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.
Welcome to Episode One, you should have been there what a long strange trip. It's been. It's going to be myself, Kyle Shannon, and ritesh Patel, who are going to take you on this journey. And I'm Kyle Shannon. I'm the co founder and CEO of story vine, and did some stuff back in the day, which I think most of today's episode will be about. And then ritesh
Hey, man, how are you? I'm wearing my agency.com shirt, just oh, I was there. I did the thing. And I have the shirt to prove it. Right. So currently, as the Chief Digital Officer for health in Ogilvy, but had the privilege to be part of something amazing that we're going to cover.
Yeah, indeed. And so before we dive into it, I know we're both excited to get into it. But you know, this is a live show. So we got to get some housekeeping in so yes, you know, I'm not wanting to write things down. But I've actually written things down. So I got exactly. So so. So this is Episode One of you should have been there. We will be going live at noon, every Friday noon PST, you can learn everything you need to learn about the show at you should a.com I can't believe that domain was available. Just like I couldn't believe agency.com was available back in the day. But it's a little it's a few years later for that one. But anyway, go to you should a.com and you can you can read our BIOS, you can learn about upcoming episodes. And you'll have the links to the Facebook and YouTube channels where everything will be archived. So that's good there. Next, if you're on Facebook or YouTube right now, if you leave us comments, we can see them and we might even choose to feature you and show your comment here live on air will make you make you like a superstar, by the way, not for nothing. You like the glowing shelves. I'm an influencer. Now I got backlit shelves. It's horrible, right? The other thing now that we have a show, we have to ask you please subscribe. So actually, it really does help we need 100 subscribers on YouTube to be able to get a real URL. So So please do that. And it will also when we have shows come up, it'll let you know we're doing that. So anyway, that's the housekeeping stuff. So. So what I thought I would do ritesh is I've been thinking about, you know, why do this show? You know, first of all, it's been we just had our 25th anniversary of the founding of agency calm, and those are always really remarkable meetings. But I've been thinking about what what was so significant about them, that's not really obvious, right? And so I jotted down three things. Again, I don't really write things down. And I don't think I will for the balance of the show. But I want to I want to sort of put these three thoughts out there, and then just have you respond to it. So So you and I were lucky enough to participate in this really remarkable time in history for kind of the mid 90s 9495, you know, through maybe 911? Or just, you know, just past the
early 2000s 2000.
Yeah. And, and, you know, the world of the World Wide Web was this incredibly small world, right. There weren't a lot of people doing it. It was a group of sort of geeky misfits. We were building some of the first websites for big companies, you know, big and small. And in a lot of ways, what we did back then laid the foundation for a lot of the stuff we take advantage or, you know, take for granted today. So that, so part of it was just it was a remarkable time in history. The second thing that I found really remarkable about that time is that it what made it really magical was that there were no experts, nobody knew what they were doing, right? You couldn't get a degree in website design, there were no UX or UI specialists. Like if you wanted to be a part of the game, you just had to be curious and a little bit geeky, and kinda have the drive to do it. And so we tended to have people literally from all walks of life, like, you know, I have a degree in acting and 10 was in publishing and, you know, we had architects it was just people from all over the place, but they all had that sort of curiosity and drive. So that was the second thing. And then the third thing and for me that this is the one is I talk about my origin story. I'll try to I'll try to unpack this a bit. But I feel like we had a very strong sense in those early days of how lucky we were to be a part of it that early that, that the things we were doing, we were recognizing, in real time, oh, this is actually changing the way these businesses are doing business. And this is changing the way we communicate. And I think we kind of knew that the things that were changing, it wasn't going to go back. And and, and, and I don't know, I just I feel like like, you know, to a person I talked to to these days, there was something about knowing that you were part of that even back then. That was that was just absolutely incredible. So anyway, that's my thoughts on
it. Preston, you wrote all those down? as well as I do. So. I would say to you, if you talk to people who worked with us, and for those of you watching, yes, the show for the next few shows is going to be all about agency calm. As I said, I'm wearing the shirt with pride. It's because we were living it and we and this started no lie. A couple of gin and tonics in and about Tennant nice. I text Kyle, say, we had some great times back there, you know, the whole reminiscing thing? And he's like, Yeah, we did it or like, we should do something. And it said, Yeah, you should have been there. It was amazing. Again, wait, you should have been there.
Yeah, it's also you know, it's it's one of those things where every time I tell a story from those days, someone's like, well, you should write a book and exactly my point about not writing things down. Like, I know, myself, I don't have the discipline to write a book, but I thought we should capture these stories. Because
not to be, you know, to be braggy.
Well, no, not I was gonna say, you know, not to be too, too down or anything, but we're getting old. You know,
we need to get it out. Before we lose it all, you know, he, you know, the alumni thread on Facebook, and all the comments from people with their little bits of memory. And I think your eyes capturing all of this in this manner. And while we're doing it for, you know, the bulk of it is the origin story of agency.com. And being part of that environment, I think we'll probably get and if there's anybody who wants to be on it, and was part of that time, they should reach out to us and we should capture their story as well, I think you know, going forward. But what's fascinating to me is when we have the reunions, and you talk to people, and to a person, the statement always is, that was the best time of my career.
