In a short stretch of time, from the mid 90s to the early 2000s, a relatively small group of people started playing around with this thing called the World Wide Web. They had the audacity to think they just might change the world. This project introduces you to the big players from those hallowed days, and let them tell you what it was like and how you should have been there.
Episode Six Today, we're gonna talk to Jeff and Craig, the founders of Razorfish purveyors of the blue dot. It's gonna be amazing returning here.
This is gonna be so much fun. I know how long it's been to talk to Jeff and Craig. I mean, I didn't know Craig as well as you may have. But I certainly have some great stories about Jeff and so it's gonna be a lot of fun. Happy New Year Kyle happy great New Year.
Yes. Yeah. Happy New Year to you know, fantastic so far so good. Well, you know, other than you know, the insurrection but
this is gonna be the one hour of just pure fun for a change.
Yeah, exactly. You can ignore all that just watch this. It's gonna be good. This is also our first non agency.com guests. So I'm super excited about that. So we'll get him on in a second. Okay, some housecleaning before we get started. So so if you want to see past episodes, go to youtube.com if you're watching this live you're likely on on Facebook or YouTube you see it there. So so you know please go to you should it you can see all the back stuff from there and more information who's coming up. The other thing this is super important. If you're watching and you know, these guys you can Heckle ritesh will be. I'll be on your comments as you as you type them in. So So feel free to share comments and we'll pull pull, pull your comments up, and probably trigger some stories and things like that. And then finally, this is super important, because we want to be influencers, but we're not quite there yet. Especially if you're on YouTube. I think we need 22 or 23 or
23 more please 23
on YouTube, and we can get our own vanity URL right now. It's just gobbledygook because you know, that's that's life in the big city when you're when you're not influencer. So anyway, with that, let's let's bring on Craig and Jeff and gentlemen, gentlemen. Hello there.
How's it going? Oh, you
know, it's going What a crazy week we've had, but it's so good to come and hang out for an hour and just have a bit of fun, right? Absolutely. So
We're talking about Kim and Kanye, is that what you mean? Yeah.
But yeah, I sent him a note saying I'm available if you if your heart is broken, I'm ready to mend it for you. So
yeah, that's fantastic. So for those that don't know, Craig and Jeff, were co founders of Razorfish, I would say, you know, for me that one of the reasons I'm so excited to have you on I wanted to kick off the new year this way. I feel such a kinship with both of you because I feel like agency calm and Razorfish while we were super rivals, and sort of from personality standpoints, we were kind of opposite sides of the coin. But but we also had such incredibly parallel paths, right, we, you know, we had urban desires, you had blue dot, you know, we were doing big corporate clients, you were doing like hip, you know, music stuff and design stuff. Like, it was just and and, you know, our growth path was was really similar. So it's just amazing to have you. So I so much appreciate you being on to this little experiment. You know, back in the day, we were trying to figure out what the what the internet was. And I don't know now we're experimenting with live shows on the internet. So welcome, and thank you. Oh, good to be here. Yeah. Happy New Year.
This is great. Really, guys, and thanks for having us.
Yeah. All right. So let's jump in. So where are we like to start? I know this is radical. Is that the beginning? And I know, I know, I know. So. So.
Right? And by the way to start?
Yeah, it's true. Well, people every time I would tell an agency comm story, people would say, you should write a book. And then I finally realized after 50 years, I don't have the attention span to write. I could probably to a TV show, and still capturing the stories actually seems important now that my brain is starting to go so. So So anyway, yeah. So I mean, the thing about Razorfish is kind of when when we came on the scene and we're coming up you were there like I kind of feel like we just kind of emerged at a really similar time but I don't actually know your origin story. So I would love to just hear I don't care who goes first you can battle it out. But But like, how did it begin like what were you doing, you know, leading up to that and, and and how did it all begin for you guys?
You want to go first?
Yeah, I mean, I look I can, we have. So the first thing is Jeff and I knew each other growing up, right? So we went to, we went to neighboring elementary schools, same synagogue, same summer camp, same youth group. We're buddies during high school, and then lost touch when we went to college. Because, you know, there was no internet or cell phones. And that's, you know, the only way to stay in touch with people was to write letters. So that didn't happen. But I was
Not gonna write your letter...
yeah, real time. During that time, we went and did different things, obviously. And, you know, my, my path there was I studied computer science and philosophy and and went and worked in a software company and then went to the MIT Media Lab, and got a degree in visual studies from MIT, graduated and came to New York to figure out what was going to be next for me and try to find things and met a handful of people. And I was trying to think of the guy's name was David cherry, I think, and somebody else, I can't remember the people's name. But we, from when I went to go see these guys who are setting up a CD ROM based map, or DVD ROM magazine, right. The idea was, you're going to subscribe to a little platter rather than a stack of papers.
