The Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series is supported by Diet Coke®. Now, the drink that helps you stay extraordinary brings you extraordinary people. Find Diet Coke® on Facebook for access to a whole lot of extraordinary.  The name Micah Baldwin may not immediately ring any bells, but if you’ve ever used the #followfriday hashtag in a tweet, read a digital comic book in the last two years or followed any of the startups emerging from the rising TechStars incubator program, then you’ve no doubt been influenced by the work of the serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, and current CEO and founder of Graphic.ly.  Baldwin’s most visible claim to fame was starting the Follow Friday movement on January 16, 2009, to encourage early Twitter users to recommend their fellow tweeters. The #followfriday hashtag (or #FF) quickly became a Twitter meme, and it continues to live on to this day.  But it’s behind the scenes, at some of the web’s youngest but most promising startups, where Baldwin’s sagacity is seen and felt most. As an adviser for the TechStars and 500 Startups programs, Baldwin mentors youngsters and first time entrepreneurs on how to build companies in a healthy way — and how to avoid the pitfalls of the larger-than-life personal brand and the party-too-hard startup lifestyle.  Mashable interviewed Micah Baldwin on his tenure in the technology industry and the path to starting his latest venture, the nearly ubiquitous digital comic marketplace and reader Graphic.ly. Baldwin went on the record with candid and intimate details from his early startup days, discussed the conflict between developing a personal brand and a company brand, and shared his approach to mentorship.  What’s something people don’t know about you?  Not much. I committed to being very open about myself publicly, so if it relates to me, it’s probably out in the world. I turned down an internship at IBM out of high school that was given to only one person in the area because I had committed to lifeguard at a local pool and refused to wear a tie. I often think what would have happened if I took the internship.  You started the #followfriday Twitter meme. What was the impetus for doing so, and did you think that the idea would go viral? When did you first realize that you had started a social movement?  In its most basic, I felt that Twitter lacked the ability to discover new and interesting people, and that the best way to do this (which is true in real life) is to get manual recommendations from friends.  I had no idea it would blow up. I realized that it was something special, when the next Thursday I started to see #followfriday tweets in foreign languages (since Friday had already arrived in other countries). It continues to this day as a big force on Twitter, although I am glad to see Twitter Suggests and Lists slowly take its place.  "I love big butts / I cannot lie" -- an unfiltered Micah Baldwin Instagram capture and caption.  It’s the constant battle of a startup founder in weighing the importance of their personal brand versus the company brand. I think many founders early on convince themselves that building their brand is building the company brand, but that’s just not correct. It also puts an enormous amount of pressure on the founder to not do anything to hurt their personal brand.  When I was considering joining Graphic.ly as CEO at the end of TechStars, a good friend and mentor said to me: “Micah, you will need to be more presidential.” He cautioned that I had to reduce the poop jokes on Twitter, watch what I blogged and generally understand that my brand was intertwined with the company’s.  In many ways, that desire to ensure that Graphic.ly is what people think about when they hear about me (versus say, #followfriday or poop jokes) is why I have taken a huge step backwards — I barely speak at conferences, I haven’t blogged as much about personal stuff and I only write poop jokes on Twitter on Thursdays — in building my personal brand.  What’s interesting is that I think every founder gets to this point. Pete Cashmore is a great example of someone who has quietly stepped into the background as Mashable has gotten so big.  I know it’s cliche to say people, but it’s true. I have so many people around me that are highly creative and giving and successful, all things that I strive to be. I am also inspired by words. I think how people use them to help and hurt, to connect with one another and to express themselves is magical.  You sold Current Wisdom, the search marketing agency you owned and operated for several years, in 2007. When did you know that it was the right time to sell? What did you learn from the experience?  Current Wisdom was a big learning experience for me. As I built the company, I became deeply addicted to a party lifestyle (read: drugs) in part because I let the life of building a startup get away from me. I got sober in April of 2006, and knew that I also needed to sell Current Wisdom for my own personal well being. I am still great friends with most everyone that worked there, and it was great to see them go off and help build big companies all through Colorado.  I learned so much about me through that experience. I understand my limitations better; I was deeply humbled, and I understand how important humility is to success. I had great success, and I understand better what that means and how to measure it.  “In its most basic, I felt that Twitter lacked the ability to discover new and interesting people, and that the best way to do this (which is true in real life) is to get manual recommendations from friends.”  What’s your relationship with TechStars? How much time do you spend advising and mentoring startups, and how do you go about managing your time and commitments?  I’ve been a mentor of TechStars since 2007. I like to consider my role as mentor to be secondary to my role as cheerleader of the program. I firmly believe in the power of mentorship, and David Cohen has done an amazing job of creating a communal environment for mentorship and entrepreneurs to grow in a positive, healthy way.  