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Episode 3 3

This Week in Startups #33 with Shawn Gold

TWiST #33 with Shawn Gold

Jason’s guest this week is Shawn Gold, CEO of online invitation startup, Cocodot.   Shawn and Jason have a long history together, including at Weblogs, Inc (where he was the President).  Shawn’s most recent venture, Cocodot, is looking to reshape the way people handle invitations for high end events – it’s the first online service that presents and invitation of high enough quality to use for important and elegant events like receptions and weddings.  Tune in to hear Shawn’s take on what it’s like to launch at TechCrunch50, his history with MySpace, and the lessons he’s learned from working at numerous tech startups.

TWiST is brought to you by our generous sponsors:

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  • http://www.reignnet.com Jim Mueller

    Jason, great show! Shawn brought up several concepts that I can apply right away to my startup…real world stuff! The idea of performance based marketing and pushing customers further down the funnel with partners was a light bulb moment.

    Thank you so much for doing this show…I know you have fun doing it but it really is different and infectious..I hope to do an “Ask Jason” segment someday but until then I’ll keep soaking this info up like a sponge.

    Lastly, the most profound insight that I have taken away from the show is…
    “It’s not rocket surgery” :-)

  • http://www.propadoo.com Jim Mueller

    Jason, forgot to ask you if you guys are coming to Denver with your Open Angel Forum?

    Jim

  • Vlad

    Great News this week.

    PS: It’s wonderful that you guys got Bing on the sponsorship board.

    PPS: I found it very funny how Jason was offering a mac mini while Microsoft was a sponsor. But Jason changed his mind at the end. Smart move.

  • http://www.bradendouglass.com Braden Douglass

    Shawn is definitely the man! Not knowing who he was, the episode starts off real slow but if you are involved you quickly see how smart and brilliant the man is. I actually wrote a whole review of it here for your little contest Jason:

    http://www.bradendouglass.com/remove-the-goalie-review-of-33-twist

    Definitely in the top 10 if not top 5 on my list despite the slow start

  • David

    I enjoy all of your work. Your podcast is currently my favorite spot to learn on the Internet. I’m still trying to figure out how you know so much about everything.

    Idea: Ask each of your guests to give a few book recommendations, and list them on a book recommendation page.

    One negative thing I feel obligated to mention is that I was put off by your support of Rackspace a couple episodes back. They have been an awful hosting provider as long as I have used them, and we eventually had to move all of our production stuff away from them. I still keep one server there and it experiences more problems and downtime than all of my other servers combined. I can understand if you don’t want to criticize them, but I don’t think supporting them is appropriate because they are truly awful. Better to just leave the story alone. It makes me question whether I can trust other things you say.

  • http://www.domainnoob.com JohnH

    Tyler’s Zuckerberg story deserves a mention (MZ’s privacy concerns led him to ask his assistant to tell the photographer three feet away to delete the photo he’d just taken).
    But the story about Tyler’s Dad selling the Porche out from under him.. cold! The thing was, he bought it for him when he was 9! It was sitting in the garage for 7 years! it’s not like he bought a Porche for a spoiled teenager who didn’t want to cut the lawn.
    I liked the whole Iranian hackers riff, especially, “Send in our crack team of scalability architects!”
    Shawn was great too. Would love to pick his brain more about ‘influencers’ and the power of celebrities in marketing.

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  • http://sergiodelamo.com Sergio del Amo Caballero

    I have posted a recap of this episode. I hope the Microsoft-price-package contest is still opened.

    http://sergiodelamo.com/archive/twist+episode+33+with+shawn+gold.html

    Shawn Gold was a great guest.

  • http://www.samonsoftware.com Sam Howley

    Hi,

    Big fan of Jason and TWIST.

    I have posted a review of episode 33 at :

    http://www.samonsoftware.com/?p=342

    It starts off a little tongue in cheek

    Cheers
    Sam Howley

  • http://advisingwriters.com/ michael

    the internet has a bright future with guys like theses

  • http://www.localendar.com.au Pyjammez
  • http://thenyelabs.com Al Doan

    Not exactly a review of the episode, more a counter to jasons despising ABC’s Shark Tank, but still qualifies I think? Maybe? :) Look forward to today’s show guys, keep up the good work http://www.thenyelabs.com/2009/12/a-case-for-shark-tank/

  • http://www.thisweekintechtools.blogspot.com Erika Blanchard

    I thoroughly enjoyed this episode!

    You can find my review at: http://thisweekintechtools.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_4829.html

    Hope you enjoy!
    Erika

  • http://www.velteo.com Congo

    This episode rocked, definitely in my top 5.

    Find my full review at http://www.congeorgiou.com/2010/01/09/twist-33-review-with-shawn-gold-an-influential-episode/

    Looking at set up a local TWiSTup in Sydney Australia. Let me know whose keen.

    Fighting the good fight,
    Congo

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