Interview with Daron Babin
interview by DUC
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
SE Guru aka Daron Babin writes: "For the record, New Frontier Media
did NOT lay off the entire internet division. I was not laid off either.
If you would like to know what really happened, I would be happy to
let you know."
I did a long interview with Daron Babin by telephone Thursday afternoon
to get the scoop on NOOF's internet plans. I heard Wednesday night,
1/15/03 from a good source that Daron Babin aka SE Guru and his entire
IGallery internet team, owned by New Frontier Media, had been laid
off.
Daron, at work for IGallery and NOOF since November 2001, set me straight
by email at noon Thursday and a few hours later we spoke by phone.
Luke: "How are you doing?"
Daron: "I'm seeing some interesting days here. It was great
to be sitting here in my office at NOOF to discover that I had been
laid off. Where the hell did that come from?"
Luke: "Someone who knows you."
Daron: "Isn't that wonderful? Apparently they don't know me
well enough. "
Luke: "What happened?"
Daron: "It's simple. Since the acquisition of IGallery [in
early 1999] NOOF has been working uphill against a number of technology
factors, rolling of the operations from Los Angeles to Boulder, and
really getting their hands around the business models and working
to find what is comfortable for them and looks to be an ongoing money-maker.
If you begin to pare down business models that are just ok, then you
don't need the type of staffing we had. Initially, out of the gate,
we needed that. We did not lay off all the staff. We still remain
in the content sales business for webmaster product. We're still operating
Ten.com. Call it a futher narrowing of the focus.
"You'll see a much more concerted cross-promotion between the broadcast
channels and Ten.com. That hasn't been our focus."
Luke: "What has been your focus?"
Daron: "Cleaning up everything from the acquisition and the
roll-up of operations. It's taken a good bit of time, eight to twelve
months, just getting a handle on the infrastructure."
Luke: "How long has NOOF owned IGallery? Three years?"
Daron: "Yeah. But you can't really place any weight on NOOF's
involvement for the first two years because contractually they had
no say-so whatsoever."
Luke: "Weren't there rumors a year ago that IGallery was going
under?"
Daron: "The rumor was that Boulder was rolling operations up.
Everyone was saying IGallery was going out of business. That was not
the case. The parent company said this is costing way too much money
and we don't see any impact to the bottom line. It makes no sense
to have staff this size. We don't have our hands around the numbers
yet. Being a public company, if you don't have confidence in your
numbers, give it up."
Daron couldn't tell me how many people were getting laid off from
IGallery and how many will remain.
Daron: "It [the layoff] occurred while I was down at Internext."
Luke: "This wasn't your decision?"
Daron: "No. The one thing this company has focused on is making
sure that the business models in place are profitable and make sense
for the shareholder. IGallery had never been able to look at retention
numbers. We were able to get there in the last four months.
"You see a wasteland of crap spewed at the Yahoo stock board. That's
basically a bunch of disgruntled ex-employees using it as a playground
to coddle each other.
"In this environment, all companies out there are hurting. They are
all scrambling to find new varieties in the business model to support
the industry. It's who's going to get there first. Who's going to
find a model that's going to support an ongoing effort that's profitable.
"You and I both know that nobody reports their numbers. Everybody
says we're doing great. Look at what's going on with Sin City. Look
at what happened with Vivid. The writing's on the wall. It did miff
me to see that hearsay made it to setgo. All we've done is narrow
the focus. It just makes sense for us to keep working the business-to-business
aspect of promotions for Ten.com. Look at what Ten.com did with On-command
[video streaming]. Our door has been beat down almost daily by other
webmasters and companies out there trying to get on board with the
on-command deal. The B-B aspect of this business is what NOOF does
well - an intermediary between large entities that are not in adult
that service the mainstream the world but touch on adult, and they
want to profit from it but they damn well don't want to get their
hands dirty. That's what NOOF does and does well."
Luke: "How long do you expect to be around at NOOF?"
Daron: "As long as it makes sense for both parties. NOOF has
made it clear that they find my skills valuable. I expect to be around.
There's way too much to be done here until I choose to exit stage
left."
Luke: "I thought you were the Search Engine Guru rather than
the management type?"
Daron: "Search engines have been my claim to fame. That hasn't
changed. I built the sexfiles.com search engine for IGallery. I built
Gary Kremen's search engine for sex.com and gave him a foundation
to build on. I'm about traffic optimization. As business models and
search engines have changed, I've had to learn and adapt. My skills
apply to optimizing any click stream you might receive. We're still
targetting end-users intent. Getting them something of relevance.
