20VC: Digg CEO, Gary Liu on The Rebirth Of Digg & The Evolution Of Content

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Gary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Clickable.

We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!

Click To Play

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Gary made his entry into the world of tech and later became CEO at Digg?

2.) What were Gary's biggest takeaways from his time at Google and being an early employee at Spotfiy? How has he adapted those learnings to his role now at Digg?

3.) What really happened at Digg? What went wrong? Why did Digg not live up to the early hype of being the darling of the internet age? How are Digg evolving to change this?

4.) In the vastly competitive space of content creation and distribution, how do Digg stand out and differentiate themselves from the plethora of options available to consumers?

5.) How do Digg try to engage and unite the community through the commenting process without alienating people through the potential for malicious posts and trolling?

6.) How does a platform like Digg plan to monetize content with the ever disappearing ad dollar? Does it concern Gary or does he see potential in other avenues?

Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Gary's Fave Book: J.D Salinger, The Catcher and The Rye

Gary's Fave Blog: Jon Russell, Asia Tech News Review

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gary on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the 20-minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, and for this episode of Founders Friday, I'm delighted to welcome a friend of mine, Gary Liu.
0:09.1	Gary is an exceptional operator, and he's recently been named the new CEO at the infamous Dig, the platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet.
0:22.5	And prior to joining Dig,
0:28.1	Gary was an early employee at Spotify, holding numerous positions, including head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. And Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the
0:35.2	director of sales strategy and operations at Patch.
0:38.9	And before AOL, Gary was a business and sales operation leader at Google and Clickable.
0:44.3	But before we delve into the conversation with Gary today, I'd like to thank our good friends
0:48.2	at Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis used in the show today.
0:52.4	As always, this is not a sponsor. They're just absolutely
0:55.0	fantastic and I'd like to thank them for all their help. And then we also have to tip our hats to
1:00.0	Nick Frost at Thinker on Twitter for the Mattermark Daily, which is the best way to find all the
1:06.2	latest startup and VC long form articles. so sign up for Mattermark Daily.
1:11.4	However, enough from me, so without further ado, it is absolutely fantastic to welcome Gary Liu, CEO at Dig.
1:22.6	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:27.4	Gary, welcome to the show.
1:28.8	A huge pleasure to have you on.
1:30.0	I've been a big fan of Dig since I think the days of Kevin and Jay.
1:33.4	So it really is fantastic to have you on.
1:35.3	Thanks so much for joining us today.
1:37.0	Thanks for having me.
1:38.3	So let's get the ball rolling.
1:40.4	So what's your background and how did you end up as the newly appointed and congratulations on that, by the way, CEO of Dig?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.