Yeah. And you get the monthly and it was actually bi monthly because you were actually launching software, one of them right. And it was it
was it was paid for by Felix Dennis, who had made a shit ton of money on the Mexican Maxim magazine magazines in the UK. And this was his foray into the US. And I was helping these guys literally take their computers out of their boxes and plug them in and just kind of like, I don't know, is there something for me to do here? Maybe, maybe not. And, and I said, I was from Minneapolis. And I believe and I want to tell your story, Jeff, and I think Jeff was in there like the day before. Similar thing, like what do you guys up to, you know, do you need someone to help with marketing what's going on. And they they called Jeff and gave Jeff my phone number. And I came home and Jeff was on my answering machine. So the first time in five years, I had heard from him, wow, went over to his apartment in these village and talked about what we were up to. And I had been doing some freelance work for a small software company, really small, three person, sort of digital design company up in Westport, Connecticut, designing ads for prodigy, and, and some other, you know, little digital things. Actually, my, one of our really fun gigs was we got hired by IBM, to work on a little project that when you took a PC out of the box, and plugged it in a screen popped up and said, Thank you for buying me. Can you please tell me what time it is? So I can set the clock.
So you get to build that little that little experience. So
I built that little startup. When I was commuting from New York City up to Westport, or want to do that, I thought, I can get my own clients, I can do these things. And then I and then I hooked up with Jeff and and, you know, showed him what web browsers were and, and, and, and it was like that, because I remember I remember explicitly sitting in your living room on on Avenue C and you saying, Wait, so you know, right now who's looking at that page, and you know that they're in Michigan. And so instead of, you know, the typical response was okay, nerd. This was like, wow, this has value. This is amazing. Yeah. And then, you know, I don't want to say the rest is history. But we chatted about about, about starting a company together. And I'll jump to a related agency.com story about six months later. And then Jeff, you should tell where you were first, but I was invited to speak at an internal conference at Time Warner by a guy named Larry Gagliardi, who was in charge of the telephone system and the email system. And he asked me to come and show some of the web design work that I had been doing for this small company up in up in Connecticut. And I believe that the person who spoke after me was Chan, knowing how he was breaking all sorts of corporate rules by selling ads on vibe.com. And we were in the same room at the same time. And there was a guy in the audience named Shaun White Shawn white, Sean, and he was
Sean Carroll.
He was an editor at GQ magazine. And he also was very involved with the time life gardening book series that was advertised on television. Yep, yep. And then after that meeting, he got in touch with Jeff and I about Building a little website for the New York Botanical Gardens, which was going to be part of the Time Warner's Pathfinder giant room that they were going to do to try to turn life books. Yes. And so I don't know if it's actually true Chan Chan's watching he would have to chime in but but um, I believe the chairman home and started agency calm that afternoon and Jeff and I basically started Razorfish like.
So that's great. That's awesome.
That is an incredible serendipity thing. Imagine that.
I mean, it really, it really is just this parallel thing, because it was Yeah, Chan and I were both I was doing Urban Desires, he was doing Vibe. And then, yeah, we just said, Hey, you know, he said, we should go make websites for these big companies, because they don't seem to have them. I keep trying to sell them ads, but we don't have websites. So, so So, Jeff,
is it true? What Craig said?
largely, I think so. Trying to think about having any, any memories of anything different, you know, I had been thinking about how digital was sort of changing things in a lot of ways I had, I'd been involved in almost every form of ideation, production, distribution, and monetization of media formats, and, and I've been involved in all of them, I sucked at everything I was, I was awful at every form of creative expression that you could you could muster I did it and was bad at it.
He didn't give you how to launch Photoshop, but that was about it.
Yeah, yeah. Pretty much. And, and subsequently, you know, as as things you could feel it, you know, I am describing, you know, in a way that you guys understand, but like in 92, and 93, and 94, you could start to feel well, what we would term is today as convergence happening. Yeah, we're digital stuff, the ability to produce, you know, distribute, and monetize, digital stuff was all coming together. Whereas in the past, all of those functions had been separate. printing presses made magazines, magazines, got put on trucks to get sent to newsstand. newsstands, where you bought the magazine, and the production, distribution and monetization of those ideas that show up in a magazine or in a TV show, or in a radio show or in a any other form of fee, a theatrical event or a movie or, or DJing, at the at the at the club, all of those things started to come together in, in, in digital, in some way, shape or form early on. And so I was, I could feel it. And I knew that what I, you know, I knew that I sucked at all of these other things. But what I was good at is putting it together. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
And that's, that's kind of the ultimate skill back then. Right? Because you had to bring stuff from all these other disciplines.
Yeah. And so so that, you know, the liberal arts degree or whatever turned out to be kind of handy.
A good thing. My acting degree still is not a good thing. But you know.
Yeah, but you know, how to do CSS? Well,
that's it. Yeah, I know how to act like a CEO. Yeah.
All this right.
You know, and I was hungry, you know, Craig and I went to went to school, and we went to Hebrew school and summer camp with another another group of folks, a guy named Bob roback. And Dave Goldberg, who ended up founding a CD ROM magazine called launch. Right? And if you know, Dave Goldberg has passed away, but he, he, he went on to, to marry Sheryl Sandberg and part of SurveyMonkey and all that, but my my point in all this is that is that there was something going on, and I wanted to be involved in it, you know, and so I I, my brother and I had worked on a company we that we treated taking public a couple of years before and I had sort of Wet Wet my beak a little bit with it with the capital markets. And I and I but I but I knew this thing, this convergence, digital media, digital stuff is happening. And I wanted to be involved in it in some way. So So after, you know, hustling around, looking at stuff I bumped into the folks at at, at blender with David geograph. And there was a woman named Regina Joseph if you guys are sure. And Regina Regina. I'd had a job at this is a strange at TVT records with a guy named Steve Gottlieb at TVT records. I kept pushing on Steve and and by proxy, a woman that worked with him Patricia Joseph Regina sister, that we needed to be a digital record label. And Steve basically he fired me I mean, he fired me.