Yeah, or I've been trying to replicate that variance for the balance of my professional career. And it's, that's the thing, it's, and I have to like, quite frankly, like, it was so magical. It's like, you know, it felt like you had a formula that you could do it again. And it really was, I think, just this moment in history, we were lucky enough to be a part of so
the planets lined up. And that's, you know, maybe that's where we should start is, you know, there's always been these stories about you and Chan in a little room at time life building. And, like, how did this all start with you? You know, were you when you were a kid at school? Did you ever sort of think about I'm gonna, you know, conquer the web?
Kind of, but I didn't know it. So I'll tell one little, you know, old timey story. So when I was in seventh grade, we got our first computers they were Radio Shack, trs 80.
I remember those. Yeah.
And I learned basic programming on them. And I remember back then. I was like, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were on the cover of Newsweek and time. And I remember thinking, I was just too young to be part of like, the next Gutenberg press. Hmm. And, and, and I was really bummed about that. And then, you know, life happened. And I went to college, and I got a degree in acting, I got a fine arts degree in acting, Oh, wow. And then moved to New York, and started and ran a theatre company. And I was horrible at waiting tables. So fired from
Glad you weren't my waiter. So that's all I can say.
Yeah. So I, I was doing desktop publishing as my day job. And, and let's see, there was I was acting for about four and a half years. And then I said, I want to, I know, I'm tired of doing free theater, how to write myself an acting career. So I started writing screenplays. Ah, as I'm writing, I was talking to someone that I worked with and they said, Oh, you should get on this thing called Echo, which was Stacey horns, dial up BBs or bulletin board system. Basically, back then you would have your computer called her computer, and then people would just talk about stuff and there it was kind of like Facebook without the pictures and with much more intelligent conversation, and there are a lot of people publishing on there. And it was really interesting. People were talking about the internet. And then at some point, you know, I started to learn there was this thing that was out there called the World Wide Web, where you could, you know, put things on the internet, like pictures and things like that. And so I actually ended up starting the web forum inside echo. And a number of people like Howard Greenstein, and this guy named Chen Zhu. Were in this little web forum. And I was like, the more I learned about the web, what I realized about it was how you structure a website was almost identical to how do you structure a screenplay? Like a screenplay? You've got three acts, right? You've got three pages, like three main sections. And I was like, Oh, I can, I think I could translate how I thought about writing screenplays to this web thing. And then I had an idea, I thought maybe I should do like an online magazine. Because at that time, when you went on the internet, it was just like, just papers and research. And I'm like, there's no art and culture here. So I went on vacation with my wife. And we came up with this concept called urban desires, which was an online art and culture magazine. And I put it up on the internet. Well, I, I learned that how you get people to see it was you have to put it on a server somewhere, I didn't know what that was. So I found this place in California where I could upload my files that were on my computer to something in California. And so I put it there. And I went to look at my website, and none of the pictures showed up. And so I went to the web forum on echo. And I'm like, hey, when none of my pictures showed up, and Chen Sue said, Hey, you quoted them wrong, you you made absolute links, and they need to be relative links, or whatever it was. And so then my pictures showed up. And it was, it was in that time, I also thought, because I know so little about the web, I should probably start a little group of people that know more about this than I do. So I started this thing called the worldwide web artists Consortium, which became wack and it became this big thing, we could talk about that. But I really just did it as kind of a shameless way to surround myself with people that were smarter than I was. So So at the end of one of those whack meetings, we were sitting around talking, and and you know, Chen Chen had done vibe online, and we'll talk to him next week and the whole story. And I was doing urban desires. And at one point, Chan said, You know, I keep trying to sell advertisements to these big companies, and they don't have websites. I think we could maybe sell websites to companies. And then I said, Oh, it would be like, you know, we could be like those, the, you know, men in dark suits and hats and
glasses. Yeah, we'll build
the their websites for them and then leave. And I thought we could call it the agency. And so I went home that night, and I went on, you know, Internet, and looked up agency COMM And it was available, and I just grabbed it, love it. And then we ended up changing it to that. And and and then a thing happened that really made me realize that that this was actually a significant thing. So in November of 94, I uploaded these files for urban desires to the server in California. And a month later, I got a note on Eco, someone on eco said, Hey, Kyle, there's a full page article about urban desires in liberation, Leone, the Parisian news region, newspaper.
Wow.
And I was like, What? And so I was living in New York at the time. And there was an international newsstand in the middle of Times Square on 42nd
Street.
And they said, yeah, we get those in, you know, we'll get this week's in, you know, next Sunday. So I remember I got up at seven in the morning. And I went to Time Square, and I bought this French newspaper. And I'm like, flipping through the pages. And sure enough, there's this full page article with screenshots of this thing that I made on vacation, like, you know, in Paris, and I and I realized in that moment, I said, like, I remember thinking this phrase in my head, oh, my God, the world just changed. And, and, and I had this rush of excitement because what I realized was this was just like, jobs and gates had done, you know, the personal computer.
