We chatted with Mike Markson, VP Business Development, of Topix.net after his participation in our last Strategy Series event, "Terms of the Deal Were Not Disclosed!" We’ll tell you more about what those guys had to say, too. Mike covers his thoughts on citizen journalism, hot Topix.net’s deals with Tribune, Knight Ridder and Gannett went down, and advice to start-ups on their exit strategies.

IBDN: Give us a quick overview of how Topix.net works.

Markson: Topix.net is a news aggregator covering over
300,000 topics, down to the zip code level, from over 10,000 sources. The way it
works is the newspaper publishes a story, we crawl it, and it shows up on our
site in the relevant category. It gets distributed via RSS to our subscribers
and partner sites, and all that traffic circles back to the newspaper site.
Right now we have 3 million unique visitors per month coming to Topix.net, and 1
million RSS subscribers. Users love Topix.net as an easy way to find categorized
news they are interested in, and media brands love it because we drive traffic
to their sites. We sell our news feeds to content distributors like AOL, Ask
Jeeves, and smaller sites like ThatsRacin.com. Advertising is our largest share
of revenues, and we also offer feature story placements we charge for.

IBDN: What about blogs? Are they part of your content partners? What
is your take on the citizen journalism/bloggers-as-journalists movement, and how
does Topix.net treat them?

Markson: We have 500 blogs we monitor as content right now.
This is the only piece of human intervention in our model – we decide which
sites we want as news sources, like government, health department, and
university sites, all the way to John Battelle and Siliconbeat. For the
bloggers, as for our other content sites, it’s a great relationship. We crawl
them, we send them traffic, and their blogs show up as news stories. Plus, they
get traffic from our distribution partners, like Ask Jeeves.

I hope citizen journalism continues to propagate – it’s good for us. I want
to see bloggers that go to the local PTA meetings and report back on what goes
on. Those kinds of people haven’t necessarily adopted the medium in critical
mass yet.

But take a blogger like Susan Mernit, for example. She posts about 10 times a
week, and 7 of those posts are about new media, and the other 3 are about food
or something. Topix.net crawls her content for new media stories, and leaves out
the other stuff.

IBDN: You’ve made many successful partnerships with media sites, and
then sold a 75% stake to three major newspaper businesses, Gannett, Knight
Ridder, and the Tribune Company. Was this the plan from the get-go? Were you
building this business with those "exits" in mind?

Markson: Well, when we started out, I was wondering what
media companies were going to think about this. I’m a deal guy. I want to build
partnerships. In the beginning, it was like 3,000 media companies wanted to be a
part of our crawl, and 4 or 5 said no. We’ve always had an opt-out policy. It
was pretty obvious that newspapers understand the value of aggregation and
traffic. Gannett, Knight Ridder, and the Tribune Company all saw us as a product
development team that they wouldn’t know how to build themselves.

We were very focused and head-down on building our business from the start.
Topix.net was started by a pretty tightly knit team – we go way back. Four of us
went to high school together. We have two brothers and two brothers-in-law as
the founding team. I was number five. All of us have had the positions at other
companies dealing with VCs, the big-wig strategic partners like HP, having to go
through the stress of M&A, etc. I worked for Terraspring and saw it through
to acquisition by Sun Microsystems. So, we really wanted to build a fun company
and a cool place to work that we would love to wake up to in the morning and go
to every day! Then before we knew it, we’re getting calls and talking to all the
Sand Hill guys, and we’re like, "Wait a minute. This isn’t fun anymore!"

But I’m a partner guy, so I don’t turn down any opportunities. We were
approached by lots of people to do lots of different things, and we explored
them. I approach every deal as a partner opportunity, and that’s how I talk to
VCs. It’s like dating. When you’re looking to get a date, it doesn’t happen, but
when you just want to hang out at a bar and have fun, that’s when the
opportunities come up!

IBDN: So what’s your advice to start-ups as they pursue multiple exit
strategies and opportunities?

Markson: Don’t smell like you’re trying to get liquidity.
That’s not very attractive. Pursue your core business, grow smartly, and others
(VCs or potential acquirers) will see what an integral part your business could
play that will benefit them, and that’s where you will find yourself – cutting
the deals.

Michael is the vice president of business development for Topix.net,
where he leads the company’s strategic partner efforts. Prior to Topix.net, he
was the general counsel and director of business development for Terraspring,
Inc., where he led the company’s strategic partner program, forming valuable
alliances with entities such as HP and EMC. In addition, he headed the efforts
involved with the final sale of the company to Sun Microsystems.

