Gregg Spiridellis

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• how do most websites recieve credit card payments,what systems do they use?

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    We use recurly.com to manage our recurring payments. I couldn’t recommend them enough. We use paypal as our merchant account to process the charges.

• you dont have to tell everything but what are some things you do when you enter your office?

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    I get in very early. With 40 employees the days quickly get packed with meetings, etc. When I come in, I sit down at my desk and try to get at least 3 hours of uninterrupted work done. I am a huge believer in ‘flow’ and if I don’t have the time to get into my head every day and think, I become grumpy. Just ask my wife.

• You talk a lot about your investors on your website, and the positive relationship you have with them. Why has it been so positive for you? You hear so many VC horror stories...

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    Try to understand their motivation before you take their money. We met a lot of VCs who were practically salivating at the opportunity to package us up and sell us in 2007 when the online video space was red hot. When we met the Polaris guys, it was clear that while they wanted to make a lot of money (that’s their business) they were motivated by an intellectual curiosity in what we were building and the opportunities we saw emerging in media in the years ahead. It was obvious they were going to be supportive, value-added investors with perspective and patience. I hate to go back to the marriage analogy, but ask yourself if you really LIKE the people you are meeting with and can see riding through the bad times with them as well as the good because the bad times always come. That’s life.

• if my company makes $1million a year,how much should i sell it for?

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    Look at other businesses in your space that have sold, figure out what multiple of revenue or profit they received, then apply it to your revenue/profit.

• what can you do when you dont have money for marketing?

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    Try to create some free version of what you offer that will provide value for users and even more value if they share it with their friends.

• Hi Gregg, I am running a startup focused primarily on providing contract financial analysts to small businesses. For example, for a business who cannot afford a full time CFO or financial analyst, they can elect to hire one of my folks for a short duration (i.e. 1 Month). We are having some trouble gaining clients - do you have any suggestions?

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    Take a lot of accountants and lawyers to really nice lunches and ask them for introductions to their fastest growing clients. :) Like a lot of service businesses, this is about identifying the right prospect at the moment of pain and offering them a solution that makes sense from an organizational and cost perspective.

• How do you approach product development?

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    There is no single answer. Developing a process around product development requires so many different perspectives that it is a function of the skills of the people you have around the table. One of the biggest challenges we have always had is defining the line between product and design. Where does one start and the other begin? What we have now is an iterative process where design, technology and product folks work together as a very close nit team to develop the feature sets and how they should be presented to the users. Once they are on a path, my brother and I will be brought into the process for feedback. We have found that there is no right answer to process, it’s all a function of the chemistry of the team.

• I've been involved in a number of Facebook-based viral campaigns lately and we find Facebook as a communications tool to be worthless. The stream moves too fast. What makes your campaigns effective in this medium (or are they no longer effective on Facebook)?

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    Facebook has been KILLING it for us. While email will drive 3 clicks per share, a Facebook share can drive up to 20 clicks. I would focus on optimizing your feed stories to see if you can make it work. It’s an incredibly powerful distribution channel when it does.

• How should I determine how much money to raise?

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    How much do you need? Multiply it by 3.

• How much equity should I give early hires?

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    Depends. That’s a perfect Quora.com question. I’ll bet you’ll find a lot more quality answers there than I can provide. With regards to founders, Fred Wilson posted on it recently. Here’s a link: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-and-employee-equity.html