Life Before Yahoo!

Stanford MBA Mike Folgner co-founded a video-editing and -sharing site a year ago, and sold it to Yahoo! last month. Here's a day in the life—preacquisition

Mike Folgner
Co-Founder and CEO of Jumpcut, a Yahoo! Company
Stanford GSB
Class of 2005

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Jumpcut is an online community for video editing and sharing. I co-founded the company with Ryan Cunningham, my chief technology officer, right after I finished my master's in business administration at Stanford Graduate School of Business. I wrote the business plan for Jumpcut during my second year of business school and officially co-founded it in June, 2005.

We prototyped the product over the summer of 2005 and did more market analysis before raising money and closing our financing in November, 2005. We officially launched the Web site jumpcut.com in April. The site was well-received, and we did an early deal with Warner Bros. Independent Pictures (TWX) to promote their movie A Scanner Darkly and an even bigger deal with Fox Atomic (NWS) to license our technology to them.

Deciding to Sell

At the end of the summer, we faced some difficult decisions about what direction to take the company. We were choosing between either raising another round of financing or selling the company. In the end we chose to sell the company to Yahoo! (YHOO) in October. (See BusinessWeek.com, 10/2/06, "Yahoo's Strategy: Growth By Acquisition"). It has turned out to be a great match. Everyone has made out well and we're still driving forward to make Jumpcut the video editor for the Internet.

When we started the company I was responsible for creating and implementing the initial business plan, hiring the first key employees, and financing and operating the company. Since the acquisition, my responsibilities remain much the same. As chief executive officer, my primary responsibility is to manage our staff of 15 employees (and growing), but I also enjoy the elements of strategy (examining opportunities, generating product ideas) and business development (signing technology licensing and advertising deals) that are part of my job.

Here is a look at a typical day in my life prior to the acquisition:

6:00 a.m.—My wife wakes me up and drags me with her to the gym for our morning workout. We usually have a good breakfast and take some time to talk over tea or coffee before the day starts...

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