BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
27 May 2007

NOT!

But, today marks the 2 year anniversary of the sale of my old company, a men’s online magazine. 

Now, it’s not like I’ve had a reason to look at the legal documents pertaining to the sale since the date of the sale, of course, but when we sold, we had to sign non-competitive agreements for two years after the sale. 

Time flies.  It’s been an uneventful two years…

NOT!  Last one, I promise…

Mind you, when I “resigned” and left the company in December, 2005, I signed a new agreement stating that I could not compete with my old employer until December 31, 2006… so I don’t even know which date was more pertinent: May 27 2006 or December 31 2006 (note to HR and legal departments everywhere: make sure you don’t have conflicting dates in your agreements, or if you do, it explicitly states “this agreement shall supercede all previous agreements, otherwise, it’s confusing, judges don’t like that, I would presume, and would chuck out the non-compete altogether, again, I would think).

I guess the December date was more important, since that contract was more recent, but IF I wanted to launch a competitive service, I would have waited until today, well, tomorrow… just to be safe.

But, I’m not.  Well, probably not. 

First off, I’m quite happy focusing on producing video content.

But since my departure, there’s been a few folks and companies approach me.  I did build up quite the expertise in men’s publishing, be it content strategy, closing $8M of ads on hundreds of campaigns and advertisers, ultimately returning investors 27 times. 

I was so hellbent on not getting anywhere near my non-compete, that I almost forgot that I had built up all of this expertise, contacts and know-how in the men’s space.

Was that wise?  After all, men are not watching TV, they’re increasingly online.  The stakes are bigger than ever.

- You saw this past week Anheuser-Busch close down Bud.tv despite plunking down $40M in the project.  How could that have failed?

- Conde Nast reportedly spent $120M to launch Portfolio.  Madness, sheer madness!

Now that the shackles have been removed, I wonder, is it wise to have totally turned my back on the men’s market?  It’s not like I had not been approached.

One party has even asked me if I wanted to sell Mojo Supreme to them, manage it separately and then build up their men’s lifestyle content operations. 

It’s intriguing, don’t get me wrong, but since:

a) we’ve began to ramp up WatchMojo.com’s video syndication business,

b) increased search volume to MetaMojo.com and base traffic to WatchMojo.com,

c) secured more and more advertisers, and

d) we’re on the verge of relaunching the site on a comprehensive new CMS and redesign things…

I won’t lie, I’m quite happy and comfortable in my own skin and content with the overall direction of the company. 

I don’t know.  A lot can happen in a short amount of time.  We have, after all, in less than 18 months made WatchMojo.com the biggest producer of web video on the Web.  Imagine what can be done in the next 18 months?

Time will tell…  

But if I ever wanted to launch an online men’s lifestyle magazine, boy oh boy would I have an incentive to make my former partners pay…