YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Meeker

lines on the record: 88
first: 2024-11-04
most recent: 2024-11-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, not at all. Henrik and I together put in $10,000 and kind of that same story of. Too much money or money at all. Isn't the type of company we want to build. We want to build something for us and something that's profitable. And this isn't going to be a venture back thing. It's going to be a business that we build.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in a way, I got paid to be the co founder of 20 different startups simultaneously without the headache of sleepless nights or what's going to happen next week or any of that. E commerce was hot at that point. It was on fire. And so part of my day job was meeting a lot of companies. And I'd say a quarter to a third of those were commerce related. And I felt so dumb. I didn't know how those businesses worked. I didn't know how to engage in the conversation and to suss out as there's something here. So part of this for me was I want to educate myself through experience as to what's important. How do these things work? So we found our third co-founder at that point.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not at all. But nothing had been designed or built. So again, this is an image on my phone with now a Square account attached to it. So I started to carry a square in my pocket and I'd show people, and they give me the reaction, I'd plug the square in and I'd say, it's live, swipe your card. And I'd hand the phone to them. And their faces would change. They'd be like, well, so the first person I did it to was a very good friend. And he said, I don't even have a dog. And I said, well, Evan, you know people at dogs, but I'm a gift. Come on. Get out your credit card. And he got out the card and swiped it. And those were the first two we sold.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He put together overnight, and he said, I really like this. And when I got the visual of it, I thought, well, that's interesting. And I had my phone. I took that image and I put it as the lock screen on my phone. And nearly everyone I would come across, I'd show them and I'd say, what do you think of this? And they'd usually say, oh, that's cool. When it's live, let me know and I'll buy it.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, subscription service, sending samples of different beauty products. And we were looking at that and saying, wow, what if we did that for dogs? And we sent samples of food and toys and treats and things that were appropriate for the different size of dog. And Henrik came up with an absolutely terrible name. He's Danish, so we forgive it. He called it doggy baggy, which was just awful. We said goodbye for that Friday afternoon. And on Saturday morning, I woke up to a mocked up designed homepage of a site”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what happened was we had three days at sea getting to know each other and talking about our philosophies. We had both gone through startups in the early 2000s where we raised too much money and flamed out. We had a lot of shared experiences and ideas about how do you do this. So after Summit, we would get together every Friday afternoon for beers and talk about possibilities and ideas. And at that time, one of the hot startups in New York was birchbox. And so we were looking at that.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it took a bit of time, and there was another intersection that happened. So in April of 2011, I went to a conference called Summit Series. I had never heard of it before. It was up and coming, but this year they were doing it on a cruise ship. And so it was three days at sea. I was cheap, so I bought the cheap ticket. And what that meant was you got paired with a roommate who you didn't know. And that gentleman was Henrik Wordolin, who's my co-founder in BARC.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Even the food, it took us a while to find the right food for him. And everything was difficult to find the right thing for a great Dane.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mainly, I became obsessed with Hugo and I loved him more and more and more. He was my first child. And so I fell into the mode of I want to make him happy. And there was a local little pet store right around the corner from my apartment and they would hand me a bully stick and charge me $12 for it. And I take that home and give it to him. And if I'm honest, Hugo is probably thrilled with that setup, but it wasn't connecting for me. I was just disappointed with the offerings and tried the local PET codes and PET smarts as well. It was all the same.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it wasn't acquired or sold. I had taken a little bit of secondary money off the table and enough to sustain me for a bit.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spent a summer training for that. I was trying to find what's next and I was struggling with that. Sort of looking for that next lightning strike and feeling frustrated by it.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That point, I kind of took a look at it and looked at myself and said, if I had said to myself at the beginning, this is where we would get to, would I be happy with it? And I absolutely, this would have been a great outcome right here. And the other part was I was feeling very overwhelmed by the size and the size of the team and thinking 45 people, this is enormous. And I think, oh, wow, they're all depending on us to keep this afloat. So it became an overwhelming thought to me. And I decided to opt out for those reasons.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was doing very well, growing quickly, profitable, supportive investors on board, everything looking very good. And 10 million plus active members worldwide every month.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess at a certain point, from what I understand, I mean, it got, you know, it was starting to get pretty stable and I guess around 40 to 50 people now on staff. And you left in 2008. You decided that you didn't want to be part of it anymore. Can you kind of explain your thinking around that? Because, I mean, you know, it seemed like it was just starting to hit its stride.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were scrambling for a business model in the early days. And so the initial idea for a business model was this will be great for all the businesses. What we'll do is we'll direct traffic into these local businesses and they will pay us for sending foot traffic into their business. So as an example, we sent a group of about 30 people into a Barnes& Noble in Union Square in New York. And then our smart plan was to call Barnes& Noble the next day and say, see all those people last night? We can do that every day for you if you just pay us. And we called them and we said that and they said, that was you. Don't ever do it again. And they weren't ready for it. And so we learned something there, but we really tried everything we could. And we were cobbling it together and making a little bit of money.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a big deal. And so by March of 2003, there was a good sized venue on the lower east side, New York. And he showed up and they were opening the windows and there was a huge crowd on the street and about 500 people inside. Just to hear him speak. And that was the moment we said we did this, and he knew we did it. We did it together. And that catapulted him to the point where every other campaign, Wesley Clark, John Kerry, all of them.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. In February of 2003, a young guy on our team. Very boldly called the governor's mansion in Vermont and said, Well, I have a proposal for you. And that turned into a meeting with Governor Dean and Joe Trippy, his campaign manager, at which they said I intend to run for president and I don't have a lot of money, but I can promise you this from now until the day I get out of the race, I will end every speech I give with join your local Howard Dean meetup. That point, no one knew Howard Dean was outside of Vermont. He ended up racing to the head of the Democrat nomination.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was very difficult, and we would go stock the local meetups in New York. And there was a common behavior worldwide what we would see is about half of the people who RSGP'd would actually show up. And we would go and we'd sit across the street and sort of watch, and you had this common thing where people would walk by wherever the venue was and sort of slow down and look in the window and keep walking slowly but looking. And then they would either go up and they'd circle back and then come in or they'd run. So they had seen what they needed to see and they made their choice, but it was a new activity and they didn't know what to make of it.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the people who were more disenfranchised in the shadows were the ones who really grasped onto it initially. So it was witches and pagans and vampires and vampire hunters and these real fringe groups and then technology oriented groups. Around Python coding language, things like that.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was everywhere. Which probably went as well as that sounds like it would go. You've got a computer in New York City making decisions of how things should go in Moscow. We started with a couple hundred topics. And then we would tell people it's 7 p.m. at that Starbucks.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very little, very little. So, what we ended up raising an angel round of $250,000. And largely from Scott's network So many lessons in that for me as well. First, I asked my parents to invest. They wouldn't do it. And so I invested $10,000 for them because I said they would regret it if they didn't do it. But then we, you know, you get to the end and I'm sure it's a familiar story for founders of you get a lot of commitments saying I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. But getting that signed document and getting that check is another thing. And so herding the cats was a challenge. So, what we did, it was the exact moment where the iPod came out. And we sent notes to all of them, and we said, Hey, Matt's going to come up and pick up your paperwork and your check. If you hand it to him today.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was not. And Scott and I both felt like we had just learned the lesson that too much capital is a bad thing. And so we swung the pendulum way to the other side and said, how about zero? How about we raise zero dollars? But to your point, it's hard to rent an office or hire people or really do much of anything with zero.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was March of 2002. We put an ad on Craigslist. It was very obnoxious saying interviews are next week. We were looking for co-founder CTO. If you're not here in New York City next week, then you can't be interviewed and that's it. Within 24 hours, we had 450 applicants. We chose 60. We did 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. one hour interviews Monday through Friday the following weeks. Interviewed 60 people. And we came out with our co-founder, Peter Kamali.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure. For sure. And then, of course, all the side effects of that, the health effects, the mental health. So we wanted to create a construct that made it safe for people to come back together and have healthier communities and be closer to their neighbors.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you'd walk down the street and people would say, How are you? And they meant it, they wanted an answer. And it really hit us. So we had a collection of things we could do, ideas we could start. But the one we kept coming back to was what ultimately became meetup. And one of the inspirational moments for it was, boy, when all these strangers come together and they actually talk, they really talk and they listen to each other. There's some serious power in that.