We chatted with Mike Markson, VP Business Development, of Topix.net after his participation in our last Strategy Series event, "Terms of the Deal Were Not Disclosed!" We’ll tell you more about what those guys had to say, too. Mike covers his thoughts on citizen journalism, hot Topix.net’s deals with Tribune, Knight Ridder and Gannett went down, and advice to start-ups on their exit strategies.

IBDN: Give us a quick overview of how Topix.net works.

Markson: Topix.net is a news aggregator covering over
300,000 topics, down to the zip code level, from over 10,000 sources. The way it
works is the newspaper publishes a story, we crawl it, and it shows up on our
site in the relevant category. It gets distributed via RSS to our subscribers
and partner sites, and all that traffic circles back to the newspaper site.
Right now we have 3 million unique visitors per month coming to Topix.net, and 1
million RSS subscribers. Users love Topix.net as an easy way to find categorized
news they are interested in, and media brands love it because we drive traffic
to their sites. We sell our news feeds to content distributors like AOL, Ask
Jeeves, and smaller sites like ThatsRacin.com. Advertising is our largest share
of revenues, and we also offer feature story placements we charge for.

IBDN: What about blogs? Are they part of your content partners? What
is your take on the citizen journalism/bloggers-as-journalists movement, and how
does Topix.net treat them?

Markson: We have 500 blogs we monitor as content right now.
This is the only piece of human intervention in our model – we decide which
sites we want as news sources, like government, health department, and
university sites, all the way to John Battelle and Siliconbeat. For the
bloggers, as for our other content sites, it’s a great relationship. We crawl
them, we send them traffic, and their blogs show up as news stories. Plus, they
get traffic from our distribution partners, like Ask Jeeves.

I hope citizen journalism continues to propagate – it’s good for us. I want
to see bloggers that go to the local PTA meetings and report back on what goes
on. Those kinds of people haven’t necessarily adopted the medium in critical
mass yet.

But take a blogger like Susan Mernit, for example. She posts about 10 times a
week, and 7 of those posts are about new media, and the other 3 are about food
or something. Topix.net crawls her content for new media stories, and leaves out
the other stuff.

IBDN: You’ve made many successful partnerships with media sites, and
then sold a 75% stake to three major newspaper businesses, Gannett, Knight
Ridder, and the Tribune Company. Was this the plan from the get-go? Were you
building this business with those "exits" in mind?

Markson: Well, when we started out, I was wondering what
media companies were going to think about this. I’m a deal guy. I want to build
partnerships. In the beginning, it was like 3,000 media companies wanted to be a
part of our crawl, and 4 or 5 said no. We’ve always had an opt-out policy. It
was pretty obvious that newspapers understand the value of aggregation and
traffic. Gannett, Knight Ridder, and the Tribune Company all saw us as a product
development team that they wouldn’t know how to build themselves.

We were very focused and head-down on building our business from the start.
Topix.net was started by a pretty tightly knit team – we go way back. Four of us
went to high school together. We have two brothers and two brothers-in-law as
the founding team. I was number five. All of us have had the positions at other
companies dealing with VCs, the big-wig strategic partners like HP, having to go
through the stress of M&A, etc. I worked for Terraspring and saw it through
to acquisition by Sun Microsystems. So, we really wanted to build a fun company
and a cool place to work that we would love to wake up to in the morning and go
to every day! Then before we knew it, we’re getting calls and talking to all the
Sand Hill guys, and we’re like, "Wait a minute. This isn’t fun anymore!"

But I’m a partner guy, so I don’t turn down any opportunities. We were
approached by lots of people to do lots of different things, and we explored
them. I approach every deal as a partner opportunity, and that’s how I talk to
VCs. It’s like dating. When you’re looking to get a date, it doesn’t happen, but
when you just want to hang out at a bar and have fun, that’s when the
opportunities come up!

IBDN: So what’s your advice to start-ups as they pursue multiple exit
strategies and opportunities?

Markson: Don’t smell like you’re trying to get liquidity.
That’s not very attractive. Pursue your core business, grow smartly, and others
(VCs or potential acquirers) will see what an integral part your business could
play that will benefit them, and that’s where you will find yourself – cutting
the deals.

Michael is the vice president of business development for Topix.net,
where he leads the company’s strategic partner efforts. Prior to Topix.net, he
was the general counsel and director of business development for Terraspring,
Inc., where he led the company’s strategic partner program, forming valuable
alliances with entities such as HP and EMC. In addition, he headed the efforts
involved with the final sale of the company to Sun Microsystems.