Yeah,
sure. Didn't that this was that, like, this was another one of those things. And I was like, I didn't think this would happen in my lifetime. And so, so so that was that and then you know, that Shannon and I, we went and pitched he had some connections. He was working at vibe, so it connections at timing. We went and we pitched Sports Illustrated about building them a website and they're like, well, we're launching the Sports Illustrated It Swimsuit Issue. So why don't you build a website for that? So that was our first job. And
how you ended up in the time life building. You know, the
other story we need to talk about. It was Yeah. We had a really good relationship with the woman that headed up timing, consumer marketing, those are the ones that do all the sweepstakes, and yet,
those records used to buy every man or whatever. Right? Yeah.
And, and we went in there. And we, we, we put a proposal together. And we said, we said we want $250,000. We want office space for up to 20 people. We want 10 Macintosh workstations, and we want it by next Thursday. And it was an absolutely wild meeting. But two weeks later, we had offices in the time life building
is your foundation and that attitude of we can do anything and ask for anything, you know, just permeated the organization really, as it grew, right.
It was, it was just ridiculous. But But what I think what we sensed was, I mean, the reason we are space for 20 desk was, if this thing was really going to happen, it was going to happen fast. Yeah. And, and also, quite frankly, you know, I was an I was an actor, and a screenwriter. Like I was ready to quit my day job at a moment's notice. In fact, like when we got our first job, I quit my job. And I'm like, can quit your job. Chad had like a 10 year publishing career, right? It's for him to quit.
Instead of looking at you going, Are you mad?
So part of the reason we asked for so much is a we knew we couldn't ever lower our prices, we had to start at what we thought was the top. And and, you know, we need to see if this was a business, Was this something people are going to be willing to pay for? And and it turned out the answer was yes. And it was a remarkable we ended up closing five fortune 500 companies within three months. It was
so did you do the Sports Illustrated websites we
did do that there was there was a technical group at timing called Pathfinder, and they did a whole sort of thing where they were going to put all those the timing properties under Pathfinder. Yeah. And so we're doing this site and we were given like we were allowed to use, I think it was two minutes and 40 seconds total a video of the swimsuit model. So we had to break it up in like these 1010 second little, you know, postage stamp size videos, but we put them on a website. And we thought, you know, this is gonna get a lot of traffic. So we kept saying to the Pathfinder, guys, like, we have a feeling this might crash your servers, and they're like, Oh, no. bandwidth is handled and you know, within, you know, 15 minutes, the thing launching, crashed, scrambling to spin up other servers and things like that. So that was the beginning of it. And, and, and then it just took off from there. And you know, we went from just two of us in that office to it was space for 20 people, we maxed it out at 46 people within nine months. So it was absolutely insane.
So what came after so you got time you were you carrying on? New hiring some people bringing people in? And what are your earliest memories of some of the new people that you brought in any standouts on? You know, we we've got to hire this guy, cuz or it was just, you know, let's get some people in because we were starting to land this work. I,
I remember that, that the technologists were always super eccentric. And, and, and I also remember, like the hiring process was, do you know how to turn on a computer? And have you thought about this even a little and, and then we would hire you. And so the people that tended to work in that environment were people that were kind of inventive and already kind of experimenting with what they wanted to do. I remember, I assume, you know, Clay Shirky. Yeah, he worked for us for the early days. But how I found him was he put up a website on the net cause that was called bifs incredible website or something like that. And he basically took every worst practice of HTML, like Blinky tags and and twirling things, and he made this horrible website. And I remember finding at the end his email on it, and I sent him an email and I said, anyone who can design a site this bad, worked for us. And so Clay Shirky came and worked for us for a while and he was a site builder and you know, he was absolutely brilliant and and, and it was One of the earliest moments of that we did these things called geek Intel's. And what a geek Intel was, was someone who figured something remarkable out. And, you know, remarkable very much in context, like, everything was really simple back then, like I remember the day, we were so early, that early HTML didn't have a center tag. So you literally couldn't center text or pictures. So I remember the day I think it was Paul galley or someone, or maybe Scott major, who we're talking to two weeks from now. Yeah. And I said, Hey, I figured out a way to center text. And I'm like, what, and I came over and he goes, I created a single pixel high image that's invisible, and I created a bunch of different lengths of them, and we can could kind of stack the different links together and senate senators gathered around
and start coding their thing. So so everything was inventing all the time. Yeah. It was just that energy. And it was beyond collaborative. It was like, you couldn't do your work without knowing something. And no one knew anything. So the minute someone would learn something, we would geek and tell and tell them and you know, and do that.
And then Chan and I,
you know, we were out selling, and we were you know, we were very pragmatic about this stuff. A lot of the A lot of what we did was talk about, you know, someone would say, Well, I need a website, and we'd be like, Well, why do you need a website? And they'd be like, Well, my buddy on the golf course, as well, we used to have those
conversations all the time, like, what are you going to do with it? Right.
And, and so and so we were kind of focused on that. And so, I think because of that we got we got very trusted with with these large brands. And, you know, once you do something with the fortune 500 brand, once you've done, you know, two or three of them, you become trusted, right? It's a relatively small circle, like the marketing folks that those organizations talked. And so so, you know, a lot of the work we got, we got through recommendations, but you know, I don't think we lost a pitch for a year and a half. I mean, it was our, well, this is what our original corporate motto was figure out what sucks, don't do that.
