Valley of the Jolly Green Midget

I love startups. I've loved them all my adult life. The first one I worked on was SunDance magazine, at 1913 Fillmore Street, in San Francisco in 1971. After a half dozen or so others, Rolling Stone hired me in 1975; and though it no longer technically qualified as a startup, it was still in Act One of its particular drama, as I've written and blogged about many times in many places.

I was part of Mother Jones, as it started; and New West/California during its all-too-brief reign. The most important startup of my entire career was (and remains) the Center for Investigative Reporting, which I helped build from scratch from 1977-1989. Ever since, I've remained on the board, trying to stabilize and extend this valuable institution into the future.

But it was not only media companies that attracted me. I've also devoted a substantial part of my energy to helping build non-profits devoted to global environmental and social justice issues. The prime examples are the Pesticide Action Network and the Rainforest Action Network, but there are many, many more. Some are still active; some are not.

Nevertheless, despite all of these efforts, nothing had adequately prepared me for what confronted me when I joined HotWired late in 1995. This was ground zero for Web 1.0. Wired magazine had already caught the publishing world's attention and won National Magazine Awards, but despite my background in magazines, I didn't join that side of the company.

Rather, I agreed to become the producer of The Netizen, on HotWired, the first daily political news site on the still-young web. I'd cut my web teeth by helping launch what would eventually come to be known as Salon.com in the fall of 1995, but HotWired was potentially the Rolling Stone for its generation, if only it could win a race against time, and against the expectations of greedy investors who ultimately chose to kill the golden goose rather than allow it to flourish.

There have been many other startups for me since then, but tonight my mind is on HotWired, because tomorrow, for the very first time since I was laid off by Wired in late 1997, I'm again working with my friend, Louis Rossetto, the founder of Wired and its former Publisher.

Louis is one of the best bosses I've ever had, for a myriad of reasons. That our mutual dreams did not work out is insignificant in retrospect. Tomorrow, we launch a new collaboration, one that, though modest, carries much potential.

You know: Startups. That's where the likes of me belong.

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