EXPO Announces Expansion of Board of Directors Including Pete Blackshaw and “Kam” Kamerschen

Of all the things in this release, the thing I like the most is “enjoying strong growth”.  Welcome to some awesome new board members.

New Directors Join Board as Company Enjoys Strong Growth

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – July 7, 2010) –  Citing rapid client growth, EXPO announced an expansion of its Board of Directors from four to six members, with several changes that dramatically strengthen its composition. New members include Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online Strategic Services, “Kam” Kamerschen, Presiding Director of the Board of MDC Partners and Thayer Bigelow, former President of Home Box Office and Time Warner Cable Programming.

Blackshaw, who is frequently cited by publications including the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, has been a leading thinker on social media for over a decade. Pete was part of the team that first headed digital initiatives at Procter & Gamble. Blackshaw later founded PlanetFeedback, Inc., which now forms part of Nielsen Online. Blackshaw is the author of “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.”

“Pete is a pioneer in the areas of user generated content, customer listening and all of the other concepts we now call social media,” said EXPO President Bill Hildebolt. “People think these are new concepts, but Pete has been practicing them since 1997 and to have that credibility on our Board shows the impact we’re having with global brands.”

Robert “Kam” Kamerschen is a highly sought after Board member who is currently active as the Presiding Director of MDC Partners and has served as a board member at IMS Health, Radio Shack and elsewhere as well as with numerous private company boards. Previously he was CEO and Chairman of ADVO, Inc. and also held CEO roles at RKO/Six Flags Entertainment and MaxFactor. “We are extremely grateful to have Kam involved,” noted EXPO CEO Daphne Kwon. “His experience across the corporate life cycle and his connections to companies large and small have already been invaluable as we continue to accelerate our growth.”

Thayer Bigelow, a long time investor in the company, spent more than 30 years working for Time, Inc. and Time Warner in various senior roles at HBO, Time Warner Cable Programming (and its predecessor company) and Court TV. In addition to EXPO, he currently serves as a Board Member at Lord Abbett Funds and Trinity College. ”Thayer personifies the concept of a value-added investor,” said Kwon. “His support of EXPO since inception has been key to our success today.”

“Expo is breaking new ground,” said Kamerschen. “Their marriage of consumer generated video with product reviews, how to videos and other purpose-driven content is giving companies fresh and actionable insights into their brands and creating new standards of authenticity and transparency for consumers. I think I speak for all of the Board members when I say I’m excited to be part of it.”

www.bit.ly/EXPOBoard

EXPO has jobs and NYC has talent

With all the debate about whether NYC has become a city competitive for tech startups, one of the indicators we could look toward would be how fast digital jobs in the area get filled.

Two years ago, we would gladly pay a headhunter outrageous fees to find us a low level developer. But the competition wasn’t from other tech startups. It was from the conglomerates and banks that were paying premium rates for tech folks, pricing startups out of the market for dev talent. Nowadays, things are different.

We’ve got 4, soon to be 5-6 job specs out there, and we’re getting great response. High quality, deep experience, and entrepreneurial attitudes. My opinion is that this type of demand isn’t an indication of an already robust startup city, but rather will be the cause of one. With AOL layoffs and other media companies hitting the skids in 2009, tech talent is out there, conspiring, networking, searching. They’re realizing that the cushy job security they thought they had by taking the clock-punching jobs at big companies wasn’t actually that secure. So, the benefits of joining a small company — launching exciting new products, garnering larger responsibility, EQUITY — are becoming more attractive, more valuable in the career assessment process.

I’m predicting that some spurts of growth occur in NY from the talented seeds that the big companies are dropping all over the City. Existing high-growth companies and new ones springing up will be able to surge forward faster than anticipated with access to the exciting new talent in 2010.

EXPO hiring sales talent…midwest/NYC

Through the magic of interconnected news feeds, I’m sure a lot of my high school friends will see this, (sorry), but we are hiring at EXPO. It’s post-worthy to the extent that anyone growing as opposed to shrinking has got to be good news generally, right?

Our founding sales exec, David Rubinstein, has nurtured a pioneering team that has launched the adoption of video commerce within the nation’s top brands. We’re very proud to be expanding his group to support the growing flow of F500 companies seeking insights & experiences from our authentic, accountable consumer knowledge base.   As you can guess by the location of the position (Chi/Cin/Min/NYC), we’re working with some of the largest consumer brand names out there. We are looking for someone to help those companies navigate the world of social commerce safely, effectively and valuably.

Here’s the link to the job post, please pass it on freely:

Solvate: New New York City Business

Julie Ruvolo, who pops up everywhere on the digital scene all at the same time, has joined a startup that went alpha this month. www.solvate.com

The concept revolves around creating an uber-database covering answers to common customer service issues that people individually need to solve hundreds of times each day. Solvate allows frustrated customers to not have to re-invent the wheel each time one of us has a problem someone else had before. For example, something like “How can I return my cable box back to Time Warner so I can cancel my cable subscription” probably takes us 45 minutes working through TWC’s byzantine call centers before we find out our options. And even then, we probably only find the option that one customer service rep knows, which I bet would be a different option if we were connected to another rep on another day. Meanwhile, I know hundreds of other people had to have gone through this…why don’t I know what they know?

