Venture capitalist Kevin O’Connor, interviewed in the April 2009 issue [PDF] of Kaizen, is now co-founder and CEO of FindTheBest.com. FindTheBest, as described by Mr. O’Connor, “was created out of my desire to organize part of the Internet, filter out the excessive junk and present information in a simple, comparable way.”

He explains further: “I could find endless amounts of information on any subject but when I had a complicated decision to make, I found myself wasting hours, or even days, compiling information I could compare. Or, I found sites offering their “top 10” recommendations, only to discover they were secretly getting “kickbacks” from the sites they were recommending.”

His solution, FindTheBest, is now in beta version.  It allows the user to compare search results (similarly to travel websites like Expedia), and to narrow down the results by various criteria (much like browsing Amazon). Like Wikipedia, users can also contribute to the site, updating existing areas or creating new listings in which they have expertise.

Check out FindTheBest.com

Read Kevin O’Connor’s introduction to FindTheBest.

Read the full-length interview with Kevin O’Connor.

An article by Vivek Wadhwa at TechCrunch explains why “VCs follow innovation, they don’t lead.”

The National Venture Capital Association claims in their Venture Impact report that companies like Microsoft and Google “…would not exist today without the funding and guidance provided during their early stages by venture capitalists.”

But what about the entrepreneurs who, as Wadhwa puts it, “risk their life savings, max out their credit cards and put their families in the back seat?”

Read the article here.

Kevin O’Connor is co-founder and former CEO of DoubleClick. DoubleClick is the world’s largest Internet advertising technology company and was recently acquired by Google. Prior to DoubleClick, Mr. O’Connor founded and developed several successful Internet businesses and is now the principal of O’Connor Ventures, a venture capital firm that provides funding for startups. For this interview we met with Mr. O’Connor in Santa Barbara, California to explore his thoughts on Internet entrepreneurship, venture capital, and success in life.

Kaizen: Before you went to college, you were a young man with an experimental turn of mind. Some of those experiments went well—and others didn’t?

O’Connor: Well, there was the one when I tried to build a hot air balloon and it was too windy, so I launched it in our garage and it caught on fire. It was about six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and all the hot ashes flew up in the rafters and almost burned the whole house down and killed the family. So I had to put everything out before anyone woke up.

Kaizen: What was your parents’ reaction to that?

O’Connor: My dad actually helped me build a new one, and we went out and launched it, but it was too windy and it burned up again. But it was outside. He was always very good on that. And the other time, I think I was building a rheostat and it was very, very hot and it caught the carpet on fire. I tried to hide it and somehow my dad always found everything I did. He was totally cool with it; he was fine. He liked the story and he was glad I didn’t kill anyone.

Kaizen: So rather than dampening your experimentalism, they took the risks and—maybe keeping an eye on things the way parents do—encouraged you down that road?

O’Connor: Yep. He never even kept an eye on me. I don’t know why. They were fairly conservative people, but I think my dad had a bit of a hidden wild streak in him.

Kaizen: So by the time you went to college you had years of fun experience with technology and great parental support?

O’Connor: Yep. My dad used to go out with me every garbage night. We’d go out and collect TVs and radios and anything with electronics. He used to help me do that.
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The latest issue of Kaizen features our interview with Kevin O’Connor, co-founder and former CEO of DoubleClick. DoubleClick is the world’s largest Internet advertising technology company and was recently acquired by Google for $3.1 billion. Also featured in Kaizen are reports on a new course coming soon from Professor Asongu, our guest speakers, and projects by students Bridget Markin, Khetsiwe Dlamini, Stacy Moore, and Goran Mamic.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post the full version of the interview with Mr. O’Connor.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.