Interview with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO De Dopplr
I recently met with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO of Dopplr, one of the jewels in social media and travelling.
We had initially scheduled a 30 minutes interview. We ended up talking for well over an hour. One of the most interesting chats I had in months.
I was really surprised with Marko´s view on some topics. As I wrote in the article published this week, he´s a countercurrent man, in a counter current start-up. Two proofs:
“The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!”
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does this pass the Larry Page toothbrush test? – meaning that entrepreneurs should aim to create apps that people use at least two or three times a day, like a toothbrush – Well, that´s the challenge”
Here ´s an excerpt with some of the highlights of the interview:
Question: You background is not the typical one of an Internet entrepreneur… degree in philosophy and music, lecturer at Columbia University, professional musician… do you feel an outsider in the Internet world?
Answer: No, I think everyone has their own path. While at Columbia, universities where the early adopters of the Internet. It was the time when everybody got their firsts email address. It was also early days in digitization of music. There are different types of entrepreneurship models, and I followed mine.
Q: You founded Dopplr with four other people: Matt Biddulph, Lisa Sounio, Dan Gillmor and Matt Jones? Did you all feel lonely in hotels around the world?
A: Yes, we were trying to keep track of each other. We thought: could we replace the evening alone in a hotel room typing in Facebook with meeting someone for dinner? I was also getting emails all the time asking me “when will you be there?”, “when we will meet next?”… Originally, it was really as a tool for ourselves.
Q: Dopplr has been successful among hardcore corporate travelers… but not casual travelers, tourists… was that the initial intention?
A: I think so. When we launched it, it was very minimalist. When people came to the site, all we said was: “if you travel more than five times a year and you know people that do as well, this may be for you”. We encouraged heavy travelers to try it. Today, 80% of the people using Dopplr travel for work, 20% for leisure.
Now it´s not only about where people will be, but marking the places that you visit, the restaurants, a local bookstore, a swimming pool, whatever.
Q: A lot of people like Dopplr because it´s more intimate and private than Facebook, it´s a more select club… was that the key for getting visibility?
A: I think so, we designed it to be private and polite. We used to call it a “beautility”, a beautiful utility. Quality and elegance plus privacy and politeness. In that sense, it is a very European social media.
Q: Dopplr face two big hurdles as a start-up: a deep economic crisis and being in the Facebook era. It must be very tough to convince people to use yet again another social network.
A: We are progressing very well. We have 150.000 registered accounts, growing about 34% unique users month-on-month. It´s not huge, but we focus on quality audience. Think of the readership of the Economist, 1,5 million people. That´s a good goal for us. Our users do an average of 15 trips a year, and they enter up to 75% of them in the system.
Q: There must be something we don´t know about Dopplr to have received investment from heavy-weights such as like Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters, or Martin Varsavsky, CEO of FON… Tell us the secret.
A: (He smiles suspiciously) They were just users of the service. And there is an interest in a business based on the data and travel of a certain community. Travel advice in the Internet is done now trough large anonymous reviews, like Tripadvisor. You have 1.000 reviews but maybe you check just some of them. We want to modernize that.
Q: Who gives you better advice, Hoffman or Varsavsky?
A: (Again, he first laughs, but then thinks very seriously for 30 seconds) Different advice. Silicon Valley social networks expertise versus passion for product and ramping up a business.
Q: Did they invest in Dopplr maybe because you found the trick to make money out of socializing online? Transactions instead of advertising?
A: It´s way too early to say. But the game is definitely about transactions and subscriptions. For our audience advertising is not the right model. And for Facebook-type audiences, the numbers speak for themselves.
Q: The way in which people socialize online is changing very rapidly. A year ago, Facebook seemed to be a revolution and now is losing ground to services like Twitter.
A: We are not in that real time pulse of the world, Dopplr has always been about slower travel. We are against the grain here. The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!.
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does that pass the Larry Page toothbrush test?, which is that Google only look for things that are used as frequently as a toothbrush, with is at least 2 times a day. Well, that´s the challenge.
Q: Is microblogging, or real-time communications, the future of socializing online?
A: If you mean that only “status-like” companies will survive, I don´t believe that. What people do on Facebook are lightweight interactions. There´s always a counter current, private, and high quality, and that´s where we play. We don´t use the word “friend” we just say that you share your data with someone. It´s purely information. Many Americans tell me: “what you do is fake following”. What the hell is fake following, please?!
Tags: Dopplr, Marko Ahtisaari
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Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor