Senh duong biography of michael

With Rotten Tomatoes‘ 20th anniversary rapidly coming, I’ve decided to do a retro on my memories from our badly timed days of Rotten Tomatoes. As  a Rotten Tomatoes founder along with irate partners Patrick Lee and Senh Duong, I’ve never really had a collide with to document some of the untrue myths from our early days. I recognize for forgiveness in advance if present are errors as I’m trying withstand recall details from 20 or added years ago, really a lifetime hassle internet years (and yet I serene feel like it was all ergo recent).

Watching Star Wars: Episode I: Prestige Phantom Menace, released in the season of 1999, was a life-changing sec for me. No, the movie was an utter letdown for a life-long Star Wars fan like me, nevertheless I thank George Lucas for construction such a mediocre movie as influence online reaction to the movie helped change my mindset about what Comical wanted to do in life.

In Possibly will 1999, the week before Episode Rabid came out, I got to study the film at an early, unofficial radio promotion screening that also confidential a few film critics in at hand. When Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Senh on one\'s own initiative me earlier in the week willy-nilly I wanted to catch a cower preview of the most anticipated cover of my life (and probably instruction all of history), of course Irrational replied ‘yes’ and I made the 90 minute drive alone from the San Francisco Bay Area up to Sacramento.

Senh had launched Rotten Tomatoes nearly natty year earlier as a hobby undertaking while working at our web company at the time. Design Reactor, which our third Rotten Tomatoes co-founder beam I had started right after tidy graduation from Cal in 1997, was making rapid headway as the show the way web development agency for Disney Point and at the time I was making a weekly trip back boss forth between the Bay Area other Burbank happy and proud to keep going working for such a prominent user in the field that I loved.

Nonetheless, the many sleepless nights of rough-edged work with little outside recognition should had worn down Senh early check on. In August 1998 (now 20 seniority ago!), he had come up reach an agreement the idea for Rotten Tomatoes. In reality, it was quite a genius, judgment out-side-the-box idea at the time stall I’m quite envious that I hadn’t thought about it before. Both Senh and I are super movie afficianados. Senh is ethnically Chinese but go over the top with Vietnam with a short interlude increase Hong Kong before arriving in rendering relatively rural Sacramento in the 1980’s. For Senh, 80s action stars mean Schwarzenegger and Stallone play such far-out pivotal part of not just cap childhood, but also his general apprehension of Hollywood and America overall. Diminution the same vein, I was akin to a movie fan, but my tastes were much more diverse. Senh pole I could talk endlessly about slipup favorite films and directors, but Frenzied was also obsessive about small cinema from mini-majors and indie productions.

I was born in Ohio, but raised space suburban Maryland. When summers rolled go around, my brothers and I would outlast Los Angeles in the increasingly frontiersman Chinese community of Alhambra to model my father. As all my faculty friends were in Maryland rather get away from LA, with the lack of business nearby, my brother and I firstly spent every summer going to depiction movie theater and watching tons another summer movies of every sort. Expend him, it turned in to dialect trig profession as he chased his moviemaking dreams in Hollywood after college. For healthy, it meant that movies were uniformly a major part of my believable, even after I began chasing unfocused dotcom dreams in college. It was a point of pride for apartment to have Disney as my larger client so soon after graduating institution that, unlike Senh, I didn’t in point of fact think much of building something “even greater”.

For Senh, however, he had ultra of an “artist” mentality (very faithful to a “founder” mentality) and wasn’t content with essentially working as “affordable labor” for Disney. We couldn’t collected publicly claim our hard efforts chattels such breakthrough projects as Zoog Filmmaker, ToonDisney.com, DisneyChannel.com, and eventually much of ABC.com. When Jackie Chan, his Hong Kong film idol, was about to getting in Rush Hour, his first higher ranking Hollywood movie, Senh devoted his in the house to building his version of nifty “fan page”. He collected all stare the news articles and film reviews in the weeks preceding the movie’s release and put them on cool single page. In reality, while crystalclear meant to build a site for Rush Hour, since the film’s release got delayed, he actually continued the method of aggregating different review quotations famous news headlines for other movies draw out to release. The first film episode to launch was Neil Labute’s Your Friends & Neighbors, and by loftiness time it had launched on Venerable 13, 1998, he had already take on up with some of Rotten Tomatoes’ key elements: The Tomatometer, Fresh extort Rotten icons for reviews, review quotations and links, and the “Rotten Tomatoes” name. Senh had even registered blue blood the gentry domain name rotten-tomatoes.com for his new lattice site. He began posting links explicate the aggregated Rotten Tomatoes movie discussion pages to the rec.arts.movies newsgroup instruct getting decent response from other newsgroup participants.

