trouble calls, though, Robertson impressed some scientists at the supercomputer center with his entrepreneurial zeal. I remember one of them telling me that Robertson was working simultaneously on several related Internet-based businesses, but he and Flores decided to focus exclusively on MP3.com after seeing a phenomenal surge in traffic to the progenitor music website.
After selling MP3.com, Robertson founded a handful of other Internet startups, including SIPphone (the predecessor to Gizmo5), MP3tunes, and Linspire, a startup offering a Linux-based operating system that was intended to compete against Microsoft Windows. (Robertson at first provocatively called his OS startup Lindows, which provoked Microsoft to sue for infringing their Windows trademark.) New York-based Xandros acquired Linspire last year for an undisclosed amount in a deal that was fiercely and publicly criticized by former Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony for running roughshod over Linspire’s minority shareholders.
Robertson continues to manage San Diego-based MP3tunes, which he founded in 2005 to enable users to store their personal music collections in the cloud. He also believes strongly that crowd-sourcing information provides a crucial advantage to online media and data services providers, which is one of the chief reasons he helped start the website Dealipedia in early 2008. (Among the more interesting features of the website is a section on “Who Made the Money.”)
In our wide-ranging conversation over coffee and soda, Robertson offered a number of interesting observations:
—He views Internet gambling as inevitable, and as one of the coming hot sectors for Internet startups. He says Internet video remains a hot segment, along with “real-time information searching, sorting, and displaying, with lots more stuff moving information into the cloud.”
—But Robertson says the odds are against many Internet companies, especially if they aren’t industry leaders or hold some crucial advantage. “The world has changed, and if you’re competing directly against Microsoft or Google, it’s going to be tough, tough sledding.”
—Robertson is particularly pessimistic about the prospects for online music providers like Oakland, CA-based Pandora, and San Diego-based Slacker, which has raised close to $70 million in venture capital since its debut in 2007. “Selling music is like selling gravel; it’s a commodity,” Robertson says. “What happens when you have five snow cone vendors all lined up on the beach, selling snow cones? They’re competing and their profit margins basically go to zero. These poor guys like Slacker and Pandora have no way of making money. It’s not a matter of a poorly executed technology or business plan. It’s just not a good plan.”
—San Diego remains a great place for startups “because you have all this great talent here,” especially among the graduates of UC San Diego. As for the evaporation of San Diego’s hometown venture capital firms, Robertson says, “I don’t think it matters where the capital is.” Robertson says he turned to Sequoia Capital of Menlo Park, CA, which led the initial venture investment in MP3.com, after he was spurned in San Diego. “I went to [the San Diego VCs] with a $10 million valuation and they said no, and I got funded 45 days later at a $40 million valuation.”
On the other hand, that was during the go-go Internet boom of the late 1990s. Today Michael Robertson is the first to concede that it’s harder to create a profitable, long-term, sustainable Internet business. That’s part of the reason why he takes so much pride in Gizmo5.