Hi, Steve, have you ever watched our great friends, but but subsequently, you know, getting fired from there. And then, you know, Patricia Joseph from Regina Joseph, and then David cherry, and then blender. I I bumped into Greg. And we we got together and he showed me, you know, the internet and I was like, this is going to change society, this is going to change the world. And we've got to start a business right now.
I kind of I kind of feel like, like everyone that started that early, like where it was just coming up, that just had a sense that something was bigger. Like, I think that's why we, we all jumped into it kind of blindly, because it was it was just kind of that magical thing. I always felt and this seemed like, I've talked to a lot of other people about this for that time, I always felt really lucky. Like, did you guys have a sense of how lucky you were to be there that early in doing it? Did you have that sense?
I did. I mean, I think that, um, you know, look, we, we we, by definition, we were lucky because we were able to be at the beginning of something that was small. And you know, if you're something
that was big, that was small. Right, right.
You try to break into the airline market, now you're gonna have a hard time you try to break into a, you know it to a smaller industry at the beginning, if you're good, you can, it's just easier to grab, you know, to have influence over that. So absolutely, we were very lucky to be at at, at the time at the place that we were at. That's not to say that there were plenty of other people that were there at exactly the same time that didn't end up being successful because they didn't have the skill of the driver, the talent, bring those things. But But absolutely, you know, the the universe conspired to create some conditions for us at the right time. Yeah,
so let me ask a question on that. So cuz, Kyle, I've heard this from you. And Chad, you know, that when you guys were particularly ucol, as you were working on this, that there was this moment, just like Jeff said, Oh, this is gonna be huge. And we have to do something, there was that moment. But it seems to me, you know, having come from the UK, that he was in New York, which was the interesting thing, because prior to that a lot of that stuff was still Silicon Valley based. And we still see the valley. But this was really happening in New York. So there was this. Another piece of that, that there was this, this theme, you know, if you're not yet so please tell me what was the heart of this? Right.
Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, New York at the time, you know, was a was one a great place to be. You had this convergence of fashion and advertising and media and finance, and telecom and insurance and, you know, modeling and music and all of the things that you need to do the alchemy, that you need to have really creative people who are passionate about things who are pursuing those passions all in the same place at the same time. drum and bass music, you had this punks, you had ginger, you had all this stuff cut, you had Josh Harris, you had all this stuff coming together in literally a couple of square blocks downtown in downtown, and you weren't going out, you know, every night or whenever to hang out with people. And you weren't seeing the flyers or the wheatpaste stuff, or you weren't seeing and reading the right magazines at the right moment. You know, you weren't in the scene. And so there was definitely this scene that spurred this competition and competition and, and friendly excitement about about the burgeoning digital.
Yeah, who was doing what who was figuring what out? And I think that like the the California New York split, I felt I felt like the New York scene was much more about Okay, all this technology has been created. Now what can we do with it? That's really interesting, right out of from a cultural point of view, and I I feel like so so let's kind of shift gears let's let's move into
my Hang on, hang on before. Razorfish, what the heck, how'd you come up with the name? Look,
we came with a new look. We were extremely we did what anyone does when they when they name things, right. So we, we we we did a typical creative process we generated huge lists of names and narrowed them down and and most of them sucked and then we added more and the Muslim sucked and, you know, we had a deadline so that this client, Sean, you know, he hired us to build that website. And he said you got to pick a company name by Friday because I can't make the I'm not paying you personally, right? Don't pick a name. But you know, Jeff had an old landline telephone that was unplugged. And we just, we just just, we just put one on the on the list and we answer the phone like 50 times and be like, Oh my god, I'm so sick of that name already. We can't do that. I mean, technically Razorfish, the word showed up, while we were flipping through dictionaries and pointing at words, that's how it got on the list. But um, but you know, we, we analyzed it, you know, like, we did all the other names, and we're like, okay, it conveys a sense of, you know, it's flexible, it's got a Z, and there's kind of edgy, people don't know what it is, you know, we you can associate a bunch of things. But it was very clear, we did not want to put our names on the, on the company door, it was not about us, it was about the organization, despite the fact that we did go out and try to get a lot of publicity for the organization. But we didn't want it to be about us. We didn't want to be tied to a technology or tied to anything really, that people had an association with. We wanted to be flexible. So that's where the name came from.
was just gonna say, I mean, talk about the the sort of the cultural impact, you know, you had blue dots. So you had this, you have this corporate project that allowed you to do sort of, you know, non business specific, you know, expression. And then you had Razorfish, right, so just talk about, you know, what were those early years? Like, what, what was it like, you know, you get your first job, how did blue come about, like, just just start to unpack
some of the first employees, because, you know, there's two of you, you're, you know, you're leading off each other, probably feeding off each other doing this thing. And now you're gonna start hiring people and offices. I mean, it starts that process, right?