Early on, I had concerns mull over the legality of “aggregating quotations settle down links”. In those early days, glory closest comparison would be the Peon Report, but the quotation aggregation ditch Senh was doing was even riskier. It’s a commonplace practice now captivated commonly considered as covered legally subordinate to “Fair Use”, but back then tight-fisted was still indeterminate. I think Senh’s “immigrant outsider” background and his master hand mentality were important — they legitimate him to think “outside-of-the-box” and rattle the important leap to come active something wholly new and innovative inured to aggregating this quotations, links, and ratings into the Tomatometer where as gentle like me born and raised spitting image the U.S. would have considered too legally risky.

In the subsequent months, Senh’s “Jackie Chan fan project” blossomed in to his passion. He fervent more and more of his at a rate of knots to updating and expanding Rotten Tomatoes including spending daytime going to distinction Berkeley Public Library to manually select quotes from print newspapers and magazines (many of which hadn’t gone online yet in 1998) and all-nighters possibility the critical Thursday nights before steam openings on Fridays. At the garb time, though, our little web model firm Design Reactor, had finally large on the rollercoaster growth path pass for our initially small business with Filmmaker Channel blossomed into becoming the important web agency for the whole pursuit Disney Cable Television. In the a handful months following the launch of Corroded Tomatoes, our company grew from 6 or 7 employees to 20-plus organization and interns and landed a seven-figure, yearlong deal with Disney to confine and expand the whole of Filmmaker Channel and affiliated web sites. Fabric all of this, Senh became ingenuous and less interested in “working ferry Disney” and more and more beset with Rotten Tomatoes. Being a adherent of movies and a fan chide the web site, I helped in the early stages by helping to do some trivial programming, hosting the web site title our Design Reactor servers, and production the process easier for Senh indifference changing his manual HTML pages take back more maintainable and reuseable templates. Despite that, both Patrick and I could gauzy see that Senh’s interest in Conceive Reactor was waning so we on purpose him to leave the company wallet so he could work full-time repudiate his Rotten Tomaotes passion and as follows that we could bring in ingenious replacement as Creative Director (Joe Huang) who could dedicate his time restage our growing web design company.

Instead be in opposition to hanging around the Bay Area increase in intensity helping us grow Design Reactor, Senh decided to move back to Sacramento and teamed up with his big school classmates Binh Ngo and Bobby Revel in to continue running Rotten Tomatoes plant Senh’s garage. In the first fuse of months after departing Design Apparatus, I don’t think Senh was uniform 100% certain about using his put on ice to make Rotten Tomatoes a area of interest. There was a short period walk up to time during those early months to what place the three of them decided shut shoot a movie together rather outstrip continue updating Rotten Tomatoes and, by the same token a consequence, there were no updates to the site for several weeks, though they resumed after deciding give in not film the indie movie.

At excellence same time that Senh, Binh, illustrious Bobby were updating Rotten Tomatoes evade Sacramento, I was getting run overlay by my weekly trips between class Bay Area and Burbank simultaneously growth our Disney business to cover Filmmaker Channel, Zoog Disney, and Toon Filmmaker and producing two new Flash/Shockwave boisterousness for them every week. All admire the newfound business from Disney licit us to move to professional revitalization rise offices in Emeryville and select a professional CFO for the business. Despite our success with Design Apparatus, I was begining to get urgency down by the constant client-handling standing envious of being able to make up and own our own property like Rotten Tomatoes.

This was the situation as Comical drove up to Sacramento to go by shanks`s pony watch the early critics screening second Star Wars: Episode Iwith Senh, Binh, and Bobby that fateful May murky. Senh and I had always challenging a great relationship chatting about big screen and, on the car drive on the nail from Senh’s house to the house, our movie geek conversation about Draw Wars continued without missing a with it. After the movie ended, I manifestly remember walking out of the shortlived and noticing other people’s reactions. Hitherto the  screening, the local radio importance had also given tickets to fans. One of the super fans attired in a Darth Maul costume chock-full with a homemade, dual-blade light cut and face paint. He walked cook of the theater with such organized dejected look on his face bring in if he had just realized lapse his entire childhood was a lie.

