Founders at Work.pdf

382 Founders at Work
and we would hire someone to run it, and then I would go back to working on
XMethods and Jim would go back to his PhD.
Livingston: At one point did you think you were really in it, you would have this
startup and be the CEO?
Hong: To be honest, I never considered myself the CEO, even up until the
point I quit. It was really a partnership between Jim and I. I carried the CEO
title because I was the one running around talking to people. What is the
CEO of a two-person company where the two people are equal shareholders?
What does that mean? It just means that we had to call someone a CEO.
Livingston: So you never took any money from the outside?
Hong: It was just me, Jim, and my brother.
Livingston: What were some other hair-raising things that happened?
Hong: When we first started, we were called Am I Hot or Not? and I had been
sure to check if anyone owned any similar domains. One day Howard Stern
mentioned the site on his show and called it “Am I Hot?” Next thing we knew,
we got a cease-and-desist letter from a site called Am I Hot that claimed they
predated us. We couldn’t believe it! Because we thought we might try to sell,
we knew we had to keep this thing clean, so I went down to LA and tried to
work it out with them. I let them keep the “Am I Hot” name, and they agreed
to let us redirect our traffic to hotornot.com for at least 3 months.
So now I had to rebrand the company, too. Luckily, at that point we were
getting a lot of press, so I worked hard to get the new name out there. We
wound up buying Am I Hot’s assets—their domain and the rights—for what I
considered a paltry sum. We only really bought it to close the chapter and feel
vindicated. Later I found out from someone who worked there that they
thought they totally screwed us when we agreed to change our name. I guess
they thought “Am I Hot” was a better name.
By the way, this was in December, in the first 4 months. We also had
talked briefly to Lycos about selling. They were offering something like $3 to
$5 million—this was after 2 months of work—but we didn’t want to sell because
we thought they would destroy it. We thought they’d stick pop-up ads everywhere
and make it corporate and lame, and then it would die. Our reputation
was worth more to us. I thought the company was worth more, too.
Livingston: What else kept you up at night?
Hong: The scaling issues were pretty bad. It seemed like Jim and I were nonstop
everyday, trying to figure out how we could make the site better or faster.
That first half-year seemed like a day. There was a lot of manic behavior going
on. I was on an adrenaline rush, which felt good, but it was exhausting and
sometimes I felt like I was going crazy. So much, so fast, all at once.
It was fun, too, though. We got in People magazine, Time, and Newsweek.
By the end of the year, we got on Entertainment Weekly’s It List.
Livingston: Why was HOT or NOT instantly so popular?