And remember that load
actually met life at one point made us take it down because we handed out cider. Yeah, we brought the chairman there. They're like,
all the suits came in. Right,
exactly. But but the idea was that, that nobody knew how to do this. So all you had to do was not be horrible. And you were markedly better than anyone else. And that was kind of the early days were very marked with that.
So tell me about. So first of all, we should say hi to URI he's on and he's commenting. Cool. So you know, one of our favorite sons is out in Israel. Hey, Yuri.
The designers.
Yeah, it shows that
I found so this is something that the creative team did. Well, they came up with all these recipes, and put together this cool little cookbook.
I still have one. I used to have one. I can't find it. I've lost this shirt and a mug.
globe of crap. And I've got word storage. I've got stuff. So stuff and stuff I pulled out of this just box of crap I had so amazing.
You know? So I think probably MetLife is probably the most conservative. First one. How did that go? How did you did somebody refer you to MetLife? Did they call you? Oh,
that is a good story. So so we had done. We had done a project. There was another agency early in those days called moto media up out of Connecticut. I remember them.
Yeah. Yes. New Canaan or somewhere?
Yep. And we had done a job with them. And whatever, whatever it was, we basically signed an agreement that we couldn't talk about that we did it right. It was it was one of those
contractors, right.
Yeah. And so we finished it, and we're like, we're never going to do that again. And and I forget how it happened. I think someone that met like Richard pincho was the was the client at MetLife. I think he heard about us somehow. Maybe through the modem media thing. You might Oh, you know what it might have been? Yeah, this was this was it? I think modem media was talking to MetLife and they said oh, you should go talk to agency.com as well. Well, we came in and we you know, pitch building their website and we thought we were overpricing it and it turns out we way undercut modem media so so forever severed our relationship with them. I don't think they're very happy about but but that was one of our first first big projects and what was what was really exciting about the MetLife thing was you know, they had the the peanuts Like,
yeah, yeah,
yeah. And and so so, you know, we figured out what the website was going to be, we also had to figure out how to incorporate all these peanuts characters. And we ended up getting so good at the rules for how you can incorporate those characters into sites that, that united media that own the peanuts would actually consult on us, you know, how are you doing this, that or the other, like, our creative team actually got to become incredibly expert at generating, you know, peanuts graphics in a way that sort of met the licensing requirements and things like that. So that was, that was really remarkable, multi year relationship and really powerful, you know, times,
and then you were off. Right. So I think I joined in about 96. I think I can't remember.
I think that's right, I think it's 96? Well, I don't think it's fair to let you off the hook. Right? Because I think your origin story for how you joined agency comm it's absolutely one of my favorite stories of all time. And I think it says everything about you. So give me a little bit about your sort of origin story, but then, you know, sort of how you became an employee@agency.com.
So, you know, I was in London, I was working for 40 hotels, and we'd hired pictoris, I think, which was the French agency to do our website, in 94. It was we own meridian hotels. And so, you know, I get laid off, we got acquired in a hostile takeover. It was a company. We're a public company, 40 PLC, and, you know, so picture is Hey, guys, sorry, not gonna be able to pay you because I'm not your client anymore. But the guise of borders. And the guy this is like, Hey, you know, I just sold my business to these Americans. Yeah, maybe you should go check them out and go to work there. Because they'll need people like you. Yeah. Interesting. So I think it showed up in the office.
But But you sent, as I recall, you sent somewhere in the neighborhood of what, 20 emails or something, something like that
2030
years amount of emails that we never responded to, right?
No, I think Amen. And Andy responded to one because I sent it to the London office as well as the New York office. Right, I was abroad
with them yet. I don't think we were with them yet. Where are we?
I think so. I think that was the time when I joined. I think I can get my dates, right. As you can see.
We were so busy in those days, like nine months of agency comm was it was 14 hour days, seven days a week, right. So we were just buried, right? So anyway, we effectively completely ignored you.
Come into New York, you know, just showed up at the office in Manhattan. And
you got on a plane?
Yeah. and hang out with Liz pastoria front. He said, Why are you here? I've got my resume. You know, I've got this here. And she says, well, hang on, and she's making frantic phone calls, right? And there's nobody around, right? You guys are all out or something. She's like, there's a little bit here. So I'll wait. I sat down. And we waited. And she's like, you know, offer me coffee. She was very nice. That was like at one point, it was like, it came to lunchtime. I chose nine o'clock. And she's like, I think I'll go get some lunch and I'll be back. And she was recommending places for me to go to outside, you know, and I came back I think two o'clock. You came up and you're like, Can I help you chat the chat and had a chat with me, then, you know, then then it took off after that. And I got hired as the VP of technology@agency.com, which was amazing. You know,
I read it on the spot. Because Yeah,
you know, and then I didn't show up for a while. Because I was trying to figure out, I was commuting. The family was in Virginia. We'd moved to Virginia to work for perot systems, I think initially, and so back and forth, back and forth. For a little bit and then I finally showed up and it was just like what have I done the pit? I remember going down into the pit for the first time.
That was it. 665 Broadway. Yeah,
it was moved to 665 Broadway by the time I showed up Mitch golden. Was there as well. who basically this is how it went with the interview with Mitch after you guys saw me. When can you start? next week. Good. That's it. Yeah. All right. Wait, you don't want to know No, no. I've seen your resume, you could start next week, basically, because he was tired of being the VP of technology. He was like, anybody can take this job. I just don't want it anymore.