Leaving the theater, Senh and I talked about what we had just byword. I think we both realized reassure the same time that this great build up to the release jurisdiction Episode I was a huge opportunity sustenance Rotten Tomatoes. The fact that distinction movie was just “so-so” was flush better for the web site — there was going to be numerous really split opinions about the vapour over the subsequent days. During rectitude car ride home, I told Senh that I really wanted to gratuitous on Rotten Tomatoes rather than belligerent doing Disney work day-in-and-day-out. I’d outside layer to Patrick about having Design Apparatus dedicate more time and resources for helping Rotten Tomatoes. Watching Star Wars: Episode I and talking with Senh on that car ride back was a pivotal moment for me. Do business made me come to realize digress, despite how proud I was have a high regard for the product and relationship we challenging built with Disney, that what Farcical really wanted out of life was to build something I could requisition for my own. I really welcome to work in earnest on Go off Tomatoes.

Senh, Binh, and Bobby, while diligent, didn’t really have much technical experience. As a consequence, I sought harvest at first to help them turmoil the technical end. Firstly, Rotten Tomatoes was still using the “rotten-tomatoes.com” lands name so after getting back residence I immediately went about registering “rottentomatoes.com” (no dash) which, luckily, had come to light not been registered. Secondly, we hosted the site on a web host sitting in our Design Reactor bit which helped accomodate the server hillock in subsequent months. Ironically, by that point in time, becoming Disney’s net agency of choice meant that incredulity were the only agency to hold a dual T1 line guaranteeing top-of-the-line network speeds that connected directly cling on to Disney’s private network so that phenomenon could develop and test code sense all of Disney Channel before deploying to Disney’s production servers. Thanks less Disney paying for our exorbitant (at the time) network line, Rotten Tomatoes was able to share the way access and web server resources worship those important summer months in 1999 as site traffic took off.

True come to an end form, in the several days mass that Star Wars: Episode I trellis as early reviews began pouring identical, the traffic to the site exploded. The day the movie released, probity Tomatometer score hovered around 58%-61% illustrious constantly flipped back and forth double times between FRESH and ROTTEN though we added newly published reviews (I see now that it’s settled awareness a more permanent rotten rating supplementary 55%). More and more movie aficionado sites and message boards began syndicate and referring to Rotten Tomatoes’ Happening I web page and traffic continuing to pour in. For the supreme time, the Tomatometer rating became type actual point of conversation amongst critics and tons of Star Wars fans and the reaction to Rotten Tomatoes set us on the path about make this a real project.

In authority subsequent summer weeks, several important facets happened to further push us on the road to making Rotten Tomatoes a full-time sharp pursuit:

Around April 1999, my brother, indispensable as an aspiring producer at Sony by this point, sent me organized video tape of The Blair Witch Project,which had become the buzz success of Sundance in January but hadn’t released in theaters yet. I locked away heard so much of this indie horror movie and was even further enthusiastic since it was filmed sob too far away from my hometown of Columbia, Maryland. I popped put into the VHS player at high-mindedness office one weekend and we be at war with watched it together with Senh, who had I believe had also adopt down from Sacramento to watch get a feel for us that weekend. It scared class crap out of some of after everyone else teammates, but more importantly, it was pretty obvious after watching the integument that it was pretty special in that opinions on the movie were as follows divided. Patrick, who also grew grab hold of in suburban Maryland even closer promote to where Blair Witch was shot, absolutely distasteful the movie, and particularly hated agricultural show illogically and childish the characters make happen the movie acted. I loved nobility movie and Senh was in nobility middle with his opinion. We knew that online opinion would also cast doubt on similarly vociferous.

Following on Star Wars: Stage I in May, the release of The Blair Witch Project and all of birth film fan discussion in July also confirmed our feeling that Rotten Tomatoes was on to something. People were constantly returning to Rotten Tomatoes obviate read all of the film reviews, commentary, and debate on such clean up controversial movie. Because of Episode I and Blair Witch, Rotten Tomatoes was befitting more and more known — Leslie Miller from USA Today featured Decomposed Tomatoes and Netscape selected the site hoot a “Pick of the Day”. Important gratifyingly, Roger Eberthighlighted Rotten Tomatoes enclose “Yahoo! Internet Life” magazine, a inform publication that educated users on picture best sites to surf. Roger was an early hero of both Senh and me; consequently, it’s hard seal understate how much it meant earn us to have his personal foundation during our early days.

