Robert Scoble, Rackspace's startup liaison officer, films video interviews with founders and tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. He uses the content to make Rackspace cooler to potential customers while researching competitors. His blogging since 2000 built an audience of developers and CTOs who trust his coverage.
Tell us your name and what you're doing. Yeah, I'm Robert Scoble. I'm the startup liaison officer at Rackspace. That means I go around the world and I interview startups and do exactly what you're doing with video cameras. And do exactly what you're doing with video cameras and put that up on the Internet. Okay, and why do you do this or why do they want to do this? Oh, well, I'm running a media company inside Rackspace that's sort of like Red Bull's media company. So Red Bull has 500 people who create videos of people jumping out of, you know, spaceships and all sorts of fun stuff and that. Doing that hacks your brain so that you buy Red Bull. Right. If they didn't do that, Red Bulls just cop sugar water with caffeine in it. And you wouldn't buy it. You would buy Coca Cola. But they've applied their brand to people who are doing cool things, and by doing that, they hacked your brain to think that you're going to be cooler when you drink Red Bull. And so I'm doing the same thing. I'm applying Rackspace's brand to people who built Instagram or path or box.net or Facebook. Right. We've interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. I've interviewed Bill Gates. By applying their brands to Rackspace, the Rackspace brand becomes more relevant and more interesting. And when you think about buying hosting, you'll think about buying us instead of somebody who doesn't do this. Okay, so it's. Yeah, the company is in people's mind. That's. That's a good chunk of it. But it's also, I get to go to, you know, startups who use our competition, do research about why, you know, and that's invaluable. It's very, very rare that companies invite you in to talk about what they're doing. And so I'm the eyes and ears of Rackspace in the. In the innovation world. The world of innovation. Yeah. But you can only do this because you had your. Some jobs before. I've been blogging since 2000. Blogging was a disruptive technology. Got me jobs at NEC and Microsoft and Fast Company magazine and ultimately Rackspace. Okay. And yeah, you don't have as many clicks as some, I don't know, gamer videos has, or most of the gamer videos or. No, I'm not mainstream. I'm not about going. I'm not Oprah. Right. Oprah talks to a huge audience of normal people. I call them normal people. I'm talking to geeks. I'm talking to people who are building companies, who are developers, who are CTOs, who. People who want to change the world with technology, with innovation. That's who I'm talking to. That's not. It's a very small audience, but a very powerful audience.