And I'll talk about the pit. So the the pit at 665, Broadway was this really tall building in Manhattan. And it was, it was actually two buildings that were connected. And so we have one office and one bill inside and then you have
to cut through and go down. Right?
The floors were uneven. Right.
Barbara used to sit in the corner there. Yeah, ligaments office, remember, you had to walk past Barbara to go down into the pit, right? Yes.
So in the upper floor was project management that account, right? It's all the business people. Yeah. And then you round the corner and you go, you go down a level, to the pit, and we call it the pit because it was like a brick wall. And it was really dark, very dark. You know, the creative people were like, I hate all these lights. So they take all the lights and turn them out. So it was literally like this Dark Pit. And it was whatever, I don't know, 15 or 20 people. Yeah, just like the level of creativity in that group. Anyone that was in the pit, they were building sites, they were doing graphics, they were figuring things out. We would launch sites. I remember Scott major figured out he went to radio, radio shack, we had this idea of, you know, when we when we launch a site, it should be a launch. So he went to Radio Shack, and he bought a big red button, and figured out how to hack a mouse. And what we what we actually did was we we built the website and launched it, and then we pulled up the old site in a browser. And we just position the mouse over the reload button. And and then we brought the client down in the pit and we had champagne. And we said, All right, you're ready to launch your site. And we counted down from 10. And then we had the client smack the big red button, push the reload button.
The red button came, ah, Scott majors responsible for that. Exactly. Okay.
That was one of our early innovations. Right.
innovations. I mean, you must have I mean, you know, there was I remember, it was dial up, I think it was 14 for modems had just come out I think, at the time, maybe 28 by the time we were done.
Yeah, I mean, there were there was sort of innovations on the technology front. Um, but but there were also, you know, we were, you know, we were just north of punky kids, right. meeting and, and working with some of the largest brands in the world and and one of the ones and there's actually some innovative ideas here that you and I talked about before that we can we can talk about, but I'll talk about one that for me represented like a real turning point for agency.com is kind of like I felt like we had we had grown up to some level and it was it was british airways. So So British Airways, they they put out what's in an RFI, just a request for information, right wasn't an RFP. And they sent the RFI to 43 American companies, and obviously some some European companies, right. But they sent it to 43 American companies. And to give you a sense of British Airways, it was a it was a 38 page RFI. So it was this incredibly detailed, complicated thing, saying we're looking for, you know, a website agency. And, you know, let us know who you are, and if you're interested. And so we fill out all these things, and we send it in and you know, just weeks go by, and like three weeks later, we get a call. And I it was Julia groves. And she said, congratulations. You've been, you know, invited, we're going to invite you to come pitch British Airways in London. And she goes, by the way, you're the only company out of 43 that we selected. And I'm like, Oh, I'm like, why? And she said, because out of 43 American companies, you were the only company that answered our questions in the order that we asked them. I was like, holy crap. So like I was blown away in a bunch of levels, right? One of them was seriously 42 other companies like you. So, but the other one is like that was the mindset of British Airways. Right? They were right. Remember that? So then the like this was a huge deal, right? They had never hired, you know, anyone outside of England, right? This is this was a big deal even to be pitching it never is over. And I remember we effectively we took sort of our top echelon, like our VPS anyone who was doing any client work that was any good, and we pulled them off that line. Worked for like three weeks to put this pitch together. And we did this crazy pitch and we were going over there. And we thought, you know, hey, if we're going to be in London, one of the questions they're going to ask because I'm pretty sure it was one of the questions was, how are we going to reach you? Like, if you're not local? Right? We thought we've got to get a local office. So so like, one of the things we did was, we rented a flat in downtown London, and and we hired a temp. And we ran a telephone into that, no, and we printed up business cards. So so we flew over. And we got to fly, be a first class, which was remarkable. We flew over, you know, it was a, it was a big room, we did our pitch, and we said, and if you need to get in touch with us, we handed out our cards that had this London address on it. And and they said, Oh, you have a London office? We're like, Yeah, we do. And they're like, do you mind if we actually call it they test, they tested us in the room, they picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card. And we had an intern, like just a temp sitting in the middle of an empty apartment in London, alone and said, agency.com.
Okay, I guess this is real round up.
I mean, what do you remember from the from that pitch?
I mean, the big thing that I remember was off to the pitch, you know, the IP address targeting of Julia, as she wandered around the web, we're like, Julia, we really want your business, you know, we'd love to work with you, you know, that was like, and I was just shaking my head going. That's not only creepy, but crazy. How could you respond? Only we would come up with that. And guess what, we won the work? Right? You would come up with that. So that was amazing. Amazing. And that's the only bit. You know, there were so many things like that. I remember, folks sort of saying, you know, we're gonna go to as Bill was saying, in, you know, episode zero, you know, come and meet the CEO of Colgate palmolive. Because you're doing their website, right. And we were all very, very young and just walk in as if we own the world, we knew it. And if we didn't, we'll figure it out. There were many a time where, you know, David bortner, check from the dev group would come over and say, I just don't know, it's just, I can't fix it. I don't know what to do. And then Mitch Gordon will go, well, let's try this. And somebody else will go, we'll do that. And then before you know it, oh, that works. All right. Somebody make a note of that. So if we face that, again, let's make sure we do that. So yeah, nothing was a problem. It was just like, you know, we'll figure it out. There's a there's got to be a way to do this. Right, just like the red button that you put together.