Yeah, we didn't really know, you know, we had sort of three, three categories of things that we knew this business could become, you know, we knew that it could be some form of, you know, Technology Services, we knew that it could be some form of content. And then we knew that it could be some form of software. In fact, we had an early, you know, call it web tracking software that we had built, what we thought, oh, which, you know, and it turns out that the services component of the business was the one that we were the least excited about. But the but the one that we knew would likely generate the kind of traction and, and, and business opportunity. Um, correct me if I'm
wrong, correct. Well, that's totally right. I think, you know, the blue dawn was just look, agencies, when they want to get hired, typically have a portfolio of work. Yeah, that that helps stand for their skill set. And, you know, we were hired by Time Warner for an extremely conservative project. Right. And, and I remember even saying, you know, to the client, like, you want to sell time, like books, why don't you Why don't you sell the books online. And an argument ensued, it was like, no one's going to type their credit card into a web page, right? People read it aloud over a phone, like, Oh, that's different. That's different. Oh, look, we had two or three clients, eight clients, whatever it was, look, we have have some of my freelance work. I was very fortunate to be able to bring some of that in, I happen. To talk about luck. I happened to be at the right place at the right time. To design one of the first internet ads, the first banner ads, cause the firm that I was working for Connecticut got hired by multimedia down the street. Yeah, I happen to know Brian Behlendorf, who is the webmaster@hotwire.com, which is where the ad was going to be. And we had some portfolio pieces. But at the end of the day, we didn't have enough to say, yeah, we can do this. And we can do this. And we can do this. So there was a combination of I want to be an artist. I want to I want to self Express. And I want to see what how can happen. It's technology, my program at at MIT, the Media Lab was really focused on don't use the technology the way it's supposed to be used. Hmm, break apart the Xerox machine, put some some dog fur in there and put it back on, ya know, fill the inkwell with spaghetti sauce and see what happens. Right. So this is the same sort of idea of like, you've got this very, very rudimentary set of tools. Yeah. UML. Very, yeah.
Can you do?
Yeah, exactly.
You know, and and that became so the Buddha was a playground was also a way for us to do to do our own self expression. I think, equally important. From the beginning. I would say that there was a large percentage of us a large percentage of us and you're in that group that wanted the internet to be a beautiful place. This banner and entrepreneur place they read that I created. You know, when you clicked on it, it took you to 12 online art galleries. It didn't take you to a corporate website to try to sell you a long distance plan. We wanted to my whole goal was To try to make technology beautiful and and to make it usable and acceptable and not have it be this burdensome, hideously ugly thing, you know, you have to use the ATM machine. Like why can't the ATM machine be beautiful? So we wanted to create art and we knew artists in New York City. And our you know, and and we both pitch them on, hey, let's put your portfolio online. Gallery online, let's build this. And and and, you know, you did that we did that avalanche was doing that. It was it was like how do we show people what how beautiful this can be? And how do we bring artists who who could use some PR and some exposure out to the world and say like, these, these artists are great, you should know about them. Yeah, I think that was that was where the just, you know, the blue dot stuff came from?
Yeah, no, it was same. And we, you know, we would ask, you know, we would sort of ask internally or as clients, you know, what do you want, we'd realize, well, they don't know what they want, like, nobody knows what they want. because no one's done this before. So for us, urban desires was a place where we could turn the technologists and the creatives loose and say, you know, go pick a section or go pick an article and like, figure some crap out. And then because you can't you literally can't screw it up over there. And then what would invariably happen to be like, Oh, that's a really interesting approach. Let's bring that into you know, some corporate thing.
It seems to me the mode of media guys. were the ones who were benefiting from mobile is because you guys work with modem I think, Kyle you and Chad did something with the modem guys as well. Right?
We did the the freezer was the first subcontracting job and then we said we'll never do another job again. We won MetLife from them. So yeah, it was it was Yeah, the multimedia boys. Those are some good. Hey, what's
up smile?
Oh, gee, you know, but they were they were thinking about multimedia was really rooted not necessarily in the web. And really rooted in that, that. The Prodigy compuserve and yeah.
Yes.
We had never thought about getting into the ad business ever. Yeah, one of the sort of ongoing sayings that at Razorfish was always, you know, build the thing, not the thing about the thing. That's great. We always believed that ads were a thing about the thing. And we wanted to build the thing. And so we weren't interested in building ads about stock trading websites, stock stock trading experience, we wanted to build the stock trading experience. We want to build ads about a thing, we wanted to build the thing. And that was really kind of the beginning of a razor fish's core business and in building out businesses, not building out advertising that supported businesses.
So now you're off, right, you're off and growing. It's 1996 97. And now, you know, the whole world is starting to figure out that there's something big going on here. You're some of the early pioneers of all this. What started to change. How did you start sort of growing Razorfish? And did you stay true to or try and stay true to that vision of build the thing? Jeff?
Yes. Well, first and foremost, you know, we, we, we still struggled as I'm sure you did. Well, there was a turning point. And I don't know exactly when it was, it might have been in 98, might have even been in 99. But where you didn't have to explain what the worldwide web was. Every presentation, every single presentation that you gave up until like, whatever the date was, I'm going to call it mid 97. Or
it was around mid 90s.