Solvate plans to standardize the ‘answers’ to these questions, so that Solvate agents (and I assume the online public) can provide fast solutions to the second client who asks the same question.

Solvate charges by the man-hour to find the solution, and is currently offering your first hour of agent time for free. So, I tried it out by asking about the best online site to find a deal for a Disney Cruise. I know that Disney itself doesn’t offer many deals directly to cruisers, but they do offer them to agents (who then can pass on the deals to cruisers). Solvate did work, I did get a list of places from “Ryan C”, my Solvate agent, that offered consistent specials and weren’t shaky fly-by-night travel sites. I’m not sure if it saved me time, since it was just an online search. But, I would guess that if my problem involved customer service reps, and phone calls, and escalations, and specific departments, Solvate would save me time and aggravation. And if I was the lucky second person that asked a question, I am sure that the pain of the first person would benefit me. I think the trick for Solvate is to hone in on the problems people would be willing to pay Solvate to solve. ate.

Good luck, Julie and Solvate. I’ll call you back when I need to cancel my cable subscription so I can get FiOS.

Victims can be rich, too, I guess.

While some of you might not have too much sympathy for Jake DeSantis who resigned from AIG, I think that we should all feel sorry for ourselves that talent is definitely draining away from solving the complex, intricate problems we have before us.

On the one hand, I’m incensed that ex-Countrywide executives who caused the problems are able to participate in the solution for additional personal gain. But I also turned to my husband yesterday and said, “Why in the hell is Edward Liddy still working at AIG? Why doesn’t he just say ‘Screw it. YOU people try to solve this problem’ and walk away?” He’s got these idiot Congressmen judging him who can’t even figure out their own taxes. Does anyone realize that he was ASKED to take this job by Treasury Sec’y Paulson? “Six months ago, I came out of retirement to help my country,” Liddy said at yesterday’s House Financial Services subcommittee hearing in Washington. If we’re going to make a scapegoat of someone innocent, we should at least pick someone who was there when the crime occurred.

I have limited sympathy for this guy who wrote the AIG letter above, because I am *sure* in his career he was overpaid, and the money that he says he earned for AIG was enabled by a machine *he knew* was overpriced, overcomplicated, and under-financed. But, we should be careful when John Q Public thinks he knows how best to run these companies, lest we end up driving away people who really do. I certainly don’t want Senators with “wide stances” in charge of maximizing the value during the wind down of a complex financial derivative product company. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

Pete Blackshaw Book Party: Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000

We were proud to host Pete Blackshaw’s NYC “Tell 3000″ book party at our offices last night. It was a spectacular turnout, and lasted well past the anticipated ending time. Rick Lerner and Expo’s pres Bill Hildebolt were the hosts. Thanks to Rick and his wife for publicizing, financing and catering the event.

The books sold out, some pool was played, some wine was poured, and some great conversations were begun.

We look forward from continuing to learn from our friend and advisor as he continues to simultaneously teach and learn about this space.

Apple Store iPhone debut in New York, video courtesy of our intern Billy

We have a 19 year old intern from UCLA in our company this summer. He is pretty interesting because he’s got some great film making skills already under his belt. In discussing how to get us some great consumer video, he thought up the idea (the night before) to go to the iPhone opening in NYC. He got some great footage, edited it and put it up on the same day. Because he was in a self-professed “good mood” he left out the two “criticisms” that he heard that day about the iPhone (the whole thing about not being able to connect because of the problems Apple was having with their system). He even put together his own music.

His presence in the company is a fun reminder that fearlessness will always be a big part of entrepreneurialism. I hope you enjoy his creativeness to real consumer reviewing the iPhone!

DFJ Gotham CEO Dinner

So, VCs actually CAN add value!
Last night, my cofounder Bill and I attended another DFJ Gotham dinner at Sparks. It may be because we’re now on the ‘inside’ as a portfolio company, but these dinners keep getting better. There were a ton of great friends and connections — I heard over 100 entrepreneurs showed up. Some highlights:
Kevin Ryan of AlleyCorp spoke. He always is wildly pro-New York, but last night was especially engaging, articulate and funny. The best line was about how he caved and finally just started telling people that mobile was going to be HUGE (even though he doesn’t believe it) just so people would stop debating him and instead say things like “That Kevin, he GETS it!”
I ran into Elizabeth Kressel of CollectorsQuest.com at the coat check. She has a big launch coming up this week. Very excited for her and her team!
Our good friend John Foley from Pronto.com was there. We bonded over the new trends in commerce and the economy. One sharp, nice, genuine guy.
Ran into Jeffrey Stier of Sector 64 (J Walter Thompson). Always good to have advertising money in the room. But even better when that money is smart and commissioned to try new things.
I also saw Steve Rosenbaum, a new friend and visionary of Magnify.net. He told me he was going to be at Digital Hollywood next week at this panel. (Expo’s president Bill Hildebolt will be there, too at a panel called Internet Video, Advertising & Marketing: The Next Generation of Consumer Reach.)
There were a lot more folks, but I’ll just let you have to come to the next one to see who’s there.
Thanks to Jed, Danny, Ross (my friend from my banking life), Thatcher, Mark, JoAnn and Nadine!