present for the softer things in life like your family, friends, or dating life. And when you are there with them, you're not really there with them; you're thinking about this thing because you're creating it, and it takes that amount of passion to make it work. Livingston: Did this ever hurt any of your relationships? Currier: I almost didn't marry my wife. She and I started dating about 2 months before I came up with the idea, so she hasn't really known me without it. I couldn't figure out if we should get married, but then I hired a new VP of engineering and he transformed my life. Because I could trust him to do a lot of important work, he gave me breathing room to actually feel something. Four months after I hired him, I proposed and we got married. We now have four great kids. I almost really blew it; the whole haze of the thing made it unclear. 392 Founders at Work At an HBS reunion, we had a roundtable for all of us who had been entrepreneurs, and one of our professors asked, "What didn't HBS teach you about this?" And I said, "Pain." I only remember one class that came close: the professor walked out of the class with tears in his eyes, having recounted the story of his friend who had started a cable company, and it destroyed his life, destroyed his family, and moved him to a place where his life was a waste of time. That was the only indication I had at HBS about how painful this is. Having gone through this already, my ability to start another startup is now much higher. If you could give a student a tenth of that understanding at business school, it would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years of effort to understand that you will sleep for 4 hours a night for 18 straight months if things are not going well. Livingston: Would you do it again? Currier: Oh yeah. But it won't be nearly as hard this time because I have money in the bank now, and I know what I'm doing. And I know what the probabilities of different things working are, and I would know how to do it, so it would be a lot less painful. You'd still have to be obsessed with it; you'd still not be present with anything else; but if I thought it could do something important, then I would do it again. Livingston: Your company was acquired by Monster. How do you preserve the startuppyness of Tickle within this big company? Currier: You try like hell to preserve the startup feel because you are the personality that likes to start things and you don't like an environment that's not starting. We've kept our doors as desks; we refuse to move from our office; and Monster has been fantastic about leaving us alone. We're just out here doing our thing. We are very lucky, and I still enjoy and want to build a great legacy for Monster. But I won't be here forever. I can't. I'm a starter. If Yahoo had acquired us, they would have made us move to Mountain View, and would have made us a widget on a feature on a division of a department, and everyone would have left, and the whole thing would have died. And Wall Street would have applauded roundly. Whereas Wall Street has been perplexed by Monster's acquisition of Tickle. Yet it's so obvious: we're the largest career testing site in the world, we've got matchmaking capabilities between people for romance, and we can use the same matchmaking capabilities by measuring different dimensions for jobs. We can take job matching to the next level--the next stage for high-end job finding. And Monster gets the value of every person and every product we have here because there was no overlap.