Interview with John Ramey, founder and CEO of isocket
John joined FounderBuzz this week to talk about his startup isocket and how they are changing the way media sites sell ads and also discussed the recent addition of Hiten Shah (whom we interviewed last month) to his Board of Directors.
isocket looks like an extremely interesting company and is off to a good start. They are currently helping mega site TechCrunch manage their online advertising and the addition of Hiten Shah to their Board of Directors brings an experienced CEO and entrepreneur to their team.
John discussed their process for evaluating the decision of whom to add to their Board and what they expect from this addition. Outside board members are becoming a more common occurance for startups as investors look to add members to the team with hands on operational experience, and in this case an entrepreneur who is in the active process of growing his own company. All in all, John provides some good food for thought and I’d love to hear what you think of the interview.
Transcript by Speechpad
Scott: Hi, this is Scott with FounderBuzz, and today we're here with John Ramey. John is actually the founder and CEO of isocket, and they're helping online sites make it easier to manage their sponsorships and online advertising in companies like TechCrunch.
I came across isocket when I saw that they had added Hiten Shah to their Board. Hiten was one of our previous interviewees. We talked with John about the process of selecting an outside board member, somebody that is not on the investment team, and he shared some of his insights of what they hope to get out of that relationship. So, hope you enjoy this interview and would love to hear your feedback.
Scott: Hi, this is Scott Olson with Founder Buzz, and I'm here today with John Ramey. Thanks for joining us.
John: Hi, good to be here.
Scott: So, to start out, why don't you just tell us who you are and what do you do?
John: My name's John Ramey. I'm the founder and CEO of a startup called isocket. isocket makes it super simple to buy and sell advertising. So, for example, publishers like TechCrunch use our software to package up and sell their own advertising directly to advertisers. We handle all the crappy parts like payment processing, self-serve orders, ad serving, and metrics.
The best way to see it is if you go to TechCrunch, you click advertise, you'll end up on isocket. You can browse the different inventory they have available, pick, upload your creative, and you're done. It's pretty simple.
Scott: Yeah, that's great. I certainly need it and hopefully FounderBuzz will need it some day.
So, I actually came across you guys from your news that you added Hiten Shah Shaw to your Board of Directors. So I'd like to hear a little bit about that. What was the thought process of adding somebody outside to your Board?
John: Well, when a startup raises outside money, it's typically a standard board composition that you have an outside board member. So at an early-stage company, you'll typically see a three or five person board, and oftentimes one of those people is an outside board member. So, when we raised our seed round of funding, we created a board of directors. The seats were divvied up and one of the seats was for an outside independent.
We took a long time to fill it. I thought it was very important to fill it with the right people, just like it's important to hire the right people, etc., especially at the board level. So, for over a year, I had just kind of kept it in the back of my mind that I needed to find the right person. I would run different contacts kind of through a mental filter. If I met somebody, I would run them through a filter. Just over time, it became pretty clear to me that Hiten was the one.
I thought it would be a battle, so I was kind of prepared to make an argument and convince him and be persistent, particularly because he gets swamped with so many of these requests. I asked. He asked me two questions in return. I answered and he goes, "Okay, I'm in." I was, "Wow, do you want to think about it?" I was expecting a battle, but he was in and we're very honored to have him.
Scott: For an outside board member, what do you really feel like are the best things that they can focus on to help your company?
John: Well, it depends on who they are. If they're an investor board member, then I think their contribution is different than like an outside expert or a Hiten type board member.
Scott: Yeah, somebody outside, like Hiten.
John: Somebody outside like Hiten, it's really good to have somebody who is not as close to it as you are, who is able to very quickly challenge you on things. Because as smart as people are, when you're this far away from it, sometimes you need to be kicked and pulled away from it a little bit to make better decisions. So, having somebody who can very quickly grasp what's happening, without needing daily updates or 40-page PowerPoints to get caught up, they understand what's happening, they understand what's important, what's not important. They can very quickly get to the heart of the thing with you and say, "Well, wait a second. Why are you doing this? Or have you thought about this? Or, yes, I do think that's the right thing to do."
So, having that kind of fresh perspective, that doesn't require a lot of maintenance because they don't have to be in the weeds every day to understand what's going on, is the key.
Scott: Great. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today, and I certainly wish you the best of luck with your company. It sounds like Hiten was a great addition. Thanks for joining us today, and I appreciate you taking the time with FounderBuzz.
John: Thank you very much. It was fun.
FounderBuzz is the work of Scott Olson, President of MindLink Marketing. MindLink Marketing specializes in working with startups to provide strategic and web marketing services. Stop by the MindLink site for some great tips on marketing strategy, great marketing content, leads management and more – 
