Wildeye: Make it So
By: Dan Stein
Tags: Startup Life, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Founder Interviews

Interview with Ted Cohn, CEO & CTO of Wildeye

Interview with Ted Cohn, CEO & CTO of Wildeye

Tell us about Wildeye. What do you do?

We provide a marketplace enabling people bid or pay for video calls with influencers, athletes, professionals, and personalities worldwide.

What is your startup’s origin story?

I had been looking to start a more conventional human connection “gig” marketplace prior to Covid. As an introvert, working as a software developer for 16 years remotely on and off, and traveling often, it sometimes got lonely. I yearned to increase my social capital to make new friends and connect with mentors to help level-up my career.

Meanwhile, my wife, Diane, had become an emerging YouTuber. She noticed that numerous creators had hundreds of fans asking questions that went unanswered, with many offering to pay to speak with them. Then one of her viewers asked to pay to speak with her about her topic of expertise, real estate.

The lightbulb went on and we collaborated to launch Wildeye’s BidToTalk.

Had you been involved in the industry before this startup? What is your background?

I’ve been involved with software startups and larger, well-known Silicon Valley firms my entire career. I have more than 30 years of experience developing consumer software products and services such as Nook, search, MoviePak real-time Quicktime video capture/playback, games and robotics, for companies including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Ugobe, Excite/Webcrawler, and SurveySez (prior to SurveyMonkey). I’ve been awarded 10 patents, and my biggest thrill hands down was working for Steve Jobs at NeXT. Going way back, I wrote BugByter, the best selling/used 6502 debugger for the Apple II when I was 13, and sold to Apple.

What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?

In addition to selling time for fixed fees, we also enable sellers to auction their time to the highest bidder, letting the market set the price — a potentially lucrative proposition for influencers and exciting for fans. We also offer discovery to help customers find all kinds of interesting people to connect with. 1:1 calls are private and masked so callers can feel secure knowing their contact information won’t be disclosed.

Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?

At the crack of dawn, take a walk, perform a standup with my team, write code, check in with the team, speak with vendors, investors, influencers, advisors. I’m constantly thinking about traction and building the best product we can to delight and attract customers. I fix bugs, test the site, code more, get and log feedback, make improvements. Lunch gives me a quick much needed break, where I zone out to watch 15 minutes of Netflix or check in with No Man’s Sky. Then it’s back to work. At the end of the day, I squeeze in time to read and watch entrepreneur, motivation and news videos on YouTube. Then sleep, rinse, repeat.

What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?

Build traction for our new branded marketplace.

What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?

Niche influencer groups.

What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?

GSuite, Slack, Sendmail, Mailerlite, Jira, Mightycall, Upwork, Github, Zoom, among others.

Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?

Valuetainment (YouTube), Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why and his YouTube talks, plus John Lee Dumas’ Entrepreneurs on Fire.

If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?

More founding members, more research, more growth hacking market tests.

What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?

Start with why — something you can see yourself focusing on intensely for the next 5–10 years. Choose an enormous market and opportunity, solve a big problem, and get lucky with marketing timing. Select a fabulous founding team that complement each other.