From startup mode to being acquired by Yahoo! – The MyBlogLog story
When Scott Rafer contacted the MyBlogLog co-founders - Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson on LinkedIn, they were both "working on something cool". Scott, a serial entrepreneur who knows a valuable company when he sees one, was in between companies - Feedster and (soon to be) MyBlogLog. Well, let's hear it in his own words:
There was 6 months between Feedster (left Sept 05) and MyBlogLog (joined Mar 06). They were entirely disconnected. In Jan 06, an investor pal put the idea for a distributed social net into my head. I couldn’t get it out.
As I was trawling around the net over the next few weeks, I kept running across MBL’s click-tags. “AH HA!” It occurred to me how they did what they did, and I reached out to Eric via LinkedIn — we had Sean Bonner of metro blogging in common. I called him up; he got Todd on the phone; and I said, “Do you know what else you can do with that?” They quite reasonably said,” Who are you?”.
It all cascaded from there.
The best part of this above conversation was that the connection happened on LinkedIn. Check out the below video to learn more. Also, after the jump, a quick user snapshot on Scott with his two LinkedIn Tips:
LinkedIn User Snapshot:
Who: Scott Rafer, Former CEO, MyBlogLog | CEO, Lookery | Co-founder, Mashery | Chairman, Winksite
How: Well, we didn't want to let go of an opportunity to sit down with Scott as well as the MyBlogLog co-founders, Eric and Todd, to get the real scoop on what went down between the time Scott assumed the CEO role and Yahoo! acquiring MyBlogLog. And, the role LinkedIn played in triggering that sequence of events.
2 LinkedIn Tips from Scott
1. What's even better is that we were able to glean some insight into how they use LinkedIn and the feature that brought them together - Advanced Search.
Advanced People Search
is accessible by clicking on “People” under the LinkedIn logo, or “Advanced Search” next to the quick search bar. It is optimized to help you find that highly targeted person at the right time. For example, to find an expert in Six Sigma located in your geographical location to
consult for your company, you would:
- Enter “Six Sigma” in the Keywords field
- Choose your option in the location field
- Specify that you are interested in “consultants/contractors”
2. Another useful LinkedIn feature that's often used while hiring is reference search.
Reference Search
on LinkedIn is the best way to conduct reliable reference checks on your job candidates. Using the company name and years that the candidate worked at each company, the search results will return former colleagues who can potentially provide unbiased references.