Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

My New Gig

A little over 6 years ago, I co-founded CustomScoop.  Today, I am its CEO.

CustomScoop was the natural evolution of a site called PrimaryScoop (I called it a newsletter web site back then; today it would be called a blog).  I started by writing a daily newsletter about the presidential primary in NH, and it evolved into a bit of software (called CampaignScoop) that scraped political headlines from a few major web sites (sort of a political version of Google News or an early version of Memeorandum, albeit with much less sophistication).

At some point, it dawned on me that this little bit of code could become a company.  Having spent years as a consumer of traditional paper clipping services, I knew how slow, clunky, and unpredictable those services were.  In the political and crisis communication world that I inhabited, there had to be a fast, accurate substitute available.  Getting paper clips 3 weeks later and having unpredictable budgets (these services charge by the clip) wasn't a good solution.

Thus, CustomScoop was born.  Despite starting as the Internet bubble was bursting, CustomScoop was profitable from the start.  Over time, it has continued to thrive.

As CustomScoop evolved, so did I.  At first, I was the COO and subsequently took the title of Chief Innovation Officer.  As the company matured, I gradually took a less active role that allowed me to launch other companies and participate in the investment community as an angel investor.  While I will maintain those interests, I have decided to actively reengage in CustomScoop.

I believe the media monitoring and analysis industry has reached an inflection point.  The proliferation of blogs, the willingness of people to get news and information online, the ability to build better metrics, and the ever shrinking news cycles create a real opportunity.  Professionals need to be able to get fast, accurate information and act upon it.

We have a great team in place at CustomScoop and a lot of ideas as to how to better serve our customers.  We expect to have a flurry of product announcements in the coming weeks and we welcome the feedback of our customers and industry observers.

We plan to try to find ways for our clients to better deal with the vast flow of information available, to provide better tools for reporting and analysis, to make it even easier to distribute clip information to key stakeholders, to better understand blog conversations, and to have a broader suite of communications tools available at their fingertips.

I'm excited about these opportunities and my new role helping to grow CustomScoop to the next level.

Tags: CustomScoop, media monitoring, media analysis, media measurement, PR, public relations, blogs, competitive intelligence

CustomScoop Launches Blog

One of the companies that I founded, CustomScoop, today launched a group blog.  It's titled, appropriately if not creatively, the CustomScoop Blog.  It will provide information about the company and its products, but it will also serve as a resource for news and views related to the PR and media industries. 

I encourage you to check it out.

Tags: CustomScoop, PR, public relations, media monitoring, media measurement

Interview: Social Networks for Pet Owners

I had an interesting conversation a few days ago with Mark Roberge, the founder and CEO of PawSpot, a social networking site for pet owners.  I met Mark a few months ago and we've had some good offline conversations since then.  At first blush, the notion of social networks for pets seems absurd, but then I'm not a pet owner.  PawSpot and others like Dogster are trying to make inroads into this area, so perhaps there is something to it.

[FULL INTERVIEW: MP3 | transcript below]

In fact, I've heard recently from colleagues about their personal stories about what are essentially offline social networks for pet owners.  Often, these may be centered on specific dog breeds or geographic interests.  I even know of someone who attended a dog birthday party (the owners merely chaperone the dogs, I guess).

In any event, Mark explained how he got the idea (he "stumbled across a number of dog owners that were venting to [him] about their problems and pet ownership; and there were tremendous synergies between those problems and the premise of social networking").  That's why PawSpot initially seeks to solve the challenge of pet sitting, rather than merely be a general purpose site for pet networking.

Mark also makes a good point about social networking generally.  Today, it is focused mostly on the teen sector.  But as that population ages and as an older demographic becomes more comfortable with the concept, there may be other opportunities to be had in the space:

I think you are going to see a bigger trend toward a more mature demographic; and I think, as you move in that direction, you are going to see less of the expectation that the audience spends four to six hours on the computer, like the teens do, and more focus on actual utility, actual tangible value, whether it is saving time, saving money, or whether it bridges the online and the offline worlds.

PawSpot will monetize itself through advertising, sponsorships, and e-commerce.

As for Mark himself, he says he enjoys entrepreneurship and compares it to the pioneers who explored the American west.  By starting a company, he feels he is "pushing the frontier forward." 

Grow vs. Build as the Path to Greatness

I was recently reminded of a conversation I had with a VC and entrepreneur that I have a great deal of respect for.  In a conversation about a year ago, we were discussing various paths to greatness -- or at least business success -- and spent a bit fo time talking about growing a successful, existing business versus launching an exciting new one with great potential.

Being generally of a high-risk, high-reward mindset, I set out to make the case for launching something new.  Harvest the benefits of success and use it as a safety net to allow higher-risk activities that may well pay off down the road.  Why not roll the dice when you're playing with the house's money?

My friend countered that building highly successful startups isn't an easy thing to be taken lightly.  He agreed that the success of an existing company could be used to achieve greater things, but he argued that it makes more sense to leverage the existing business to grow it, rather than setting out on a new course. 

His theory was that it would be easier to multiply current success than to replicate it.

A conversation I had yesterday with a colleague caused me to revisit this debate in my own mind.  As someone who has been involved in the launch of more than a half dozen companies -- most of which have been successful (some more than others) and none of which have (yet) flopped -- my genetic makeup seems to lean toward Build. 

But I can't kick the nagging feeling that my friend may be right and perhaps I should spend a little more time focusing on helping guide some of these companies to bigger and broader success rather than constantly searching for the proverbial Next Big Thing. 

It's not an easy call.  Other serial entrepreneurs seem to have the same bug.  For instance, the Digg guys, Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, have yet to even truly reap success with Digg yet area also working to build another startup, Revision3.

But I'm beginning to think I may want to try a different course and see where it leads.

 

Technorati tags: serial entrepreneur, next big thing, digg, kevin rose, jay adelson, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur