Duncan Riley Interview: SOTB 2009
Duncan Riley: I became involved in politics at a very young age. My father was a small businessman in Australia and very much against the left wing government of the early-'90s, and that sort of reflected on me. I started a conservative politics site in 1994 or 1995.
I ran the first aggregate poli sci — conservative political sci — site in Australia in 1996. I use the word "conservative" regarding Australian politics - it wasn't like "conservative" in the American sense. I am basically libertarian. RJ: That was more about advocacy. Did you have any idea at the time that you could make a living at it?
DR: Not when I started. No idea at all.
RJ: When did that click for you?
DR: I started to get some consulting gigs, was webmaster for the Republican Referendum site, and I did some PR marketing, management, odd jobs along the way.
Blogs came around in 2000 and I started reading them. I had done something similar: we were doing a lot of links out on Australian Conservative Politics, and we were also bringing in writers to do guest posts. It was not structured like a blog, but it had blog like qualities.
At that stage I couldn't decide what to write about. I had started to lose interest in politics and I didn’t want to write about it. True story: I couldn’t work out what I wanted to blog about so I decided to blog out blogging and that was the Blog Herald.
I think that was the form that I was interested in: I was reading everything from lesbian and gay blogs to rabid political sites, to mom and pop stuff. I’d never seen anything like that, and the global voices, what people are doing in their lives - it was fascinating.
When I started it I was like, maybe I might get a gig out of it - that was my only thought about making money because in 2002, 2003 there was no money. There was no Adsense - no one was making ads on blogging. I can remember when the first ads went out on blogs. And the outcry, literally from day one, about how, "We’re never going to read a blog that puts ads out - we’re never going to read it ever again." That was the hue and cry about that.
I said to my wife in 2002 — my only son was born that year — and I said when he gets to school one of us need to be home, take him to school. I’d love that to be me, because I always tinkered on side and done bits and pieces. My wife, who’s actually a very senior manager for public utility now and does community relations for them, has always "worked."
So that was in the back of my mind. I had Weblog Empire by then, a small network of about five blogs. In 2004 I sent an email out to Jeremy Wright and Darren Rowse that said, "Look we’re doing pretty good traffic, let's talk about doing a blog network, an ad network," and that led to b5media about five months months later.
I was at b5media about two-and-a-half years. It grew from when we started from a few blogs to 250-300 blogs when I left, and more than that in writers. It was a great model for a network at the time, but it’s not today. They’ve change the model. They’ve started rolling up the blogs into great big blogs and that’s the direction the market's heading. I wasn’t happy with the direction the company was heading at the time and I left.
RJ: And that’s when you headed to TechCrunch?
DR: Well I left on a 6 month non-compete, and I had enough money where I probably could have not worked for two or three years, but after about a month the novelty wore off.
So I was doing proxy networks because I couldn’t do blogs. I planned proxy networks, which can I add is the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my entire life because you constantly getting chopped off servers. You’re constantly getting into trouble. I made good money but it got too hard and then I got a call from Michael - as simple as that, there was no interviewing.
RJ: You were one of the very first people to work at TechCrunch...
DR: Second or third I think. He got a recommendation from somebody or he decided he needed somebody to help him. At that stage, he was the only one writing something. At that stage could write, I just couldn’t build anything, so I went with Michael.
RJ: From Australia, so a virtual company?
DR: I’m in Melbourne now. I used to be in Western Australia right at the other side of the continent, so I was very very remote. You know I could fly to South Africa in a quarter of the time it took me to get to the States. I did that for twelve months.
RJ: We’re really interested in hearing how you and Mike built a blog-based media company, and what was that like. It must have grown like wild fire…
DR: It did - traffic more than doubled in 12 months. Michael was incredibly well connected and he has a unique brash style...
RJ: He’s also incredibly prolific.
DR: He is, and he’s one of the — one thing I miss, and I’m no longer, unfortunately, friendly with Michael — but he’s also one of the most intelligent guys I know. When he’s not ranting and raving, you can actually sit down and have some of the most amazing conversations with him. He knows an awful lot about this business, and I miss that actually. But he was prolific; he also doesn’t sleep an awful lot. He works far too hard. Which I think maybe today probably wouldn’t be as bad...
RJ: And now he’s got a staff of almost 20 people.
DR: Probably more actually if you count the various spin-offs. So, but yeah he used to do 18-20 hour days. I was in Australia and he would often go to bed after I would.
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