Ever that was like, every single time you had to go in and take 15 minutes and explain what online was
you carry in your computer to show them.
And so so you asked me what like when did the business kind of you know what, what was whatever moment that was when, when stop when we had when we were no longer having to explain what getting online was or why it was going to be important or powerful. That ushered in sort of a single a turning point. I think there were other turning points, which we share with agency.com where a woman named police Concannon knocked on our door from a group called communicate, which was a shell that Omnicom had created to invest in digital companies like ours, and there was a thorough vetting process of 150 companies or something. And it turned out that, you know, we were among the top six that that that communicated was interested in investing in and I think at at that moment in, in, I think it was in the summer, I forgot what when it was 1996 when Omnicom made That bet on all of us. I think it sort of separated some of the weekend, if you will. And and, and, and it allowed us to, not only, you know, have the marketing presence in the marketplace because of because of Omni comms sort of stamp of approval.
Yeah, the validation.
But but but the deal that we did allowed us, not not, they didn't make any investment in the company. You know, for you guys, you might have been different. But for Craig and I, they didn't put the money in the company. And so from our perspective, you know, when we got the marketing branding, but to we got the freedom to kind of think about things that that that didn't involve us paying our rent, meaning we were less concerned with that and got to really sort of focus all of our all of our passion on the business, one of the smartest things john Wren could have done was was structuring the deal, at least for me that way. And then lastly, gave us an operating line of credit. Yeah, allowed us to borrow money from Omnicom and grow the business in such a huge way. Which we paid back, by the way, all that money, and then so and then. So
what was it? What were the what were the things? What were the projects that you did? I would say like, the early stuff was all that exploratory stuff, but you know, now you're funded. Now you're established? What were the projects that you did? where, you know, you said, you know, we want to build the thing, not the thing that takes you to the thing? Like, what were some of the things that you built that you were particularly proud of? Or felt like, holy crap, we got to do that, like, for us, you know, we did the Sirius Satellite Radio, we did British Airways, the ticket, which was not possible, like, what were those things that you did that were like, holy crap, we got we did that. We got to do that.
Oh, I think the first one that comes to mind is pretty we'll probably both agree was building schwab.com? Yeah,
we do that we were,
first of all, we were in you know, this was this was the a revolution in the in the stock market. Yeah. And I think trading, right. And, and, and IPOs. And, and all sorts of, you know, companies going public like, Oh, right,
it was going crazy. going nuts. Yeah.
And, and Schwab came to us. And we and we built a basically a consumer portal for people to go on and buy and sell stocks, and access your accounts. And they were the first financial institution to, to really move into the digital era, like you couldn't go on to chase.com or citibank.com. And check your balance or look at your, you know, pay online bills or do any of those things. And so it did it did a bunch of things for us, not the least of which is we had to integrate a a front end platform that we built with a federally controlled, probably draining Fortran, brain financial services that needed to be 24. Seven, no lag, we're talking about people's money, wanting to build a store money, and be like, oh, come see me
marketing. Yeah,
this was this was, this was a place where people put their dollars. Yeah, and and so for us, it was a unbelievable opportunity to build something that had a massive technology program. second piece of it was we worked with a company that was embracing digital in their industry before anybody else right before anybody else in a way. And and at least those two components of it, not to mention the fact that like some of the designs still stand the test of time, like we had great people. It was, it was by far and away the largest project that we did, and I know that to sort of the lore of telling this. We did this project, I can't believe it's this many people were this many lines of code. And then three days later, you're like, wait, we just got one that's twice as big. last show.
it's like this. That happened. But that was that was um, I don't know if it was nine months or a year, but it was probably the first project that took that long that had that many people. We are we were we were we had to build the new york team in San Francisco team. Like it wasn't really. For me, that was a touchstone milestone, like, you know, iconic project for us.
Yeah, that's you did you have to deal with a lot of the political sort of infighting within that organization. So not only were you sort of, you know, smashing this Fortran mainframe to the front end, were you having to deal with any of the political stuff on the back end with them?
The different departments that needed to be involved? Like,
At Schwab we kind of had the right levels of executive and I and that's great. So so that was a I'm gonna say a relatively smooth project. But I know exactly what you're talking about. Because in essence, you know, you bump into the politics of large organizations all the time, and especially in the early days, you know, you had the internet evangelist at the company, but no one else supported him. Yeah, I
was gonna tell you, I told you this story last night, Jeff, it's Kyle, you, we were we were at an Omnicom event in London, where we we presented to a bunch of London, Omnicom clients at the offices of imagination. Okay, this incredible experience design firm. Yeah. And we had just spent about four months doing an intranet an internal project for British Airways, so they were your client on the on the front end, and we were doing an intranet thing. And I, I talked to our client there. And I said, so what's going on with the company? Like, how is this project being perceived? And he said, Craig, let me tell you, about a third of the company thinks is the most amazing, important thing that we've ever done. Yeah. And they are totally in support. Another third of the company thinks that this is a waste of money, and it'll never get done. It's ridiculous. And the other third, don't give a shit because they won't be here by the time the project is over. Right. So like, so we're finding two thirds of the company? Yeah. You bring that up? Because even though we didn't have to explain what the internet was by 98, we still had to justify why people were spending millions of dollars on
Yeah, yeah, we had, you know, we had those situations where the people that hired us were, you know, evangelists, champions believers. And, and they would say, well, we want, you know, our website to do XYZ, and then we would go look at it, and we would realize, well, for the website to do X, Y, and Z, then division a actually needs to talk to division B. And they'd be like, Oh, they haven't talked in 20 years, right. So we ended up like, I felt as things got more sophisticated, we shifted, shifted as much into a consulting role as an agency role. Like, this
is where I will I will give Jeff, a lot of credit, he noticed this and, you know, it is why we changed our marketing and our internal philosophy, from being a whatever we were, you know, platform agnostic, front end interface design company, to digital change management.