Yeah, it was like that with Well, that was we had, you know, we had urban desires, the the, you know, the online magazine. So my wife was the the editor of that. So she did all the content for that. But the creative team at agency calm, they got to use urban designers as a place to innovate because a lot of our clients were very corporate, right, we had Archie and they, they were very sorted by the book and met life very by the book. So so we had a playground where the the designers and the coders could actually innovate. And we did some some decently innovative stuff over there, that then got migrated into the other thing, but but it was just such an inventive time, like, there just wasn't a blueprint for how you do this stuff. The closest thing to it was CD ROM design, but that was sort of very packaged. And then, you know, sometimes people would have experienced, they had done something on AOL or prodigy or something like that. But those were also these very restrictive, you know, sort of walled gardens. And this web thing was, you could do some of the stuff like you could do with a CD ROM, but it was connected to all of the other websites in the world. And that's the thing that made it. You know, that's the thing we take for granted today that, you know, when you'd realize, Oh, I could click on this, and it would pull all the data from that site. And then I could spin it up in some interesting way and put it on this other site, right, that was all this stuff. That was just, no one had really done it before. And we were figuring out how, you know, how could you push the limits?
We're gonna talk about one thing so Adobe announced last year, but it's the end of flash at the end of the year. Flash is going to be dead and buried at the end of the year. And I cannot I'll never forget when Gucci when Tom Ford came and said, we were going to do Gucci, Mariska marisha, you know, managed to get us in there and we had the creatives one day he came home from lunch and you were looking for people. There was nobody around. Tom Ford here, so the entire creative department was in this room like this. Yeah, yeah. But you know, so I think it was Nicolas And Jason and folkerson they were trying to figure out and Penny Hardy, I think as well. What should we do? And Jason and Volker, they're like, got this thing. It's called flash. We think we can do something with it. Yeah, the rest of Norway, and they off they went, right. They, and then they came back like a couple of weeks later. And we were just blown away that you could move things on websites, and they do animation.
That was that was you had mentioned before that one of the one of the creative directors in that Tom Ford meeting said, you know, what should the website be like, and I what was his response? It
should be sex, but not porn.
Yeah, it should be sex, but not porn. Yeah. And so then when they said, Oh, we should do this flash thing. And it could make things move. We're like, like, I'm imagining like little icons flying on.
Yeah. Right.
So when they came back to show us what they had come up with, it was, yeah, if you want to describe it, because it was
they had some tests going. And there was one where it's sort of a black, and then a circle came out. And then Kate Moss walked on the screen in a fur coat, turned around, drop the fur coat and walk back with a Gucci bikini on, and then they hope and curtains opens and welcome to Gucci calm. That was one of the first experiments they use for flash. And I mean, literally, I remember just sitting there going, whoa,
yeah, yeah, cuz it was audio to it. It was it was a movie. It was, you know, one of the things that we were doing back then that I that I'm really proud of that I feel has been lost a little bit as the web has evolved is at when it was appropriate, we were doing very experiential site. Yeah, where it didn't just have to be, here's the six choices across the top. And, you know, here's the content management system that spits it out. It could be a brand new experience. And I feel like that's gotten lost a bit as things have gotten more in person and things like that. And it's it, you know, the IAB has created, you know, you know, the banner system, and, you know, they have to be this size. And, you know, none of those rules existed.
So Coca Cola, the bubbles
fly up, and yeah, exactly, yes,
the founder the fears. And, you know, I think Tori was working on that side for a while with Nicole and those guys. But there was so crazy stuff like that. I remember the San Antonio project. And, you know, just being marveled at HTS genius, in connecting a central database to a website with a flash movable navigation interface.
Yeah, it looked like a CD ROM. Right.
And it was connected to the back end, where he would pick up a phone and he could get the same information by pressing one, two and three. And then he whipped out his little Palm Pilot that he had, and he could do the same thing on his Palm Pilot. Yeah, and white and it was just wild stuff. Yeah, stuff.
Yeah, there was also, you know, there was also the, we, there were a bunch of innovations toward the end. You know, once we sort of broke past 2000, and it started to get real late, like the web, that whole world started to get really oversaturated in
1999.
Um, but we were doing things like, our smartphone applications. We were doing
active TV, with Tim Smith and Dan.
And I remember we did a pitch for it was a roller coaster show for I think discovery network, where you could, you know, change where you sat in the car, you could ride the roller coaster in real time, and you could switch between views, and we're doing all this remarkable stuff. And it was like, you know, oh, we're, you know, we're gonna get to do this for TV and phones and this and that. And then the.com bubble burst. Like all that stuff just blew up all the all the innovation got. It was not as much in demand anymore.
We've got about 15 minutes to go. I want to ask you a couple of questions. One of them is around the agency.com Innovation Lab. Come up with that.
