Interview: Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads

Henry Copeland
CEO of Blogads

Henry Copeland is the founder of Blogads.com (our neighbors- they're just upstairs). Founded in 2002, Blogads specializes in blog advertising and represents 1300 leading bloggers. (A more in-depth bio here.)

CB: What fascinates you about the web?
HC: The web is philosophy in action. Ideas become words. Words become drawings. Drawings becomes user interfaces and databases. And the web service that emerges -- whether its Amazon or Google or Blogads or Twitter -- changes people's lives. And then the people turn around and change the web service. And so on. The technology of writing changed the way people's brains are wired and the way society is organized. The printing press brought democracy and book clubs. I have no doubt that the web will have an equally profound impact on the way we live and think.

CB: What would you change about it?
HC: I like it just the way it is. Though, if you're waving a magic wand, I'd like a two month head start please.

CB: What technology has had the greatest impact on how you do your job?
HC: Tough question. I'll cheat and give two answers. Recently, I'm loving our task tracking tool. It's given us a lot more internal transparency and rationality. We've got a long way to go though. The second technology is very simple. My personal goal in '08 was to become better manager. A friend at Redhat told me her company has staff self-evaluate every week in an e-mail to their managers. My schedule is often too erratic for consistent meetings with staff, so these weekly e-mail exchanges have had a big impact on the way I understand our business and the degree to which I can help keep people coordinated and headed in the right direction. Here too, I've got a long way to go. But I'm thrilled to get moving in the right direction before the clock ran out on '08.

CB: Your career has taken some interesting turns, from Wall Street to freelance journalism. How did you conceive of Blogads and where do you see it headed?
HC: Pressflex LLC started in 1998 with the vision of being an ASP providing websites for newspapers and magazines. We're still in that business in Europe, in fact. But in '01, I realized the business had very limited upside. Newspapers are historically very slow to buy anything. There are lots of decision makers, and they often, then at least, thought they could build sites better themselves. Worst of all, it became clear that newspapers were buggies and we were making buggy whips. Six years later, that prediction is being born out. As I was reaching this grim conclusion about that original business, I was also becoming fascinated with blogging. I was reading blogs and, in September '01, started my own blog. I became aware that blogs had WAY more traction with their readers. Bloggers' voices were so much more immediate and real than journalists'. And bloggers link to each other, which at that time was something newspapers would NEVER do. Finally, in early '02, it dawned on me that we should build a service to connect advertisers to the incredible and uniquely powerful readership that the blogger's were cultivating. I had that thought as I sat down in my car to drive on vacation. "Blogads!" A week later I got back and was thrilled to see the domain hadn't been registered. Blogads.com sounds obvious now that many blogs are bigger and more influential than traditional newspapers and magazines. But at the time, bloggers were viewed as teenagers and eccentrics. Who would want to advertise on a blog?

CB: What have been some of the greatest challenges to Blogads' success?
HC: Well, in 2002, I pushed the programmers to rush a demo site into production and we paid for that for two years. And then we under-invested when we made the decision to rewrite the system in '05, and we've paid for that decision for another 3 years. Finally, in '08, we've gotten back to adding new features to the system. It's been a painful and strategically costly wait. But I'd like to stress that I made both decisions, so it's my fault and not the programmers'. I guess I'm learning that it's worth pushing to do things quickly and efficiently, but in the long run you can lose far more time when you try to sprint out of the gates and spend half the marathon walking off cramps.

CB: Half of your company is in Budapest. How did that happen? What strategies have you found effective in managing teams over geographical and cultural distances?
HC: I lived in Hungary from 1991 to 1998. I was working as a journalist there when I became fascinated by the idea of putting newspapers online. Hungary has an incredible pool of analytical and programming talent, so it was natural to hire people there. Being in two locations can make you work extra hard on documenting specifications, which is very positive. And while the six-hour time lag can sometimes be a burden, it often works to our advantage since we can send a piece of work out at 5pm and have it back on the client's desk at 8am the next morning.

CB: I understand that your US staff is divided into two teams - Pop Culture and Politics. I would imagine that the Pop Culture team is consistently busy, but have things slowed down post-election for the political group?
HC: Politics is going gangbusters, to our happy surprise. Corporations have awoken to the fact that many members of Congress owe their seats to bloggers, and that the next President's advisors spend a lot more time reading blogs than the New York Times.

CB: If you had one sentence to pitch your latest and greatest idea, what would it be?
HC: Let's empower blog readers to click within a blog post to take a political or commercial action directly related to that post.

CB: What is your super-power?
HC: Delusion. I see things that aren't there. Sometimes, luckily, if I imagine hard enough and talk long enough, I can make other people see what I'm seeing. The fantasy becomes a reality. And my parole from the loony bin is extended one more year.

CB: If the world's technological and economic systems were to collapse and revert society to locally-focused, agrarian communities, what role would you assume?
HC: I'd be a rabble rouser.