Cuil Archive
When to Tell Your Wife You're Taking her Company Down (aka More from Cuil's Founders)
Two more segments of my interview with the controversial startup. The first is their take on the search landscape and why there was and is such a big hole. As a journalist, what I love about this clip is how bullish they remain on their technology as the only real alternative to Google. I expect some people admire it, and it do drive haters into even more of an angry rage. Also: Tom's explains why the launch was a success.
The second clip is Anna Patterson's story -- why she left Google and why she had mixed feelings about it. Anyone who's faced that decision to stay in a cushy job or risk it all on something new will relate to what she says. I also found the dynamic as husband and wife and co-founders fascinating. Tom Costello actually hid from his wife that he was working on a search engine -- showing VCs the idea before her-- and once she saw it she almost felt she had to quit. (Despite some concerns it would work outside of a math equation) First two segments here.
Cuil Speaks
Below are the first two clips from my exclusive post-launch sit down with Cuil founders Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Also, it's exhibit A of why I have grown to love video as a reporter. Anna and Tom not only give an honest and direct answers to the questions surrounding their launch and the value of their search engine, but you see them as real human beings who are utterly resilient in the fire storm, but clearly there's also some hurt there.
Part of the problem with the blogosphere is a certain lack of humanity-- particularly amid anonymous commenters. To read the blogs, Cuil's founders went from geniuses to the anti-Christ. They become, at best, symbols for things, two-dimensional representations of entrepreneurs. But to see them on camera shows you them. You may not like them, and may hate their service, but at least you react to them as a people and not a printed headline on a screen. We've got five segments of the interview running today and I'll post the last three when they become live. Enjoy!
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Sarah Lacy is an award-winning reporter who has covered high-growth entrepreneurship for more than fifteen years. She is the founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of PandoDaily.com, the site-of-record for the startup ecosystem. She lives in San Francisco.
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