BoomTown » Planet of the Apes

SurveyMonkey's Dave Goldberg Speaks! (Plus a Tour of His New Planet of the Apes Lair in Silicon Valley)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:09:56 +0000

BoomTown was as surprised as anyone when longtime Silicon Valley Web music entrepreneur Dave Goldberg said in May that his next move was going to be investing in and running an online survey company with the unusual name of SurveyMonkey.

Most expected the former Yahoo music head to land at an entertainment or media giant, running its digital operations.

But it is at SurveyMonkey where Goldberg has swung himself and he has now made good on his promise to open a Silicon Valley office of the Portland-based start-up.

But Goldberg’s background does not suggest an interest in digital clipboards and checking boxes.

He joined Yahoo (YHOO) in 2001 and headed its global music operations after it bought a company he co-founded in 1994 called LAUNCH Media.

Previous to that, Goldberg was director of marketing strategy and new business development at Capitol Records in Los Angeles.

After leaving Yahoo more than two years ago, he worked for a while as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital and told me he was attracted to the online survey creator most of all for three key reasons:

It’s profitable. It’s an open field. And, it’s much more of a consumer product than people realize.

That’s presumably why he also put up some money to become a minority investor in SurveyMonkey.

It was part of a deal in which Spectrum Equity Investors and others, including Bain Capital Ventures, acquired a majority interest in the company.

Since it was founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley and Chris Finley, who remained minority investors and working at the company, SurveyMonkey has become the largest such survey company online, with competitors that include Zoomerang and Constant Contact.

SurveyMonkey–which has signed up two million users, with six million surveys created and 200 million responses completed–charges a variety of fees for premium versions of its service, sitting between expensive software packages on one side and free, featureless Web surveys on the other.

Here’s a video interview I did with Goldberg last week about all this and more, as well as a tour of the new SurveyMonkey digs in Menlo Park, Calif., in former CBS (CBS) Interactive space:

[ See post to watch video ]

The Sass of Kahn: Remembering Ricardo Montalban

Kara Swisher — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:22:02 +0000

BoomTown’s favorite space villain, as well as an alum of two of the “Planet of the Apes” sci-fi movies, Ricardo Montalban, died earlier this week in Los Angeles. He was 88 years old.

While he was also a movie star and helmed the always bizarre 1970s television show, “Fantasy Island,” those who love some serious scenery-chewing will never forget Montalban’s turn as the insane Khan Noonien Singh in the second “Star Trek” movie, “The Wrath of Khan.”

The fabulous movie was based on a famous episode of the “Star Trek” television series, “Space Seed,” about a race of super-men lost in space and found by the crew of the Enterprise.

While Montalban’s over-the-top performance is extreme in both cases, it is pure sci-fi genius too.

So, here is a great Internet video mashup of from “Khan,” with the terrific “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee…” line, as well as a preview of “Space Seed.”

(And, I could not resist throwing Montalban’s classic commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba and his wonderfully languid way of saying “soft Corinthian leather.”)

The Wrath of Khan:

Space Seed:

Chrysler Cordoba:

Charlton Heston: The End of His World as We Know It

Kara Swisher — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:00:01 +0000

Everyone can have their own personal opinion about Charlton Heston, the rugged movie legend who died Saturday.

But a trio of his movies–1968’s “Planet of the Apes,” 1971’s “Omega Man” and 1973’s “Soylent Green“–have been geekish (and cheesy) favorites of mine for as long as I can remember.

All three films, which have that cynical end-of-the-world tone so prevalent in movies of the time period, are all about the failings of man and the dangers of technology.

But mostly, they are cheesy in a really terrific cheesy way.

So, in memory, here’s the classic final sand-pounding scene by Heston in “Planet of the Apes,” a trailer from “Omega Man” and my favorite movie line of all time from “Soylent Green.”

Planet of the Apes:

Omega Man:

Soylent Green: