Throughout the year, Lalawag will be interviewing some of the most innovative and exciting startups from the LA area in our ongoing feature series, “LA Startup Spotlight.”
This week we sat down with Mike Mothner, the founder and CEO of top-ranked search engine marketing firm, Wpromote. Mike’s an entrepreneur, through and through, forming the company when he was just 20 years old.
Pitch us your company’s flagship service in 3 sentences or less.
Wpromote’s flagship service is our Integrated Online Marketing Solution, which seamlessly combines PPC Management, Organic SEO, Conversion Optimization and Social Media Advertising. We work across all verticals and provide our online marketing solutions to clients of all sizes, from small local businesses to Fortune 500 firms.
What made you decide to focus your company on Search Engine Marketing? Some people have dismissed SEO companies as “snake-oil salesmen” or “quack science.” Is hiring an SEO company necessary to the growth of a website?
There is a ton of misinformation about SEO and unfortunately, a good amount of shady companies in the Internet marketing field, especially in the SEO arena.
However, there is no debate that having excellent search engine marketing is absolutely integral and extraordinarily valuable when executed well. There is an art and a science to good SEO, and excellent companies will provide concrete deliverables and measurable results. Providing complete transparency and full accountability is a core reason that we have been successful.
If I were to sum up “good SEO” in one sentence, it would be to create websites that are regularly updated with relevant, authoritative, unique content, provide great user experiences, and interact frequently with their industry, clients and social media outlets.
How did your company get its initial funding? Do you have any tips for new startups on securing funding?
I founded the company at age 20 from the dorm room and have been lucky enough to be able to grow the company without ever seeking any outside funding. Knowing that, it is probably no surprise that I highly encourage new startups to hunker down, bootstrap with savings, credit cards and loans as far as humanly possible and have a business model with a path to profitability from day one.
When you’ve done all you can without hindering growth or your ability to take things to the next level, then by all means go out and raise money as needed. However, by taking it as far you can on your own first, you will dilute your ownership and control of the company far less than if you go out and seek funding day one (not to mention that funding will be far easier to come by!)
Describe your company’s culture.
I would describe Wpromote’s culture as “work hard, play hard.” We are a young, dynamic, casual, passionate team that loves what we do and the excitement of the industry in which we live. I think you can feel this energy when you talk to us and when you walk through the office, and I actually think it spills over to our clients and is a not-insignificant part of what makes us stand out and excel in a crowded space.
Stop me if you’ve heard this joke before: “So this SEO expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…” Do techniques like this actually work nowadays still? How has the SEO industry changed since you started your business?
STOP! But in all seriousness, it is a good question. The short answer is that just stuffing keywords into a web page without really providing a good experience for the user is less and less and less effective.
However, if you take a wider view, adding good, relevant, topical content to your site (or blog) on a regular basis is absolutely rewarded by the search engines. So if you take those keywords and meld them into a great article or post on bars, drinks and mixology for example, by all means that is very valuable.
If I were to sum up how the SEO industry (and techniques) have changed over the last decade, it is that good SEO has slowly but surely morphed from “tricking the search engines” to just plain building better content, better experiences and better websites. There will always be shortcuts that give quick gains, but in my opinion, continuously looking for those shortcut gains is not a viable long-term strategy. Build great content and great experiences for users, make sure that the search engines can read it, index it and reward it, and you’ll be in good shape.
The bottom line? It takes work!
Tell us a little bit about your background. What made you want to start your own company?
I suppose I have always had the entrepreneurial bug. When I was 12 and my sister was 8, we would play “Veterinarian” and she would heal the stuffed animals while I crunched the numbers and optimized profitability on excel. I started a car wash business at 13, wrote a piece of software called CalendarMan at 15, got into web design at 17 and domain names shortly thereafter (which was where the name “Wpromote.com” came from — I had bought it because I liked the name!). So where this drive came from is still a mystery to me (both my parents were teachers) but it bit hard, and it bit early!
What’s one of your most successful decisions? Can you share something that’s worked really well for you that you think other entrepreneurs could learn from?
There isn’t a single decision that really stands out to me, but I think that the overall theme of being a successful entrepreneur boils down to something like “f*** it, just do it”. Stop the analysis, the pro/con debate, the risk/reward. Just shut up, dive into the deep end and start swimming.
The fact is that being an entrepreneur is absolutely not the easiest way to make a bunch of money. If it’s just about that, go get a job at an investment bank or become a lawyer in a lucrative field. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely motivated in part by money; but to me, true entrepreneurs thrive on the thrill of the risk, the adrenaline of pushing your chips in and betting on yourself in a big way, and the dream of seeing your vision become a reality.
Where have you struggled? What’s a mistake you’ve made that you think other entrepreneurs could learn from?
I make mistakes every single day, and I struggle every single day with being a better leader and a better communicator. I’m in no way a glass half empty guy, but the more successful this year is, the higher the bar is next year. I will never be satisfied, but that’s the fun of it!
Specifically for me, over the last year and a half, I had to start dispersing to others the many hats that I wore over the years. It was challenging, but looking back, I can’t believe how liberating it was. Hell, I had built Wpromote to a $7 million company and still was doing the books with no idea what a balance sheet was supposed to look like! That’s just plain absurd in hindsight…
So to sum it up into one message: Build a fantastic core team around your own leadership (which I did) and then enable them to run on their own (which I did, but should have done far sooner).
Who are your three most influential entrepreneurs?
There are a lot of entrepreneurs that I highly look up to and admire, though I don’t know that they had a direct influence on me, which is interesting. I’m sure these are quite unoriginal, but Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Tony Hseih of Zappos are the three that come quickly to mind.
What are your thoughts on the LA entrepreneurial scene? Do any particular startups have your attention?
I absolutely love the LA entrepreneurs that I have been fortunate enough to get to know personally. However, I would sum up the LA entrepreneurial scene as “not nearly big enough!” I would love to see the LA scene expand into much more of a hotspot for technology companies, not just media and entertainment. To that end, I’m trying to do my part!
Finally, what are your next goals? (Either for the company or yourself as an entrepreneur)
It’s funny to me that of all these questions, I don’t really have a great answer for this one. I want 2011 to be a breakout year for all four of my companies; hit the second hockey-stick like growth for Wpromote, see our newly spunoff companies Plundr and CouponPal hit their stride and see significant traction and growth, and have ScanDigital continue on it’s path to be the market leader. On a personal level, I want to sleep soundly, wake up excited and laugh often.