Well, the agent, the agency.com Innovation Lab, so a couple of things.
running it was Paul galley, right, wasn't it? You and Paul galley and Tim, right. Yep. Okay. matlow.
So a couple of things happen. So I was Chief Creative Officer for the first bunch of years. Yeah. Then I switched over to Chief people officer, I took over HR because the reason I did that I had when we moved into 20 exchange place, I had three people within one month, walk into my office and quit within two weeks of being hired. Because no one had introduced themselves to them. They don't computer they didn't know what to do. So like I'm just gonna leave at three of those in one month. So it took over HR and then we got that stabilized, but then you know, the data bubble burst. And we started consolidating. And so basically, I thought, well, I'm the innovative guy for agency.com. So we got to keep the innovation going. But no one was really buying innovation. So it was basically a lab off in the corner to do innovation. And we hand that to the teams. The problem was, none of the teams wanted it, because none of their clients wanted innovation. They wanted what's worked before. That's what we're spending money on. You know, I remember, sort of six months after the bubble burst, we had a client that had committed to $20 million for the following year for 2001. They called us up in November and said, hey, it's probably not going to be $20 million next year, it's probably going to be more like 100,000. And, and so you had things like that, where things just got dramatically conservative so so I was sort of off doing innovation, you know, screaming in a canyon that no one can hear the echoes and it's very sad violin.
We can't miss the the 30 people in 30 day hiring spree you went on when you first became the chief people officer. What the mind numbing interviews you made us managers go through with people that were just coming in, literally off the street.
We were We were understaffed, and and, and it was it was another one of those things where it was just like, the the people were like, we're never gonna be able to do this. And I was just stupid enough to go, why can't we run three people in 30? We can hire 30 people in 30 days. I didn't really have any sense. I didn't run HR before. But but you know that that was the thing about folks that agency.com like when I put that out there, like while people might have rolled their eyes in the background, what they did in the foreground was they went okay, well, what do we need to do to do? Well, if we were gonna do that, we would have to interview this many people a day. Okay, well, in order to do that, we'd need
to have this many people coming in. Yeah, like, like,
I kind of felt like, no matter what the problem was back then. The way that culture was, was okay, we can do that. Let's attack it, let's attack the problem, problem solve it, and we'll come up the other side of it. And almost always did.
I think, you know, the culture is very important piece of this, I think, you know, we were always compared with razor fish, and I Excel and organic and sapient. But we have this unique thing around working with big brands, but being so crazy and innovative and nothing fazes us kind of, you know, culture that we had. And it was really interesting that as we grew, and even when we went public, and even after that, that culture remained, it wasn't, it was so ingrained in everything that we were doing. Even with the bubble bursting, there was still ways of, I remember the last pitch I did before I left the New York office with Adam and Katie, we're JetBlue. And the Spirit was still there, there was only six of us that we can do this, right. Yeah, take these people on. And that spirit remained. And I think that's the most interesting thing was, you were allowed, because we were making it up mistakes, what mistakes were just Hey, we'll figure it out. Because nobody knew how to do it better or worse, right? Yeah,
I think there was also we took I don't think there was a lot of ego about where an idea came from. That's right, which was a huge thing. Um, and then I think it was also just, we took great pride in in solving the problem. But we didn't take ourselves too seriously. So So even though it was hard, you know, we'd go have a beer afterwards, we go to this key bar and remember that. So so it was like, the level of bonding was incredible, because it was so intense, right? You were working with massive brands, and, and you know, like British Airways, our first review with them, they told us to give ourselves, you know, a self grade and I think we gave ourselves a C because C plus because we didn't want to give ourselves an egg. We knew we'd done a level work, but we didn't want to be jerks. And we present our grade to them. And they said, You got a D minus and we're about to fire you. And we're like, holy crap, like, so. We were dealing with some intense stuff at the time, but but it never felt heavy in those early days. It was felt like okay, we can get through this. We can get through this. And so, like the level of bonding that happened, and I think, you know, Bill said this last week, but but I agree with it, like the level of talent, I think because people came in with an open mind and that level of curiosity and drive. The level of talent was just remarkable. Yeah,
some amazingly smart folks. I had the pleasure to work with and still stay in touch with a lot of them. who've gone on to do amazing things, you know, some some of the folks have done I mean majors a big shot over a Deloitte digital some $20 billion company, right? And he was the original time life guy, right?
Yeah, he was employee number four. He was an architect of the pit he had he else create tape met with him. That's a funny story. So. So, tape nut. So we move into 1271 Avenue Avenue, the American time life building, right on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, this giant building. And we're getting ready to do our first job. And I think we'd won MetLife at this point, like we're rolling. And so we said to the, the IT department of Time Inc. There's all these Ethernet ports on our walls, we just need to know where they terminate. So we can put our internet boxes, right, our routers, so we can share files. And they said, Oh, okay, yeah, we will get back to you in two months. And so well, we don't have two months. Well, we took our Ethernet, we ran it into one of our routers, and then we just bought a huge spool of Ethernet wire, we literally duct taped it to the walls, and ran Ethernet to all of the computers, which, when you only had four or five people there wasn't. But I remember there was a point where the fire marshal came in, we had about 40 people working in a space for 20. And we had it was literally like a cable of Ethernet wires, there was just duct tape and wires hanging from the walls. The fire marshal walked into the room, he looked at us, he looked at the person he was with and he goes, I was never in this room, it turned around and walked out. Just nuts like it was everything was that like, we can't do it, tape it to the wall.