Yeah. Okay, interesting. So, Jeff, you you care. I mean, you carry that on after Razorfish, but talk about that transition? I mean, what, what, what did you see? or What did it feel like a survival thing for you? Or like, a sales thing? Like, what, what? What shifted you in that direction?
As you started to look at where the strategic value was in delivering services. It wasn't just in the creation aspect of it, but it was in internal organization around the digital business, creating these digital businesses, you couldn't just create the pretty front end, or even the technology that connected pretty good. And I mean, you could and you could sell it,
and a lot of people did. I mean, that was, yeah, a lot of Yeah.
And that's a great business, I guess it was or was, you know, web design, if you will, but what we then built out was an entire army of people that could help navigate that change management exercise that can help bring those organizations together, that could get them focused on the kind of business process, the kind of technology integration, and then the kind of marketing and support that you needed to build out a true digital business. And so digital change management, which we notoriously stumble over explaining on 60 minutes isn't was a thing, and you needed all of those things to line up to be successful. And, and we realized that early on, which was we're doing these digital front end projects, and and like you said, the organization's weren't necessarily lined up to make your project to success. And so who wanted to have a bunch of failed projects on their, on their, on their roster? projects that were successful, so we needed to build the expertise inside of inside of Razorfish to digitally change manage these companies and help them with BPO and technology integration and marketing and sales support, and the digital experience designing and all of those things were crucial for success. If you didn't have one, then you weren't gonna succeed. Yeah.
The journey you went on there because you know, they, it's fascinating. I remember, I did a stint for a conduit communications, which is a strategy consulting firm in London and Chris and Matthias and I still good friends of it, because he hired me, you guys by conduit as a strategy consulting firm. They was that Boston based technology company that you acquired? I think you got acquired by them and then you acquired them. Yeah. That was Eagle River. We bought Eagle River. We bought, you know, what was the tech company that Larry Krakauer and those guys came from? I forgot the J, I think, yeah. So it was funny how we both were on this parallel paths of getting these additional capabilities. What started off with creative and thinking and making, to your point great things beautiful, started to morph a little bit more into business operations and, and changing the way you work and the way you manage your own money and those kinds of things. But it was still changing the world a bit, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In my,
just completely aside, my brother called me one day goes, I'm gonna go work for these guys called Razorfish. He was in London, and I'm moving to San Francisco to work on cisco.com for them. Do you know that I'm like, Oh, God, because I really, you kind of Razorfish?
Yeah, really? I know, right. Well, so what I want to, I want to, you guys have both done really interesting thing since Razorfish, and there's, I feel like every one of these shows we do, I feel like, we need another couple of hours. But I know we all have to go. So like, at some point, we got to just unpack all the stories like those crazy times in the in the, you know, sort of 96 to 98. We're just not, you know, we should we should do another one and just talk about that. But I would love to hear from both of you. You both did really interesting things. And you're both doing interesting things. Now, since then. I would love to just hear from you. What were the lessons that you took from them? Like, what did that time that phase from kind of mid 90s to early 2000s? Like, what did that color moving forward? How did that impact how you do what you do now or what you did next? I
would love to get your mining away there. So Oh my God,
I'm smiling. Cuz like, I got like, 100 you know, really? No, I mean, like, Look, we we, I'm gonna rattle off, I'll rattle off like little ones, right? So we got a lot of, we got a lot of publicity and a lot of press. And we did a lot of interviews. And I learned how to speak in public really well. And I really enjoyed it. I also learned how evil the press can be because they're looking for clickbait. And I learned how to, you know, what media training was really about and how to like answer questions in a way that is, it's good for you and and I learned, you know, so I learned that I learned that when I first started the company I told Jeff that I didn't want any more anyone to work directly for me, because I didn't like firing people. It was icky. And I didn't like I learned that that is ridiculous. And and that, you know, real business people like do all the things so I learned how to do that. I learned how important corporate culture is. Yeah. How making people enjoying what they're doing is important and how to be part of
something I think, you know, again, I feel like agency.com and Razorfish had such clear cultures
struggle just yet,
you know, Razorfish people, you know, loved Razorfish, and same with agency.com. Like that, that's a huge one. Like, how did how did that evolve? Like, how? Not not? How did it evolve? How did you maintain that as you grew? Because that was one of the biggest challenges we had was not having that organic culture bleed out, as you grew quickly?
