We’re pleased to welcome Tony Conrad, CEO of Sphere to AltSearchEngines’ CEO Chats.

Tony’s roots are in consumer marketing, having worked with early-stage growth and public branded companies.

Formerly, he was a Director of Mergers and Acquisitions for Groupe Danone, a leading $30+ billion global consumer packaged goods firm, where he focused on brand extension opportunities through mergers and acquisitions in Southeast Asia. He has also held several senior marketing management positions with Groupe-Danone, with his last position as VP of New Product Development for Gervais-Danone France. In addition to Sphere, Conrad is a Venture Partner with True Ventures (a $165 million early stage IT fund) and serves on the Board of Automattic (WordPress), VoxPop and WeGame.

ASE: When was Sphere founded and what was your inspiration?

Tony Conrad: Prior to starting Sphere, I was an investor and board member at Oddpost, a web-mail application that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. At Oddpost, we saw first-hand the reach and influence bloggers had on driving awareness and trial of Oddpost. It was really impressive. As a result, we began white-boarding a lot of ideas about RSS, blog search and discovery. As luck would have it, Yahoo! pre-empted our ability to build out any of those ideas.

So in the Spring of 2005, Steve Nieker, Martin Remy, Toni Schneider (former CEO Oddpost) and I started kicking the tires again and felt there was still a good opportunity to solve a hard problem in the blog search and discovery space: help readers more easily discover great blog content. So we formed Sphere to solve that simple, yet hard problem.

Since then, our focus has evolved and the bulk of our focus is on making connections between different content forms. Most people know us through our Contextual Widget but that’s only a small piece of what we do. We also connect our partner’s content to contextually relevant content from their archives as well as from Blog Posts, Media Articles, Video, Photos and Ads from across the Web.

ASE: Is Sphere a search engine?

Tony Conrad: Yes, but not in a traditional sense, I think we’re more of a Discovery Engine. While we have our destination site, the bulk of our business happens on partners’ site. Instead of relying on keywords, we analyze the content of a page and help the reader discover more content that is contextually relevant to the article they’re reading. To do this, we create a Content Genome™. Unlike other solutions, our Content Genome™ does not require a taxonomy or training — Sphere can index any text artifacts, or media with associated text, and generate related content out of the box.

Integration time on the publishers’ side is minimal, no additional meta-data is required. The Content Genome™ was developed specifically to deliver high-precision, low-cost (automated) related content delivery in dynamic online publishing and news environments.

Our model has evolved and the bulk of our focus is on making connections between different content forms. Most people know us through our Contextual Widget but that’s only a small piece of what we do. We also connect our partners’ content to contextually relevant content from their archives as well as from blog posts, media articles, video, photos and ads from across the Web.

We excel at finding content that is related to content you’re reading. We offer keyword search for media and blog content but our true focus is on connecting content

ASE: I know you’re a strong believer of ‘Conversational Media.’ Please define ‘Conversational Media.’

Tony Conrad: John Battelle coined the term and it resonated with me. For me, it’s based on a set of tools that enable people to participate in a conversation. By participating in the conversation, the group is helping to create the content. Without their input, the content is considerably less interesting.

We feel Sphere plays a key role in connecting mainstream media with the voice of bloggers and their community of participants. It’s probably the funniest part of our job. We believe everyone has a voice, and our mission is to create exposure for each of them. By creating connections between contextually relevant mainstream media and blog content, we’re exposing a broader set of Internet readers to blog content, creating exposure for the voice of the people.

ASE: How do you monetize the Sphere blog widget?

Tony Conrad: We have lots of different forms of monetization. In addition to advertising, partners share revenue on a CPC basis.

ASE: Are there other widgets that offer the same features? How do you rank against them?

Tony Conrad: I don’t see a lot of Contextual Related Content Widgets – we do see different approaches to generating content links, mostly behavioral. We believe, and data supports our conclusion, that contextual links perform significantly higher than behavioral links.

ASE: I read that you have only ten team members and no marketing. How do you get the word out about Sphere?

Tony Conrad: In the beginning, we focused on solving a hard problem and created a good product. We kept it simple. We focused on user experience. Once we went live, we allowed ourselves ample time to make adjustments before elevating our exposure. End of 2006, we took it to another level by expanding our focus with the launch of our very popular Sphere Contextual Widget.

With this widget, we figured out the intersection of mainstream and conversational media, connecting readers to the larger conversation happening around content. Our launch strategy was to create a killer product that created value for both the reader and the publisher. We focused on launching with A-list partners including TIME, Dow Jones Market Watch, ZDNet and several of the top Tech blogs including TechCrunch, O’Reilly Radar, Battelle Searchblog, Venture Beat and GigaOM. By doing so, we created instant awareness and credibility. We also made sure we created value for each of those partners and, most importantly, their readers. Simple concepts– but all very hard to do.

ASE: What’s your vision for Sphere – where will it be five years out?

Tony Conrad: Five years is too long a time period for guys like us. We just want to continue to work with great brands to create a deeper, more robust reader experience by connecting their readers to contextually relevant articles from their archives and content across the web. Some people like to call it the Symantec Web but I feel like that’s a buzzword of the moment.

ASE: On the personal side- where are you from/what did you study?

Tony Conrad: A small farming community in Indiana. Telecommunications, Journalism and Economics.

ASE: Why did you decide to become a venture capitalist?

Tony Conrad: I’ve always been entrepreneurial, even when I worked in a corporate environment. I like working with/supporting people. I like the consumer application of technology, figuring out how to solve problems.

ASE: Which languages do you speak?

Tony Conrad: English. French.

ASE: I heard you were a fan of sumo wrestling. How did you get into it and why?

Tony Conrad: Don’t believe everything you read J

ASE: Ha! I’ll remember that… Thanks for your time, Tony. Best of luck with Sphere.

Natalya Murakhver is a freelance writer/PR consultant based in New York City.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under CEO Views, Guest Authors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.