22
February
2006
|
18:16 PM
America/Los_Angeles

A chat with Become.com -- the stealth search engine play

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher


About a year ago I was in Palo Alto, trying to get back home but I had promised to stop in early evening to Il Fornio and meet with Become.com--a shopping portal.


I remember that Tim Dyson the CEO of Next Fifteen was going to be there, and I wanted to touch base with him, but I wasn't that interested in meeting with one of many shopping search sites such as Become.com--I was determined to make it a short meeting.


You can tell where this story is headed: I ended up staying for dinner and I was very impressed with the team behind Become.com (and that's when I also met Jason Dowdell(!)) I ended up staying well past my bedtime but it was worthwhile.


Wednesday I got to catch up with Michael Yang, the CEO of Become.com--not that we haven't bumped into each other many times since last year. What continues to impress me about Become.com is the discipline and the focus of the management team.


This is a company that is very single-minded about the ecommerce opportunities that lay in its lap. And this is also, a very experienced management team, having built up My Simon.com, the shopping portal, which was sold to Cnet.


This time, Mr Yang and his partners, know how to avoid the mistakes of their first go around--and that's what makes this company and this team very interesting. They know what to do and they are executing near perfectly on a business plan that they laid out to me more than a year ago.


So stick around, an interview with Michael Yang, CEO of Become.com is on its way.