Interview with an Entrepreneur: Part 1 with Clarence Wooten of CollectiveX
This week, we are interviewing Clarence Wooten from CollectiveX. Clarence is a serial entrepreneur with many successes under his belt. His latest venture, CollectiveX, is timed perfectly for the social networking wave hitting the Internet. In Part 1 of a 2 part interview, we discuss their new product launch, Groupsites.com and dealing with competition.
Please provide us with a bit of your personal background in business and entrepreneurship.
I was coined a “serial entrepreneur” by Entrepreneur Magazine in its February 2000 issue, since then I have launched and operated numerous technology-based companies since founding my first company, Envision Designs, while an undergraduate at John’s Hopkins University.
In 1993, I co-founded Metamorphosis Studios, an interactive multimedia development firm, where he served as CEO and Creative Director until early 1998 when the company was acquired by MediSolv Inc. Immediately following Metamorphosis Studios, at the height of the dot-com boom, I co-founded and served as CEO of ImageCafe.com. Touted as the Internet’s first online superstore of customizable websites-to-go, ImageCafe was acquired for $23 million by Network Solutions/Verisign in November 1999 just seven months after it launched. Most recently prior to CollectiveX, I co-founded and served as General Partner at Venturepreneur Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm.
Articles about me have appeared in Forbes ASAP, Entrepreneur, CNNfn, The Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company magazine. Additionally, a few of my entrepreneurial experiences are also the subject of a Babson College case study.
Lastly, I am an avid supporter of the community and serves on many non-profit boards. In his personal time, I enjoys playing with my daughters; spending time with family and close friends; and attending Maryland Terps basketball games.
Your current venture is CollectiveX – what’s your elevator pitch for it?
CollectiveX is a platform for creating Groupsites. Groupsites are special websites for groups that enable groups to share, communicate and network. They combine the best features of discussion forums, email lists, calendars and social networks. Groupsites are FREE to setup and can be easily configured to public, semi-public or private.
Group-managers can deem their Groupsite as primarily social or professional, while members of their group can optionally set-up dual social and professional profile personas for display.
Groupsites are primarily used by membership groups and clubs, as social networks, and within companies as intranets or for centralizing communication within departments and workgroups.
There’s a ton of competition in the social networking space, especially when it comes to groups. What makes CollectiveX unique?
Two of our users describe us best.
“CollectiveX Groupsites fall somewhere between Yahoo Groups and a white-label Facebook” - Farhan Rehman
“Groupsites are like Microsoft Sharepoint, but are much cooler and far more user-friendly” - Jeff Mason, VP Marketing, Social Solutions
How many social networking platforms are that flexible?
Enabling equal benefit for small groups and very large groups, social groups and professional groups, within the enterprise and for personal informal groups.
Answer = None!
Next Time: Living the Web 2.0 life, HR in this new web world and raising money