Well, we we did and then we didn't, right. So like, for a long time, it's pretty easy, because it's like anywhere else you go, you meet people, and very quickly, like, Oh, these are my people, right? I get these people. Yep. And I don't, it's a cliche to say, you know, if you were willing to go grab a beer with them, then maybe you'd be willing to work with them. But but it was it was fairly obvious, especially early on, who was in it for the money who was in it for the press, and who was in it for the passion and the religion and and yeah, it could be flexible and open minded, and who couldn't and all that. So it was very easy to it was in some ways, it was easy to do that. The hard part was to, to make sure that you engaged in actually being proactive about the culture, like not having events and and and lectures, internal lectures and learning and all that as opposed to like, Oh, we got a bunch of people who think the same way. So we're all going to be good, you know, like, any set of relationships, any group dynamic, you need to work on it. You're right, as time went on, and as we acquired companies that had different cultures and yes, require different skill sets. And and as, you know, the land grabbers and the and and the people are just like, yeah, I hear I can make a lot of money on the internet. So can you hire me?
Yeah. Yeah, I've been out of school for a year. I want $150,000.
It becomes harder and harder to maintain. To maintain that.
Yeah. So yeah,
you've you've got going on some of the learnings, Craig, what else that you're applying today and it'd be interesting to first of all, what are you doing today and What's going on?
So I have, I'm currently the CEO of a company called New York cruise lines where a marine based sightseeing and transportation company in New York, we're most well known for. Celebrating 75th year this year. In fact,
I've got one of the one of the shows with the show we did with Ayman and Andy. We talked about we did a Circle Line cruise, like in 97, or 98. And it was, it was talked about for years. Just
send them send them back. So, you know, I'm working in a company that is very different, we've got hard assets, we've talked about this earlier, it's like, we have no assets back then we had a couple of crappy PCs, you know, millions of dollars worth of steel boats, boats. So, you know, so but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm using my, my, my experience in communications and marketing and management, all the in all the things that I've done throughout my life. So that's, that's what I'm doing now. But I've, I've learned, look, I think with age, we all sort of learn what's really important to ourselves and what isn't. So, you know, we weren't never in it for the money, which I think we sort of Yeah, proved. Yeah. Not ever selling any stock,
you know, we actually bought more.
No, but I mean, this was, we, we figured we would be in it for the right reasons, and the money would come when it was supposed to, but um, you know, I think when you're when you're 30 ish, and you're, you know, starting a company, you starting a family started whenever you're trying to establish who you are, and chase a lot of things i don't i don't i don't think that the things that I thought were important back then in my life are as much as they weren't. But I think, you know, we're just talking about entrepreneurial ism, you know, knowing what you're good at what you're not good at what you need to do, what you don't need to do. What what being a boss is like, and what being an employee is, like, all those things, you can't really put fingers on them. You know, they're not, it's not precision.
It's like MBA by osmosis, right? Rather than the great. How about for you, Jeff, what you know, you're doing one drop now talk about what you're up to now, but also, yeah, catch us up on what stuff Did you carry forward?
So, today, I'm the CEO of a company called one drop. We're at our core, a data science company utilizing data science to help people make better decisions with their chronic conditions. And health tech, I produce hardware and wearables and a huge data science platform all all delivering, you know, telehealth services through your mobile phone.
Yeah, yeah, congrats on you. You've done some big deals recently. You're You're killing it. Congratulations.
Thank you. You know, really it's all credited to the one drop team and and really, the hard work that they put into it. I'm
waiting anyway, we got to stop right there. That's a different Jeff than I knew. No way. I'm just kidding.
Me former Razorfish people around the Wonder Yeah.
Rich people at one drop, you know, been fortunate enough to work with some really talented people over the years, the last couple of decades and fortunately, some of them are still willing to stick with me. So that that's that's that's been great. oslob Ling shout out. He was the first Razorfish employee he was also employee number one at one drop. So just and our offices are in Silicon Alley, our offices are are on 166 Mercer is right, right in the heart of where we were when we started raising again, just to say there's a lot of good energy and a lot of a lot of good Juju there.
But you went from Razorfish to, then you did your own thing, right, in Austin, because I worked with a couple of colleagues at Ogilvy who worked at the dakis group for a while. I mean, you took a lot of what you learned there, and you were applying it again. And it seems like you've taken some and then even grown it and into this new product company that you've created. But it's all about the product. It seems to be the DNA, right, Jeff?
Yeah. I mean, you know, I've evolved over the years and taking what I've learned and brought it to the to the next thing as we all have, you know, I would hope to say that I, I was able to grow over the over the years as opposed to think stagnant doing just just one thing. I hope that's the case, I hope I can continue to grow to and learn. And I think, you know, when we look back on those times, I mean, how we were, we were in our 20s when we raise a fish and you don't necessarily know a whole lot in your 20s just to be honest with you, you might have some raw talent you might feel like
you don't know things but you say you know things which that was part of the trick back then was like, we just needed that much More than everyone else, but acted like we did. So, yeah, we, I
mean, we didn't know a bunch of things, and we had vision and passion and focus and determination, and grit, and fortitude, and all of those things that got us, you know, sort of, to build what we built. And so, you know, I'm grateful for all that. But now, I think, you know, you looking back a lot, you know, there's so much that we didn't know so much that we had to learn. And, and I'm really just grateful for, for some of the scars and the life lessons that have that have kind of flowed out of all those experiences, I don't think I don't think you get to be present and in the moment and living a life that, that that is true, if you're not able to haven't gone through, you know, some some a lot of those types of experiences. And so, I mean, I feel just just just immensely grateful for for, for all of that.