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was. And for me, I didn't know what to do. So I kept coming into our office and I kept working on this problem and trying to start this company that everyone had given up on. And I'm meeting with Shimon, the founder, at the same time, Scott, who is the founder of iTraffic, he was also coming off of a failed startup attempt. We have a bunch of ideas and more and more we're hanging out. We're walking around the city. Like you said, it's post-9-11. One of the most striking things in the city then was people actually cared about each other.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. And no, it wasn't you or not. I mean, you were, of course, brought on to the team, but you were not the guy who was kind of seeking out the financing. I mean, but you were part of this project. And, okay, and that fizzles out. And so what, I mean, and I guess this is probably, this probably takes you through 9-11 in New York City, right? I mean, you were probably in the city at that time.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. As a startup does. So, you have very talented people who are bringing, you know, imagine you're running marketing for ATT one day and the next day you're trying to start something. You're bringing that approach. And it meant we spent a lot of days in conference rooms talking about PowerPoints. And when we got stuck on things, we hired consulting firms to help solve those. So it was just wonderful people who were not meant for that stage. So we took a good idea and didn't do it well.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe in starting the company, we made every mistake that you could make in starting a company. And for me, I believe that starts with having access to way too much capital leads to some bad decisions. And we had a COO who was a C-level executive at Citibank, and we brought him over. We brought over the CMO from ATT to be our CMO.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shemon and Robin Nusteen, and they had a concept where what they wanted to do was it sounds silly today, but they wanted to put mobile devices in everyone's hands and create a text messaging channel that connected everyone in the US. Actually, the network that we were using to send the messages was the existing paging network. So we were sending text messages through the paging network, very low cost into these devices that were the size, the form factor of a credit card and the credit card had an LCD screen built into it. Imagine going into your wallet today, taking out your credit card and reading a text message on it. That's what it was”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I knew my time was up and I was looking for the next thing to do. This couple who had a bold ambitious idea at a time where the whole world had big, bold, ambitious ideas.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you got a $30,000 payout for just working there for like what two years or something a little less than two years. So, when that happened, you're like, what, 20, 26, 27 at that point? I guess you start to think about maybe starting your own thing.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did we were acquired by agency.com in December of 1999. And it was a great learning for me. This was the first time anyone had talked to me about ownership or equity of the company you work for. And everyone there had equity. My piece of that ended up being $30,000. To me, that was fantastic. Yeah, it was all the money in the world. It was great.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of action. And by the time I got there, they had signed Disney as a client. And it was just booming. It felt like new things got invented in the world every day. And we were on the front lines of learning about those and then incorporating them into our work instantly.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I walk into a class that was called Marketing Communications, and the professor was a visiting professor from the London School of Economics. First words out of his mouth, he said, who in here knows what the internet is? And he got zero hands out of maybe 35, 40 of us, nothing. And he said, from now on, this class is internet 101. It's not marketing communications. If you don't want to take that class, that's fine. But that's what we'll be doing this quarter. And I didn't know what he was saying. I liked him. And it was the most eye-opening experience ever. Instantly, you knew he was talking about something important and big and that the world was about to change.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Subscription box, which eventually morphed into all kinds of dog products, food, treats, furniture, and now chartered flights. Before Bark, Matt and a partner launched an idea back in nineteen ninety nine that was way ahead of its time, a credit card-sized device that could essentially send and receive text messages. The business flopped after about eighteen months, but a top mat, an important lesson about what not to do when starting a business, a lesson he would definitely apply when he co-founded his next business called Meetup. And we'll get there. But for now, Matt Meeker grew up in the 1970s and 80s in the small town of Mason City, Iowa. He spent a few years in the Navy and then studied finance and marketing at the University of Minnesota, where one of his classes made a huge impression on him.”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That year ending March 31st, we burned 194 million dollars. And if we had done that for the next 12 months, that would have been it. We're done. We're gone. So the immediate challenge is do everything possible to keep this thing alive and floating. Don't die”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2024-11-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · BARK: Matt Meeker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT