Garrett Camp
Garrett Camp
Garrett Campis a Canadian entrepreneur. He co-founded StumbleUpon, a web-discovery platform that grew to over 25 million registered users, while in graduate school at the University of Calgary in 2002 and co-founded Uber, an on-demand car service available via a mobile application in 2009. Garrett serves as Chairman for both StumbleUpon and Uber. Uber operates in 58 countries and in over 400 cities around the world, and by 2016 was valued at $62 billion...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth4 October 1978
CountryCanada
If you know what you want, you use Google. But if you don't know what you want, and you want to be surprised and find something you didn't expect, we want you come to StumbleUpon. Really, that idea of being a discovery engine versus a search engine.
The way the Facebook network is set up, it's not as suitable for content discovery. Twitter is better, but there are too many over-sharers. Also, on Twitter and Facebook, everything comes from people you know. On StumbleUpon, it comes from people that you don't necessarily know but share your interests.
The bigger a company gets, the more people are involved in decisions, the slower decisions get made. Look, the whole theory of startups is that three motivated people can go and do something that every company can't.
If the founders of a start-up are considering selling it, I'd advise them to consider the synergies. Could the buyer give you access to something you don't have now, like a certain technology? Would it make your life easier? Are you looking for a change? Things will change, so you have to be ready for that.
If I had it to do over, I might have finished school first, then devoted all my time to StumbleUpon instead of dividing my time between the two. In the end, however, it was probably good to take the time I did.
I like to say StumbleUpon provides a personal tour of the Internet. The responses are more targeted to your interests than they would be with a regular search engine. If you choose a topic on our site that you're interested in, such as art, Web sites related to art appear, as if you're leafing through an art magazine.
I have 250 contacts, employees, and investors who, anytime they come across something relevant, will share it with me. I wake up to 10-15 links that people have explicitly recommended for me. I don't have to look for news anymore; it flows to me.
Facebook is made up of people you've met, but not necessarily who are similar to you. I have 850 'friends,' and a lot are acquaintances, not friends. I don't really know them. If I've met someone one time, how should they be influencing my feed?
If you don't find a new website when you Stumble, we've failed.
I definitely see a correlation between how many things a company gets right and how fast a company grows.
Every time I make a mistake with a company, I write it out and try to figure out why it happened.
I'm interested in sites that help people find information and filter what's available. The Internet is so big that no one can stay on top of everything.
A lot of productivity is capturing ideas. I use a wiki - it's more valuable than e-mail for running a company - and I have a page for every person with whom I interact frequently.
It all starts with a great idea and teamwork.