I never thought one of our network sites would be outed by Valleywag, but that’s what happened today 馃檪 I’m pleased to introduce Read/WriteTalk, a brand new podcasting show produced by Sean Ammirati and myself. Sean is the driving force behind the show, so all credit goes to him for setting it up and doing the podcasts. By day, Sean is the VP of Business Development and Product Management at personalization startup mSpoke – so Read/WriteTalk is a part-time gig for him. There are still a couple of minor design issues that we wanted to fix up before announcing Read/WriteTalk, but now that the site is out there we’ll tell you what it’s about.
The tagline behind the show is “The People Behind The Web” and Sean will be interviewing a number of major players in the Web Technology industry over the coming months. The opening podcast features Jason Calacanis and – as well as the Samurai quote that Valleywag picked up on – Jason gives a lot of informative details about his background and experiences as an entrepreneur. Jason also reveals how he came up with the idea behind Mahalo, the people-powered search engine he founded this year, and how he went about launching the product (also see our review of Mahalo). To add spice to the podcast, there are also a couple of none-too-subtle digs at Valleywag and in particular Jason’s arch-nemesis Nick Denton!
We will be providing complete transcripts for each podcast. For example Sean asks: “If you could give one piece of advice to entrepreneurs, maybe you were at this debut and we聜脛么re out doing Silicon Alley Reporter, what would that piece of advice be?”. Jason replies:
“Never give up, resiliency and being an entrepreneur is about who can withstand the largest number of challenges, detractors, negativity. Anybody who聜脛么s doing anything that聜脛么s ethic or worthy of attention is going to basically be attacked until that聜脛么s not possible. And you聜脛么re going to face days where you wakeup and the challenge that you see is insurmountable. And the people who do great things in life are the people who look at those insurmountable challenges and say, 聜脛煤I聜脛么m going to try and get through somehow.聜脛?And the person who would stand the most pain is the one who typically wins. It sounds crazy but you know I聜脛么ve seen so many entrepreneurs just give up. And it聜脛么s like, 聜脛煤You know what, if you just made it over that next hill, you would have made it to the promise land.聜脛? It聜脛么s like sort of people trying to swim for shore, lost in the desert and trying to get past that final sand dune and the oasis is there. And some people don聜脛么t give up when they聜脛么re 50% of the way there, 80% of the way there. So resiliency and never giving up and pursuing your passion, those are the things that I really think an entrepreneur is made of.”
So check out Read/WriteTalk and subscribe to it in your iTunes or whatever method you use to track podcasts. Sean has other great interviews lined up and he’ll be out and about at conferences too, with the Read/WriteTalk microphone in hand.
p.s. the irony of launching Read/WriteTalk on the same day Alex Iskold wrote Will Podcasting Survive? hasn’t escaped us either 馃槈
