Socially Speaking

Transcribed from last week’s Waxxi ‘Cast with Seth Godin:

“What was your biggest Dip?”

I’ve had lots and lots of Dips, which is really lucky for me.

There are plenty of people I went to business school with who have been on a dead end ever since. There are plenty of people who I worked with at my first job, who have been at a dead end ever since.What I have tried to do is seek out Dip after Dip.

Now, there have been a few times when I’ve quit in the Dip and regretted it. There have been a few times when I almost quit in the Dip, and managed to just squeak through. Just before I sold Yoyodyne to Yahoo in 1998, the good news is the day before we sold, we were profitable which was very unusual in those days. The bad news is that in the six weeks before we sold, there were three occasions where we almost missed payroll. We were within an hour of not having the money in the bank to pay our employees.

And it would have been really easy in those days to give up. To look around at the well-funded companies that had raised twenty or forty or eighty million dollars. We had raised four. To look at the companies in California that were getting great deals and hook-ups because of who they knew, and we were in New York and knew no one.

It would have been easy in the pressure of the moment to say, “Well, we gave it a good try. Let’s go home.” I’m really glad we stuck that Dip out.

Originally blogged over at The Long Blonde Tail.

Our next Waxxi interactive podcast will feature two world-renowned figures in technology and business: Michael Parekh and Michael Arrington.

A founder of Goldman Sachs’ Internet Research group, Michael Parekh was one the early pioneers who helped discover, nurture, and fund the foundations of the web as a lead analyst for the IPOs of such organizations as UUNET, Yahoo!, and eBay. Michael (Mukesh) is a native of India and came to the US in 1977. He is passionate about all things Internet and technology, as well as interesting trends he observes, globally.

In building TechCrunch over the last year, Michael (Mike) Arrington helped lay the foundation for the Web 2.0 world we’re living in today, becoming one of its most highly respected pundits, educators, and analysts. Mike is a former corporate attorney (of Wilson Sonsini fame) who has also helped bring public several companies, and is co-founder of edgeio. He grew up in California and Surrey, England, and lives and works in Atherton.

Together, Michaels Parekh and Arrington represent the core of the Internet, and technology: where it’s been, how it’s evolving, and where it’s going.

The date to join in on this global conversation is Thursday, June 29, 2006 and time is 10:30AM PDT. As always, all you need is a phone and/or Internet connectivity.

By dialing in, you’ll not only hear the entire conversation, but have the chance to be a part of it. We’ll give you instructions when you register, but the process is rather simple: hit two buttons on your phone in order to ‘raise your hand’ to ask a question or make a comment.

Many of our members and participants outside the US will choose to use this feature only. This was tremendously effective and important for our first interactive podcast.

We’ll have more details posted shortly. Stay tuned.