RAINE MAGAZINE Volume 16 | Innovate

RAINEMAKERS
FROM WIRED TO WEB 2.0 TO TACKLING BIG DATA
MEET THE ULTIMATE ENTREPRENUER
JOHN BATTELLE
By Nova Lorraine
In our era of ultra-connectivity, one man stands out as a pioneer of
Web 2.0. Entrepreneur John Battelle is best known for launching
standout media properties such as Wired, The Industry Standard, and
Federated Media Publishing: all now top-ranking online properties. His
insights into emerging trends have made him a leader in all things web.
Battelle co-founded and co-hosts the annual Web 2.0 Summit and his
next book, WHAT WE HATH WROUGHT will give us a forecast of the
interconnected world in 2040. Follow along as we learn more about this
tech leader who is definitely ahead of his time.
PART 1 - THE EARLY YEARS AND ENTREPRENEURISM
RAINE: What was your first entrepreneurial moment in your childhood
that you can reflect on?
BATTELLE: When I was a kid, one of the things that I used to complain
about with my friends in middle school was when our parents would
have these cocktail parties, and they would ask us to help them. We
would do whatever we could do to not be around. This was the early to
mid 70’s. There was a circuit of these parties in our social set. My mom
would complain that it was a lot of work, so my friends and I founded
Parties Unlimited, and we catered these parties. I did the bar. I was
12 years old. I made the business cards. I was the co-founder. I saw
this as an opportunity to turn this negative into a positive. How were we
going to get paid, and how were we going to scale it? Thirdly, we looked
good in the eyes of our parents and it got us in the middle of the party.
It was also pretty easy to steal a few drinks! I ran that for 2 to 3 years...
until it became uncool to be doing that in high school.
RAINE: Can you talk about your interest in technology as an artifact of
who we are and what we do?
BATTELLE: I’m obsessed with ad technology right now, not for the
technology, for what I think it means underneath. The infrastructure of
advertising technology is very complicated. It’s an open platform with all
kinds of players from entrepreneurs to fraudsters. It’s 10 times the size
of search engines, i.e. Google. It’s how our culture is going to interact
with each other: through data. I’m studying it because it’s the next great
artifact of our society. I’m interested in how to guide it. And what is the
greatest artifact ever created so far? The Macintosh.
RAINE: What was the catalyst for creating Web 2.0?
BATTELLE: It was an idea. I wrote a piece while teaching at Berkley.
I was working with a magazine called FOO, Friends of O’Reilly. One
of us had this idea of bringing together a group of really cool people
without any agenda. Something is happening, we thought- a second
coming of the web. This was between 2003 and 2004. We decided
to call this conference Web 2.O. It had a great run for a decade, but
I ultimately made the decision to stop doing it because it had run its
course, and it was time to do other things.
RAINE: Are certain individuals destined to be entrepreneurs?
BATTALLE: Entrepreneurism has become a job description in today’s
world, and it’s simply not true. When I did Wired in the early 90s, the
first truly crazy thing I’ve chosen to do; we had 300K and 11 people, and
I was employee number 5 or 6. I took that job and was so in love with
the idea and saw that I was going to be part of building something, and
never thought about the consequences (e.g. no pay for 3 months). I
never thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to be an entrepreneur now.’
Now, everyone wants to leave business school or any school to be an
entrepreneur. It’s like a kid leaving school early to be drafted, as if it is
an understood path. It’s celebrated and its hyped. That wasn’t what I
was. We go on this path, and we figure out what we are and are not
good at and we re-examine it. It turns out that a lot of entrepreneurs stop
running things, and then they become venture capitalists; they become
the player under a coach or the coach that helps the player. After a
couple of decades of starting stuff, you tend have a bit of reflection. I
just can’t imagine not being in a start-up and had been working at a ‘real
job’ instead. I am fortunate to have made a path, so far, in making new
things as opposed to working on others’ in a large organization.
A lot of people go through this process and fail. Maybe it’s not wise to
for the press to glamorize this. There is a potential downside if you don’t
go into it with your eyes wide open: lost relationships, health, time with
kids, money, life…
PART 2 - THE BOOK
RAINE: Has the premise of your book changed since your announcement
to write it, back in 2011?
BATTELLE: It’s a difficult task to paint a picture of what the world could
look like in 30 years. In terms of a premise and starting the narrative,
I’ve figured out how to tell the story and I’ve identified a hero. The overarching
premise is the same, but it’s still an active work in progress.
RAINE: What are some scary or more concerning observations that will
be highlighted in the book?
BATTELLE: One: As we, as a society, become data-driven and begin
to clothe ourselves with data about ourselves and our interaction with
others - could be commercial, social or political interaction - as we
create information about that, and as it is stored, analyzed and tracked,
it is done on systems that we don’t have control over as individuals.
It’s not the privacy issue. It’s far more about the individual and the
organization and how that social contract is written about this new
currency of information. I’m very interested in that piece of the puzzle.
I don’t think many of us as readers have thought very deeply about that.
We are entering a new era, and it’s extremely exciting the potential of all
kinds of opportunities. But we have to think about who is in charge of
this information. My concern is when we start adopting systems through
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