Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore • My Startup Story

-You know what's right for your small business. -I pick the right tools to click with my clients. When it's game time, I have the right answer-- no matter the playing field. -Your small businesses is unique. So is our coverage. Hiscox-- get the right insurance right now. -It was in my parents' house in the bedroom. Yeah, and I later moved out to San Francisco, where I still live. But yeah, it was just like, I didn't even have a computer. I just borrowed their computer. Yeah. I just really wanted to do this thing. And then-- -Mashable was started on your parent's computer? -Yeah. -That's awesome. -Yeah, because I didn't have one. -Yeah. That's great. -So I started Mashable when I was about 19 living in Aberdeenshire in Scotland, a little rural town called Banchory, and I wanted to get into technology. I saw it really taking off and these websites like MySpace springing up, and millions of people joining them. And it seemed like a really exciting movement. I'd always been excited about the web. I didn't really have many opportunities where I was from. I didn't really know anyone who worked in the web or worked in technology. So I started up a blog, just installed WordPress on the server instead of writing. And people started reading it. And the started commenting. And they started emailing me about it. And I suddenly realized that, actually, this could be my job in technology versus trying to be my entryway to getting into it. Yeah, I was straight out of school. I'd been sick a couple years in school, so I'd just, actually, finished high school. I'd come back and done a couple of years. And I felt really behind, and didn't really want to go to university, and didn't really have any opportunities to do anything because I wasn't qualified in any things. But I was really passionate about writing. I was really passionate about technology. So I started doing what was natural, which was just start up a blog, start writing about tech, and, hopefully, at some point, maybe I'll get to actually do tech as a full time thing. So Mashable is-- so, at first, I wanted to start off with something generic because I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I wanted to leave it open ended. So I didn't want to be like WebStartupReviewSite.com or something. I didn't want to be so specific that suddenly, I'm like, OK, now I want to cover something else. What do I do? And I had kind of a broad range of interests beyond technology. So I went with something generic. But it was also an era where there was like-- the web mashups were happening. So it was all combinations of website. Flickr was really, really popular, and remains really popular, for image sharing. And people were taking Google Maps and mashing it up with Flickr. And posting the photos, the Flickr photos, on a map to show where they were all from. That kind of thing, where it was very much about it recombining. It still happens with things like Twitter, where people build applications, or they mix in-- or Facebook Connect, where they mix in Facebook social graph with other features. So it was very much about, OK, what happens when the web is completely open, and we start combining all these different things together. Can we create something newer? And that's really where the name come from. But obviously, we expanded massively beyond just the mashups trend. I didn't know anything. I wasn't under the illusion that I knew anything. I really knew nothing, and I would just consume information. I would just subscribe to all the business blogs, and all the tech blogs, and anything I could find because I had no clue. And every time I did something, it was really just a first time doing it. And I think the biggest barriers are very much when it comes to like paperwork and legal. And I'm like, OK, now I have to have a company. And now I need to have a company in the US and take my UK company and turn it into a US corporation. And I need to get a corporate lawyer. And then I needed to get my visa so that I could go to the US, and then hire US people, and figure out the US tax system, and all that kind of stuff. So when you're doing that for the first time, and you know that if you get it wrong, you're really in big, big legal trouble-- -By yourself. -Yeah. Then it's kind of, it's a little bit intimidating. And those were the real challenges where I just kind of jumped in with two feet and just said, OK, I hope this is right, and it works out. I didn't really have any expectations when I started out. I rarely go in with high, high expectations. I just want to do the best that I can do and see where I end up. So I didn't feel like there was significant risk at the time. I guess, when you think about it, that maybe there is a certain amount of risk in not getting an education and not actually trying to learn a career because if that one thing that you've bet everything on falls through, then you are kind of screwed. But I didn't really sense that at the time. I just thought, hey, this is the thing I really want to do. And I'm passionate about it. I think there was a lot of doubt at that time that blogs could make money. And there wasn't really ads-- like you could have AdSense on your blog, but there weren't really ad networks to sell ads. Everyone said that blogs were kind of a fad and that they we're going to catch on. So in some sense, the market was essentially saying, no, this isn't worth doing. That was a great thing for me because there wasn't anyone else doing it, really. There was very few other blogs setting up at that time doing the same thing. I think it's probably when I sold my first ad because, again, when you start this thing, you think, well, it's kind of a hobby. And I want to get a real job at some point. And I was trying to do a consulting on the side and trying to make money off it. I'd charge $50 for half an hour to speak to a startup about what all the other startups were doing in the space and how they could compete. But the first time I really realized that this was probably going to take off was someone came to me and said, hey, we want to buy an ad on Mashable. And I'm like, well, maybe they're going to pay me $50 or something. They are like, yeah, like $3,000, is that enough? And I was like, OK, sure. That will pay my bills for a bit. So when I started, that was really the turning point from going from, OK it's my personal blog to, all right, I have advertising. What am I going to do? And I started hiring people. I started saying, well, I can take as much as possible of that and put it towards building up a big team of writers. And it was kind of one by one. It took take a long time as well. I think was at least 18 months to two years before I could actually start hiring people, which is a heck of a long time for a startup. Yeah, it was just me for years. And in the editorial, it was me for maybe three to four years. I was doing writing heavily and was the writer that was writing the most. So it takes a long time, as well, to transition and to trying and put people in the right roles, especially if you don't know anyone. If you know people, it's easy because you say, OK, I worked with this guy before. He's awsome. But it's really a learning process where you're trying to figure out, well, how do you replace yourself? And how do you move up the ladder and bring in people that are competent, or more competent than you, hopefully, to take over some of the day-to-day roles. Because it's all about, what motivates entrepreneurs, to some degree, is the control of controlling your own destiny, of deciding your own fate, and it is a kind of a control instinct. And that's why entrepreneurs go out on their own and don't go and work for someone else because they kind of resist authority figures to some extent. So when you're talking about trying to give up control, and trying to delegate, it is a kind of a challenging process. It's especially challenging for an editorial organization because people really judge you based on the tone, or on the attitude, of the angle you take. So you really need to be very careful to select people who are cultural match. We didn't want people who were going to go out and create false conflicts, were going to go out and attack people and try and get page views that way. We did want a negativity to the brand. And we also wanted to maintain quality because people are pretty tough on scrutinizing editorial publications. Even the very best of them, people will say, well, I saw an article, and this newspaper's going downhill because it's terrible. And I disagreed with this article and whatever. So people are pretty critical of editorial organizations when they do change their tone. So yeah, it's doubly challenging when you're trying to maintain a certain tone, a certain outlook, a certain angle on the news. Well I really enjoy my work. I'm really just most excited and most passionate when I'm working on things. I don't even consider it work as such. I just consider it, like, I really love the web. I love being on the web. I mean, who doesn't love all these new tools, Facebook and Twitter, and connecting with people online, and that's basically my job. If I'm on Facebook during the day, that's my job. So you can't really complain that you get to spend all your time on the web, or trying out new cool stuff on your phone, or getting an iPad as soon as it comes out because it's for work, and playing all the games on the iPad, and just having a really fun time with it, and also learning about all these new technologies, and meeting cool people who are doing awesome things, and changing the world. And so I've never really considered work. I actually have the opposite. When I'm kind of away from that, I feel a little bit, like, oh, I want to be online. I want to be connected. I wonder what all my online friends are doing. I wonder what's happening out there. So for me, it's the opposite. I get a little bit anxious when I'm away from all that stuff. And I just really, really love being online, trying all these new applications, trying everything new that's happening.