Stop. Right? Amazing. And look today, you know, it's Wi Fi and you just go anywhere you want. And you've got a phone and an iPad, and you're off and running, right? It's incredible, that in those days, those are the kinds of things you have to do to keep going and make things happen. So what you know, now, you're innovating again, you're an entrepreneur again. What's that all about? And what's it like? Well, it's,
you know, I talked earlier about a lot of people I've talked to, we're trying to replicate that experience. And I think I've tried to do that. The company that I have now is has been percolating in my head for about 15 years, I started a company in oh six, that was the precursor to it. And the basic idea was, it shouldn't be an abject nightmare to make a two minute video, and there's got to be a better way to do it. And, and so I don't know if it's, you know, I'm a sociopath like, but it is bizarre that I've stuck with this idea for this long, right? You know, storylines. An eight and a half year old company, when when we hit our fifth year anniversary, I thought, you know, I thought, well, that's a good milestone. I should take stock, right? And I thought,
Oh, yeah, where were we in five years of agency.com. And, and I was like, Oh, we were 2200 people, we went public. Yeah. Story vine. In five years, we had just laid everyone off, it was you know, Monique, and I just cranking and burnin and just trying to get this thing off the ground. And you know, it's finally starting to take off. So, so part of the thing for me is, you know, I think the thing that I've done well, in my career as an entrepreneur is I have tried to listen to that voice inside is like, is this really worth it? Yeah. And and for something like story, mine, it is still worth it. But it's been 15 years, you know, in some form or another? And so, you know, that's it. How about you? Like, what, what for you? What do you take away from that early era? Or like, how has that colored? How you do what you do?
Oh, no impacts it right. You know, before that I was in it, and I was doing it stuff mainly. Yeah. And the agency.com experience, where you you learn so much about the importance of culture, you know, the camaraderie that had to be created amongst teams to actually deliver something, you know, the, there has to be a way it's not, you know, the I can't take no, even today, I was exchanging slack messages with a colleague of mine. And I'll quote you because I asked I quote her because I asked her how our meeting went this morning that I couldn't attend. And I'm just reloading slack. So I can actually read the statement to you because I think that encompasses what we create it and we've lived through and we have inherently built those of us who worked in that time. So I said, you know, that I'm sorry, I missed the meeting. How was it she said he was fantastic. Again, research is magic bag of tricks delivers. You never know what creative solution he'll pull out of his bag, but there will always Be one.
Wow.
So it's like, you know that culture was bred into us at that young age, in our growing careers. And, you know, I lived through it every day, I think, you know, it's been an I showed I said, I showed some Ogilvy creatives, not too long ago, the San Antonio video that I still have of the user interface. And there were like, this was when as like, yeah. 1997 Yeah. Right. And they're like, Holy moly, you know, cuz it was amazing. We could do this today. Right.
I think one of the things we should do on this show is is, you know, have on the teams that did did some of that work? Yeah, I think so. Bring it on and show the work and, and really dig deep. I mean, you know, as you can imagine, there are so many stories to tell just between you and I, you know, we could do it, but, but I think the idea here, one of one of the things I realized, as you and I were kicking around the idea of, you know, how do we get this thing in the world is, everyone's got their own perspective. Right. So, so telling the stories from from lots of different lenses, I think is going to be really interesting. And, and I, you know, I feel like this is an important time. I'm also excited. I, you know, you and I know the agency.com world well, so we can tell that story, and we've got access to those players. But I'm excited also to bring on, you know, Craig and Jeff from Razorfish, like the interaction
from organic Nelson Nelson. Oh, Matt Freeman from being tribal, right,
writing the Tim Smith from Red Sky, right. So there are a lot of a lot of people out there that were a part of this that we overlapped with that, again, they have a whole different world of experiences. So for me, the exciting thing is just kind of keep teeing up the stories and let people you know, share them from those different experiences to round out what it was really like back then
I think we should get Lewis gush from Gosh, Venture Partners. He was one of the Oh, geez of the silicon, you know, Ali? Yeah, we shouldn't do it when he started. Startups
work on fubu. Yeah. So we should get David.
Remember that? Yeah, that was a crazy time. hour just on fubu.com.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Well, this was a call, you know, I think, I hope those of you who are watching all four of them. Let's see. chrissa says hello. Britain says hello. So thank you for tuning in. If you're still with us, thank you for you know, sitting through the whole thing. And this is going to be fun. I think we've got guests lined up till January at the moment books, but I'm hoping that those who had these moments with us will also come on and share those with us. And for folks who are watching.
Yeah, well, you've got our social tags on screen right now. So drop us a line. Go to you should have a.com. And that'll give you all the information. We'll also have archives of the show there and the archives will live on YouTube and Facebook will be out there. But anyway, yeah, this was a pleasure. ritesh. And but yeah, this is a pleasure. And I will see you next week. Fine, sir.
superbe. Have a great weekend and fantastic Thanksgiving car. But I'm sure we'll chat way before then. Great. All right, sir. Cheers.
