Bill Gross has more than 50 disruptive
Internet companies under his belt. Now he's looking for moneymaking
opportunities in the physical world.
(Business
2.0 Magazine) -- Some people can't stop thinking about food. Bill Gross
can't stop thinking about new businesses. One of the world's great
serial entrepreneurs, he's launched more than 50 startups through
Idealab, his incubator in Pasadena, Calif. His track record includes
both winners (CitySearch, Cooking.com, NetZero/United Online) and
losers (eToys, Eve.com, Free-PC). But he's best known for inventing the
pay-per-click advertising model behind Overture Services (formerly
GoTo.com), the pioneering search engine he sold to Yahoo! in 2003 for
$1.6 billion.
Now, after more than a decade of launching
dotcoms, Gross has rediscovered the pleasures - and profitability - of
the physical world. Idealab's current lineup is crowded with companies
that make actual products: robots, 3-D printers, electric cars, rooftop
solar collectors. As Gross puts it, he's much more interested today in
"atoms businesses" than "bits businesses." He recently sat down with
Business 2.0 Editor-at-large Erick Schonfeld to talk about why.
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