A serial entrepreneur, Kevin O’Connor’s latest venture is FindTheBest, a company that offers comparisons on everything from credit cards to golf courses. Prior to FindTheBest Kevin was a founder of DoubleClick, which Google ended up buying for $3 billion.
In this episode of Founder Stories, O’Connor takes us back before his DoubleClick days to when he joined Atlanta’s Internet Security Systems during its infancy. He tells host Chris Dixon what a 20-year old college dropout had to do with him signing with the startup. Speaking of those early days, O’Connor says, “I don’t think any of us realized it would be a billion dollar company.”
Below, O’Connor discusses life after ISS and the path he and Dwight Merriman took en route to creating DoubleClick. He says the two quit their jobs, spent six months brainstorming products and initially struck out with a job service site. As O’Connor tells Dixon, the two “made a fundamental mistake” while pitching potential clients.
Dusting themselves off, they struck gold while conceiving scores of ideas out of O’Connor’s basement. The idea for DoubleClick was crowned the winner and after taking center stage O’Connor says, “I went upstairs and I told my wife… the search is over, tomorrow we start the business.”
Make sure to watch both videos for additional insights along with past episodes of Founder Stories which can be found here, especially this one with former DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan.