Monster.com founder: Execution key in digital economy

By Becky Bohrer
The Associated Press
1/18/2008, 6:32 p.m. CST

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The culture and creativity in this city, perhaps best known for its food and jazz, make it as good a place as any to capitalize on the digital economy, the founder of Monster.com said Friday. But Jeff Taylor said it all comes down to execution. 

"You can decide that you're going to be a corridor for four different types of business," Taylor told The Associated Press before giving a speech to the Louisiana Technology Council, a group whose declared goal is to turn this traditional oil-and-gas state into the "Tech Capitol of the South."

"The reality is, it's hard to move the needle very far. Be careful. Pick one area, don't try to pick them all," he said. 

Nearly 29 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, city officials, as part of the rebuilding, are looking for ways to diversify an economy that has for years relied heavily on tourism. Among the city's priorities: focusing on international trade, green building technology, the health care industry and digital media, a sector that would include Web-based businesses, programming and software firms and marrying locally produced arts with video and other technology.

One of the big obstacles in creating a hub, and not just scattered success stories, has been getting the necessary venture capital and helping move someone's "Big Idea" from coffee shop musings to the masses. Those challenges remain. But Adele Tiblier, the council's operations director, said her group is trying to change that and provide more of an incubator for ideas and source to help connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need. 

Connecting the entrepreneurs and "new level of talent" that have come to New Orleans to aid in the rebuilding with those already in New Orleans and keeping them here, engaging them, is key, said Tim Williamson, president and co-founder of The Idea Village, a nonprofit economic development group.

"Capital follows people," Williamson said. "I think Katrina has opened the door for a new level of talent to come to New Orleans" and to bring their U.S., and global, connections with them. Networks of business, political and financial leaders need to be built up and strengthened, he said. 

Recognition by state and local leaders that innovation and creativity are vital to the local economy lend greater credence to digital-based pursuits post-Katrina, Williamson said.

Taylor founded http://www.monster.com, a resume-posting, job-search site, in the early 1990s. After leaving that company, he founded in 2006 http://www.eons.com, a social networking site for baby boomers. Taylor believes MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, "rock stars" of the Internet, changed the Web from a place to do business to one in which business is done in a more viral, engaging way. 

He said the success of a digital market is less dependent on its location than it is the people involved. In that respect, he said, "New Orleans has as good a chance as anywhere else." He said he gets the sense of a "spirited" rebuild, that the people here truly want to be. And it's easier to build momentum in that type of culture, which is more open to ideas, he said. "I think an environment like this has to be open to new ideas."

Then, he said, it's a matter of how those ideas are nurtured and brought to fruition, with development and recruiting factors. 

"Becoming a center of nanotechnology without having any nanotechnology, I think, is a white elephant," he said.