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Lunchwithsmartpeople. Today’s lunch is with Boris Wertz. From the Suite101.com website: “Dr. Boris Wertz is an Internet entrepreneur and investor and the CEO of W Media Ventures, a Vancouver-based venture capital firm that focuses on Consumer Internet investments in the Pacific Northwest in close cooperation with long-term partner Acton Capital (former Burda Digital Ventures). He is also the CEO of Nexopia.com, Canada’s largest social networking site for youth. Previously, Boris was the Chief Operating Officer of AbeBooks.com, the world’s largest marketplace for new, used and rare and out-of print books which got sold to Amazon in 2008.”

Honjin Japanese (Yaletown) 138 Davie St, Vancouver, BC

JL: So, clearly you have a passion for entrepreneurship. Can you recall when that started and why?

BW: It started very early in my life. As a kid, I was starting to sell things, and make a businesses out of little opportunities, etc. I always had the dream to start my own business, but was never quite sure when it would happen. For me, it happened right after I finished my PhD. It was the big internet boom of ‘99, and we started our own internet company. So it was never really planned for a specific time, but it was always planned as something that would happen in my life.

JL: And you did your doctorate in logistics?

BW: Yeah, something that I never did any more. AbeBooks and JustBooks were  logistics free businesses. Logistics all happened between the book sellers and book buyers. We never touched a book, never saw a book. But you know, as is mostly in the early stages of your career, you’re trying out a few things. I looked into finance, logistics, and production, and ended up more in the business development, marketing side, and being an entrepreneur.

JL: So yesterday, I bought some of your wife’s dog treats. <Aside: Luisa has a company called WildBites. They make organic dog treats. Great for our dog because she is allergic to beef. The treats we got were ostrich/buffalo pepperoni!> The store manager in Calgary said that they were the best selling dog treats they had! What’s it like having a family of entrepreneurs? Do you find that is somewhat of a different dynamic? Do you enjoy that?

BW: I think it’s great because we talk quite a bit about business. And she knows from her own life, what it is to be an entrepreneur, and the risks that you’re taking. I can also give her some advice from what I did. It’s great to have that connection, in terms of really understanding each other.

At the same time, we couldn’t work together, because we’re very different people! Its good that we have our own thing, but still a very strong connection around entrepreneurship and running our own businesses.

JL: At such an early age, you’ve already had a lot of accomplishments. AbeBooks is the latest feather in your cap. <AbeBooks books sold to Amazon. See article> What’s next in your brilliant future? Maybe talk about some of your portfolio companies and where they’re going.

BW: I think overall what I really want to do is help consumer internet companies in BC and Alberta develop faster and better, and hopefully help build a few big companies in this region. So, we’re focusing on different areas: e-commerce, media, and platform. Partly early stage, partly later stage. So that’s where the vision is. At some stage, I could imagine going back and starting my own company again. I’m not done with that, but right now, my focus is on being an investor and helping our portfolio companies. Sometimes really operationally, like in Nexopia, where I’m running the ship for the moment. But it could well be, that down the road in 5-10 years, I’m starting my own company.

JL: I was talking earlier with Rob Lewis from Techvibes about Suite 101. It seems like an interesting model. Can you talk about it?

BW: Suite 101 is aggregating thousands of writers on a site that publishes articles. So we have close to 200,000 articles on the site. It attracts over 10,000,000 uniques a month. So it’s a really large scale site. So why does that model work? It works in a world where suddenly you have no limits in media distribution any more. And we’re really talking long tail. Articles about really specific topics, that are being addressed by the writers, and they probably all have only an audience of 100 people worldwide. But aggregated, that makes big business. And that’s the interesting story about Suite. The company is on track to do very significant revenues in the upcoming years.

JL: Do you actually sell the articles, or is it ad based?

BW: No, it’s ad based. Google adsense is basically the monetization method. The primary monetization method.

JL: So, a person will find the article, and they will see contextual ads placed beside.

BW: Yeah. The typical situation for Suite 101 is that somebody searches for something: an answer to a certain question, and finds our article in Google. They come to our site, read the article, and then click on an ad.

It’s really an ideal environment for monetization as well, because these people are looking for an answer to their question.

JL: So that’s sort of like about.com

BW: But About, in the end what they have is a web 1.0 model. In terms of one writer (what they call a guide) for one topic. So if you’re the writer on Vancouver Travel, there’s nobody else that can post anything there. What we’re trying to create with Suite is the same model, but more open. So even if your topic is Vancouver travel, there are probably a lot of smart people out there that also can contribute to the topic of Vancouver travel, even though they might not be professional writers.

So we have a little more of an open model, where we say that tons of people can contribute to a certain topic, and they’re all experts. Then there are certain community features that decide what content is really valuable, and what is not.

JL: And the layout (I’m hoping) is much more clean than About? With About, it seems like they cut the article in half with ads. I get confused every time I go there…

BW: I know. Yeah - on the monetization side, I think they are really aggressive about it, and we are trying to be less aggressive there.

JL: And my last question is about the sale of AbeBooks. Can you talk ballpark dollar figures?

BW: Unfortunately not, because it’s confidential. But I think it was a very good exit for everybody - for the shareholders and for the employees who were all shareholders as well. Especially in this rather difficult financial market, I think it was a great exit, and definitely one of the bigger consumer internet exits in BC ever.

JL: And did you guys actively pursue that, or was it Amazon that decided to buy?

BW: Yeah, we actively pursued that. We had a process with an investment bank. It was a several month long process between hiring a bank and closing the deal.

Honjin Japanese (Yaletown) Vancouver

2 Sashimi Lunch Combos    25.90
GST                                        1.30
Tip                                          4.00
Plane fare amortization :)    200.00
Total:                                  $231.20    Worth every penny!

Restaurant was good. A bit of an eavesdroppers paradise - we were cosily seated in between 2 other tables. Surf clam a little chewy, but the salmon and tuna were perfect!