Really, you know, I remember that a lot, especially those those those first five years that Jeff and I would would step back a lot. And I'm curious, Kyle, if you and Chad did this, but we would step back frequently, and look at each other and be like,
really?
Yeah, we like to take a minute like we're working really hard. And and we're having a lot of fun. And we're getting beaten up. But like, you could tell a totally different story. There were a couple of schmoes from Minneapolis who happened to be in in middle of the most one of the most exciting world changes in ever, right, we are in New York City, at the turn of the millennium, working for the biggest companies in the world radically changing them walking to work having a good time. Like, who are we to be able to be part of this?
Yeah. Well, that's the name of the show, you should have been there is not like a, you know, we're better you should have been there was more like, Oh my god, you should have been there. Like, it was this wonder thing. We had this kind of internal saying, which was this just might work. And, and it was kind of a thing, like, we win this huge piece of business, and we just look at each other and go, this just might work because it truly started from this, this place of like, well, let's try this. And let's try that. And then it you know, it went to me. Yeah, it was, for me, it was it was a full five years of wonder and just sort of hanging on for dear life. And so, so yeah, I generally did that a lot. And I and one of the other things I wanted to bring up because it sounds like you've got a similar thing. When we have our reunions like the relationships that were built that so intense, like I like I have some of my best friends and, and like when I talked to them, like even talking to you guys right now. We haven't talked in years and I feel instant connection. So you find the same thing with the Razorfish crew that, that that culture is just there, you're you know,
and some of them probably, you know, my brother still refers to him as himself as a fishy. I don't know what that's all about. But, you know, if you look at both companies, I think you look at the people that came through, and I bet you if you track them, they're all doing incredible things. They're all doing incredible things right. They are
they are and the
mafia is deep and wide. You know, we're, you know, when I look at who's doing what, whether it's at fjord or at McKinsey or our or ny or Deloitte or all of the major digital consulting firms in the world are populated with leadership from Razorfish. Yeah. And, and so we feel just an immense amount of pride in, in, in the folks that, that we were able to work with, and and what they've gone on to do, you know, far greater than anything, you know, I'll ever do.
So have you guys tried to recreate what you had back then? Because I feel like that's been my sort of life thing since then it's sort of failed attempt after a failed attempt to try to recreate the magic. That was that thing. And I think part of the magic was just the time. We were at a time in history. But yeah, I
think, you know, I like to think about it as new magic, you know, so
I think you're in an era in an area that actually is because I'm in the same area. So I feel in health tech and some of the startups I work with, I feel that sense of change. It's not as big as what was in 1996 when I got involved with this stuff. But I do feel in in the work that I'm doing in health tech, which is what you're doing, that there's this sense of something big is happening, something is changing. And maybe it's because it's the industry and how archaic it is.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, don't get me started, but I mean, every single industry on the planet has been affected by digital in a profound, profound way, convenience and access access and affordability to a variety of types of services and products. They've never been accessible to people before every single industry on the planet except out. Yeah. And so, you know, from my perspective, there is so much opportunity in the last bastion of digital transformation that has to occur, the last bastion of digital change management is really in healthcare. And in my mind, it's not happening from within the healthcare. He's talking even fail this week in terms of shutting down the big, big, big, big company approach, why they brought health care thinking to try to revolutionize health care,
right. Yeah,
I think it happened in a different way. And we think self care, you know, delivered through mobile phones, were the right thing. And providing affordable, accessible, effective ways in controlling your body and and staying healthy. So that you don't have to tap into the healthcare system is really where things are headed. And I couldn't be more excited about the new magic is here.
Amen, brother. That's exactly Hey, I like I really do want to go on for another hour. But I think we all have a jobs here. So we got
to go to CEO stuff,
I gotta go. But listen, I just First of all, thank you for being our first guest of 2021 Thank
you.
Thank you for like the kinship we've had over the years. Like I just I really appreciate who you guys are what you've built in that you came on here and shared all this with us because i think i think it can make a difference for people to hear about what happened and how you did it and all that sort of stuff. So you know what
I'd like to do another show is you and Chad and Craig and Jeff and I do all the interview.
Oh, I like it. Okay good. Cuz then we can tell some stories. Yeah. We didn't even touch we didn't even touch Miami. So
Alright, gentlemen, we want to touch Miami. Yeah.
Thanks for having us call. Thanks for doing this. It's great. I we agree stories, you know, the true stories should be told and and, and same thing I know, I know. It's before Jeff we we feel a kinship with everyone who was in that in the early days and respect all the work that was done and and and more importantly, really respect this thing. So thanks for doing it. And thanks for having us. And
thanks for joining us guys. Yeah, thank you for being here.
