that they were going to come out with something, Yahoo was making rumblings
that they were coming out with something. I tend to be a lot more paranoid
than I probably need to be. We weren’t growing as fast as I wanted us to,
and it came back again to users are really the only thing that you have with
these types of companies that protects you, that makes you valuable. When
somebody buys you, they buy you for the users and to a lesser degree the buzz.
It depends on the acquisition. So...

been 2 weeks since we’ve been in the Wall Street Journal. When are we going
to be in again?” And she said, “Don’t you dare expect this kind of stuff forever.”
So you have to figure out when is the right time to sell, what you want out of
an acquisition—both in terms of money and whether you want to stay on.
Would you be happy with somebody else running the company? It’s a very personal
decision. And there are better times to sell than others. If nobody is talking
to you, it’s going...

Fletcher: Sure. It’s very flattering to have some company come up and start
schmoozing you. It comes down to you have to figure out what you want to do
with your startup and your life. With ONElist, it was very easy—I didn’t even
have to make the decision just to keep going as long as I could, because I knew
I was creating all this value from the users. Otherwise it just comes down to the
intangibles I guess. If you like the people you’re talking to, if you think you’re
getting a decent...

need a graphic designer necessarily.
Livingston: Can you remember any moments in ONElist that were harrowing?
Fletcher: Sure. Many times. The first year especially when I was still working
the full-time job at Sun and doing this on the side.
Livingston: You were still working?
Fletcher: Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? In most aspects of at least my
fiscal life, I’m very conservative. I had a mortgage and didn’t want to take the
leap of faith to do this without a salary, and so I started ONElist while I was...

the side and it doesn’t work out, you still have a job. Of course, you absolutely
have to pay attention to the employment issues. You can’t work on your startup
at work. Depending on your employment contract, they may own stuff that you
do on the side, too. You have to be very cognizant of that.
Livingston: I hadn’t realized that you did it on the side.
Fletcher: By the end of the first year, there were five of us, and we were all
working, just nights and weekends.
Livingston: What was the...