It's the same principle SE Guru used when consulting and teaching
people about optimizing a clickstream out of a search engine.
"I've had plenty of management experience. We talked years ago about
how I came out of the Christian TV scene. I moved to NBC. I was a
director in charge of production. I headed up special projects for
NBC and the State of Texas's educational videos. I'm an old hand at
the management side of things. I can slide into the corporate world
just fine or I can consult the corporate world or I can sit in a basement
with a couple of guys who are making $40,000 a month and want to learn
how to do better. It doesn't matter to me. I'm about helping people
to make money."
Luke: "I remember three years ago IGallery was one of the top
three. What went wrong?"
Daron: "That's a great question. Did anything go wrong? Look
at the business models out there today and look at who's still around
and who's not. Look at the lawsuits abounding for spamming issues.
Open the closet door, everybody's got skeletons. There were some infrastructure
problems here. I don't think IGallery was looking down the pike for
the new thing and preparing for it.
"You see companies like Nickelodeon work their cross-promo from their
broadcast platform to their web platform. Fox Sports. Cartoon network.
You've not seen it spread much beyond the sports and the children's
programming where the platforms are cross-promoting in real time.
'Go to Disney.com right now and vote for your favorite show and we'll
play that show in 30-minutes.' On the adult side, who's got the assets
that can leverage a web business with broadcast? Few. Private? Vivid
sold its channels. Playboy?"
Luke: "Playboy has been a disaster on the internet."
Daron: "We just launched two brand-new channels on the first
of the year. The VOD [video on demand] stuff you see them talking
smack about on the Yahoo board. VOD is not as big as everyone thinks
right now because the infrastructure isn't there to ramp up true VOD.
We're ready. Time Warner isn't. We're helping these larger companies
get set for it. We have the revenue to help them the moment they are
ready. We're plugged in and they're making money out of the gate.
Luke: "Did you know this big round of layoffs was coming?"
Daron: "I think it was a surprise for everybody. The more we
dug into the numbers, the more it made sense to narrow our internet
focus. This was not done quickly. Look back a year ago in Los Angeles
and fifty odd people get laid off. Did anyone know it was coming?
Everyone felt the writing was on the wall. Most of the people were
laid off have been through this before at other technology firms in
the Boulder area when Silicone Valley decided to take a nosedive."
Luke: "Are you still running webmaster affiliate programs?"
Daron: "It's still in operation. It's not our focus. But we're
still paying out webmasters who send us traffic."
Luke: "Do you still have celebrity sites?"
Daron: "No, we shut that down. NOOF is a public company. We
have to do it cleaner and better than the next guy, whether we want
to or not."
Luke: "How was the Internext show?"
Daron: "Most of the frenzy was in the back of the show floor
with the smaller companies.
"We were talking about Sexfiles.com and our new content products.
IGallery had not updated its content in a while and its customer base
was not happy. At the end of September, 2002, I was promoted to VP
of internet operations for the Internet division. I met with our lead
content guy and began implementation. We began spitting out one new
content product every 14 days. Everything has been updated and placed
on new platforms on new bandwidth speeds with new interfaces. We're
leveraging our assets. This place has more content than you can shake
a stick at. We acquire content from 40 different studios for internet
and broadcast simultaneously."
According to Daron, some ex-NOOF employees are running amok on the
boards.
WebTuna writes on Yahoo: Suite action at the CES. Thanks for the free
food and drinks but no one is buying into it nor the argument about
why the Internet is failing for Noof. You showed that as a company
you not all there and the arguments were patently absurd. It is clearly
mismanaged and just to let you know (because I know you read this)
there is no hope for you. Not all is bliss. You can tell how successful
it is by the people who stayed away.
Is Mark Kreloff and Weinie's contract up? Or is it being extended
past March this year. I think it would be a horrible mistake to renew
contracts with those two if you want to see this stock go up. If I
was an institutional shareholder I would get on the phone and let
the board know this and to make sure this doesn't happen. Call them
today. Then smoochy can pay the bills.
What are you guys so afraid of that you have to come here and bust
some people up who tell the truth. Oh, your VOD exclusive deal isn't
happening either at "whats the name of that company again". You should
hear what THOSE people are saying about you. Hilarious. Do us all
a favor and keep having unprotected sex.
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at these incredible once in a life time opportunity low, low prices.
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