We chatted with Mike Markson, VP Business Development, of Topix.net after his participation in our last Strategy Series event, "Terms of the Deal Were Not Disclosed!" We’ll tell you more about what those guys had to say, too. Mike covers his thoughts on citizen journalism, hot Topix.net’s deals with Tribune, Knight Ridder and Gannett went down, and advice to start-ups on their exit strategies.

IBDN: Give us a quick overview of how Topix.net works.

Markson: Topix.net is a news aggregator covering over
300,000 topics, down to the zip code level, from over 10,000 sources. The way it
works is the newspaper publishes a story, we crawl it, and it shows up on our
site in the relevant category. It gets distributed via RSS to our subscribers
and partner sites, and all that traffic circles back to the newspaper site.
Right now we have 3 million unique visitors per month coming to Topix.net, and 1
million RSS subscribers. Users love Topix.net as an easy way to find categorized
news they are interested in, and media brands love it because we drive traffic
to their sites. We sell our news feeds to content distributors like AOL, Ask
Jeeves, and smaller sites like ThatsRacin.com. Advertising is our largest share
of revenues, and we also offer feature story placements we charge for.

IBDN: What about blogs? Are they part of your content partners? What
is your take on the citizen journalism/bloggers-as-journalists movement, and how
does Topix.net treat them?

Markson: We have 500 blogs we monitor as content right now.
This is the only piece of human intervention in our model – we decide which
sites we want as news sources, like government, health department, and
university sites, all the way to John Battelle and Siliconbeat. For the
bloggers, as for our other content sites, it’s a great relationship. We crawl
them, we send them traffic, and their blogs show up as news stories. Plus, they
get traffic from our distribution partners, like Ask Jeeves.

I hope citizen journalism continues to propagate – it’s good for us. I want
to see bloggers that go to the local PTA meetings and report back on what goes
on. Those kinds of people haven’t necessarily adopted the medium in critical
mass yet.

But take a blogger like Susan Mernit, for example. She posts about 10 times a
week, and 7 of those posts are about new media, and the other 3 are about food
or something. Topix.net crawls her content for new media stories, and leaves out
the other stuff.

IBDN: You’ve made many successful partnerships with media sites, and
then sold a 75% stake to three major newspaper businesses, Gannett, Knight
Ridder, and the Tribune Company. Was this the plan from the get-go? Were you
building this business with those "exits" in mind?

Markson: Well, when we started out, I was wondering what
media companies were going to think about this. I’m a deal guy. I want to build
partnerships. In the beginning, it was like 3,000 media companies wanted to be a
part of our crawl, and 4 or 5 said no. We’ve always had an opt-out policy. It
was pretty obvious that newspapers understand the value of aggregation and
traffic. Gannett, Knight Ridder, and the Tribune Company all saw us as a product
development team that they wouldn’t know how to build themselves.

We were very focused and head-down on building our business from the start.
Topix.net was started by a pretty tightly knit team – we go way back. Four of us
went to high school together. We have two brothers and two brothers-in-law as
the founding team. I was number five. All of us have had the positions at other
companies dealing with VCs, the big-wig strategic partners like HP, having to go
through the stress of M&A, etc. I worked for Terraspring and saw it through
to acquisition by Sun Microsystems. So, we really wanted to build a fun company
and a cool place to work that we would love to wake up to in the morning and go
to every day! Then before we knew it, we’re getting calls and talking to all the
Sand Hill guys, and we’re like, "Wait a minute. This isn’t fun anymore!"

But I’m a partner guy, so I don’t turn down any opportunities. We were
approached by lots of people to do lots of different things, and we explored
them. I approach every deal as a partner opportunity, and that’s how I talk to
VCs. It’s like dating. When you’re looking to get a date, it doesn’t happen, but
when you just want to hang out at a bar and have fun, that’s when the
opportunities come up!

IBDN: So what’s your advice to start-ups as they pursue multiple exit
strategies and opportunities?

Markson: Don’t smell like you’re trying to get liquidity.
That’s not very attractive. Pursue your core business, grow smartly, and others
(VCs or potential acquirers) will see what an integral part your business could
play that will benefit them, and that’s where you will find yourself – cutting
the deals.

Michael is the vice president of business development for Topix.net,
where he leads the company’s strategic partner efforts. Prior to Topix.net, he
was the general counsel and director of business development for Terraspring,
Inc., where he led the company’s strategic partner program, forming valuable
alliances with entities such as HP and EMC. In addition, he headed the efforts
involved with the final sale of the company to Sun Microsystems.