I am currently formally advising six to eight startups and helping out another six to eight now and again. With some we have weekly meetings, but mostly all the founders know that I will always pick up their calls or answer their emails as quickly as I can. My hobby is startups, so I spend maybe four to six hours a week working with various founders.  I am also a mentor at 500 Startups and Advise.me — both have really exciting programs and some really interesting startups. I believe that not every startup is right for a specific accelerator. Working with a few allow me to help match the right program with the right founder.  While I don’t have a formal relationship with Y Combinator, I have been a huge admirer of Paul Graham’s program, and consider many of the alumni as friends. It’s nice to be able to suggest one or two programs out of a handful for founders, and be able to give positive, effective feedback as well.  There are many ways people can give back. Some of the great ones are places like DonorsChoose and Charity:Water. For me, I have dedicated my life to helping others achieve their dream of running their own companies. It might sound silly, but each company that I help creates jobs and happiness, and makes the world just a bit better.  In some ways, I feel that rather than just giving money to companies or causes, my time may create dozens and dozens of future investors and donors, and perhaps a few mentors and advisers.  Steve Ballmer gave the very first demo of Graphic.ly during Microsoft’s keynote at CES in 2010. It was a pretty big deal. How were you able to orchestrate such a high profile launch?  We asked? (kidding) Because of TechStars, we caught the eye of Microsoft and their BizSpark program. At the time, Microsoft was focused on showcasing Windows 7 and the “connected living room.” Our application fit in that vision, and we were lucky enough to be cool enough to be selected.  Right before the demo started, the power went out, and we were super afraid they would cut out our demo due to time. We had planned so much around this launch: press, coming out of stealth, marketing, etc. that we would have been crushed if it happened. I remember sitting next to Anthony Ha randomly and trying to figure out how I could get him interested in our story if we didn’t even get demoed!  Luckily, the power came back on, and we got our two minutes of fame.  Graphic.ly runs on a number of different web, mobile and tablet platforms. How do you manage, prioritize and support all of these applications?  That has been the hardest thing to deal with in building the company. We have had the mentality of releasing MVPs by platform, and then focusing on the platforms that gain traction. We cross-educate our development team, and have “area experts” for each platform. But, to make it simpler for us, we made a deep commitment to HTML5 and its cross-platform capabilities.  What’s been the most successful platform for Graphic.ly thus far? Do you think this could change in the future?  The web and tablets, which isn’t that big of a surprise, I guess.  We have focused on supporting independent creators and publishers and giving them a platform to get their story seen. To this end, Graphicly.com, and the ability to embed our widget on any site (much like YouTube) has really become a fantastic discovery engine for unique content. To this end, Facebook is doing amazingly well. Almost all of our publishers and creators are leveraging Facebook to drive engagement, awareness and sales around their content.  With the NOOKcolor and Amazon App Store, we are seeing huge leaps in usage. We expect even more success with the Kindle Fire, since users of those devices are readers and open to discovering interesting content.  Recently, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble ran promotions with us around Image’s The Walking Dead comics in conjunction with the start of Season Two on AMC and the release of the DVD. It was awesome to see the cross-promotion between content types and how well it did overall. Truly, that’s the future of selling digital comics.  How is Graphic.ly doing as a company? Is it performing above or below your pre-launch expectations?  I think in many ways, we are doing better than expected. We have more than 300 publishers and 5,000 creators in the system, each leveraging our technology to increase their fan base in new and unique ways. In other ways, I think that we could be doing better. We spent too much time early on working on platforms we should have dumped, and too much time in “research” mode.  The positive of all that is that we know the space and can see where its going. Great things are coming!  Does Graphic.ly have a social media strategy? If so, what are some of the key tenets?  We really don’t have a specific social media strategy, other than we consider it paramount to build a community of users, both fans and creators.  To be effective in building a community, we have to use all the available tools. What we are really good at is supporting the efforts of creators and publishers to leverage social media to build their brand and fan base. We have little interest in raising the profile of Graphic.ly (which is why we have traditionally been so quiet) and an enormous desire to increase the profile of independent creators and publishers.  Social has always been a big part of our platform, and will continue to be.  As a startup mentor, what’s your best piece of advice for first-time founders and entrepreneurs?  Listen. Evaluate. Make your own decisions.  Basically, take in a lot of advice and mentorship, but at the end of the day know that its your company and your decisions to make. Don’t be a punk — make a choice and live with the consequences.  The Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series is supported by Diet Coke®. Now, the drink that helps you stay extraordinary brings you extraordinary people. Find Diet Coke® on Facebook for access to a whole lot of extraordinary.
Micah Baldwin, the entrepreneur behind #followfriday and Graphic.ly, sheds light on his startup history and high-profile mentorship gigs.