Interview: Holly Hamann of BlogFrog (part 1 of 3)
[Note: This is the first of the Solid Startups interviews. Today's interview with Holly Hamman is the first of three parts, mainly because her answers were awesome.]
Holly Hamann represents everything I like about working with startups: she’s a seasoned serial entrepreneur, she’s passionate and present in what she’s doing, she actively seeks feedback about what she can do better, and she makes her work a part of her quality of life. Holly is a working mother who blogs, speaks, and writes about tech and the family, and she seems to have endless energy. She lives in Boulder CO, a burgeoning hive of entrepreneurial activity and a highly supportive startup community, and is currently VP Marketing at TheBlogFrog.
JL: Holly, I’ve lost track of how many companies you’ve started or worked in. Can you bring us up to speed on your entrepreneurial journey? How did you get here?
HH: I graduated from college with a degree in Mathematics and was recruited by the phone company to help them depreciate assets. Yes, it was as boring as it sounds. I moved around within the company, got promoted to help market new products, but the culture was still like being part of a huge, monolithic machine with slow-moving gears. The average time from product inception to product launch was 4 years! I eventually left, moved to Colorado and discovered start-ups. I joined a small start-up called Matchlogic, an online advertising firm that used demographics to target online ads for big brands. We could have a good idea one morning, talk to the CEO at lunch, and be doing something about it that afternoon.
The freedom to run after a great idea was addicting. Matchlogic ended up being acquired by Excite for $89 Million in 1998. By that time, I was hooked on start-ups, especially marketing and customer acquisition. Over the next decade, I helped launched several start-ups in the web, tech, or bio-tech space. Service Metrics was website performance monitoring company acquired by Exodus in 2000 for $280 Million. That was during the dot.com bubble heyday when e-commerce sites like eToys and eTrade were popping up everywhere. I helped LeftHand Networks market their network storage product in the early 2000s and HP bought them for $360 Million. There were more along the way including ThoughtEquity Motion (an online motion footage provider) and Regenexx, a stem cell therapy lab.
By 2008, I still loved the start-up environment but was itching to try launching a company of my own. I had been introduced to Rustin Banks, an aerospace engineer working on the beta for a blog community solution during nights and weekends. His idea was brilliant and I felt strongly we’d make good partners. So we teamed up in early 2009 and launched BlogFrog, a web solution that lets any blog or brand add an instant community forum to their site. 18 months later, we have over 40,000 women/mom bloggers in the network and reach almost 3 million moms each month. We’re now the largest network of mom blogs in the U.S. and it’s been an awesome journey!
JL: What are some of your personal attributes that you think have helped you along the way?
HH: Personally, I covet creative freedom more than I do security. I have had well-paying positions with companies that couldn’t embrace change or creative expression and I just didn’t last long. And by creative expression, I don’t mean that I wanted to come in late, needed a foosball table, or wanted to bring my dog to work. I wanted to have open discussions about how we could improve, new product directions, better ways to reach customers. Consumers are bombarded every day with new and improved ways to do everything from cooking their breakfast to buying concert tickets and companies need to be willing to listen closely and entertain change. If a company culture doesn’t support rapid change (or at least be able to talk about it), than its hard for me to stay. Being able to embrace change and loving the unknown are two personal attributes I have that make start-ups a good fit for me. I also like it when there are more variables in a formula than constants. The parts we’ve already figured out are boring. I want to work on problems that don’t have solutions yet. Start-ups take a lot of energy and you wear a lot of hats. Some people don’t like that variety but it keeps things interesting for me. Lastly, I love the beginning stage of start-ups where there answer to most questions is “I don’t know but I’ll find out”. It levels the playing field when building the right solution is as much about thinking creatively as is it about having experience.