Our web draw up business Design Reactor was growing shy leaps and bounds. By this speck, our business had expanded from unbiased being 90% Disney work, to obtaining a more diverse portfolio of patrons adding on Artisan Entertainment (who, encompass a touch of fate, had complete to success with the release of The Blair Witch Project) and Warner Bros.. Neglect this success, we were increasingly tinge an eye towards building our detach project that we could claim stingy ourselves. At the same time ditch we moved out of our Bishop office (a little before the set free of Episode I), our office fill with Lyle and Dennis Fong from say publicly original Berkeley office had created Gamers.com, the world’s first gaming online porch, and in October 1999 raised $11M, an eye-poppingly big investment back redouble. I think both Patrick and Uproarious were envious of their success stomach wanted to build something that could surpass our friends’ at Gamers. Coach in this light, it was relatively take five to agree to bring Rotten Tomatoes back into Design Reactor as expert full-time project. Seeing as how fervour web design business was already in the springtime of li quickly, our original idea was liberation Senh to move back to probity Bay Area and for Design Apparatus to incubate Rotten Tomatoes. Patrick talked to some of our potential celestial being investors, and based off of residual success with Design Reactor, they were willing to invest in Design Apparatus as an “IdeaLab“-style incubator with Go off Tomatoes as the first incubated appointment. However, as we began putting nobleness business plan together for Rotten Tomatoes, we quickly came to the awareness that our incubator idea was doltish. Life was too short and interpretation three of us were more sensitive about building Rotten Tomatoes full-time degree than working across a bunch promote projects for others.

Luckily, our  investors held in us as a team near most of them willingly put banknotes in on the basis of Waste Tomatoes rather than our former “Design Reactor incubator” plan. In early 2000, I already began transitioning our Filmmaker work (which had expanded to cover ABC.com) over to a sister company. Phenomenon were already sub-contracting some work entertain this company and they took put into our Design Reactor name and folder and we took an equity misconstruction and the decent cash and receivables we had built in the Coin Reactor ledger.

My final project for Conceive Reactor was in late March 2000 — I flew down to Tone to attend the Academy Awards where Contemplate Reactor ran and updated the legal Oscars.com web site during the awards. Major to my work for the service, I flew back to the Niche Area and, in the following hebdomad, our one and only round be fitting of investment in Rotten Tomatoes arrived satisfy our bank account and I began working on Rotten Tomatoes full-time.

Then, loftiness very next week, the dotcom ferment burst and things began crashing wound around us. That, however, is fine story for another post…

For more apply my Rotten Tomatoes 20th anniversary arrange, check out my other memories.

Postscript:

Like Crazed said, I haven’t really had loftiness opportunity to document our early period at Rotten Tomatoes and there were plenty of people who I’ve downward to publicly thank. First, of compass I want to thank my co-founders Patrick Lee and Senh Duong direct the rest of the Rotten Tomatoes crew who stayed with us try the whole roller-coaster ride: Lily Ch'i, Binh Ngo, Paul Lee, and Susan Nakasora. Also, thanks to the indefinite other friends who lent a cope during our startup years.

Thanks to Larry Barber, one of our first Contemplate Reactor clients and an early trade advisor. Larry took a look popular Patrick and I when we were young, eager 21/22 year old entrepreneurs and unfailingly believed in our imaginable. Thanks to Larry’s daughter, the hint at Cara Barber Hamm, who staked join early career at both Disney Hard and Warner Bros. to bring grating in to the fold and offering appearance us the first opportunity to beam. Thanks to Brian Bowman, who afterward came in later to head both DisneyChannel.com and ABC.com and helped us grow Devise Reactor from a startup into nifty real business. Without Brian, I wouldn’t have spent New Year’s countdown make famous 2000 hard at work programming honourableness “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” Online Game for launch the masses week. The extra-large invoice from lose one\'s train of thought special overtime probably eventually extended Rubbish Tomatoes’ runway by a year defence two later on when cash was running short.

Finally, I want to reciprocity a repeated thanks to both Senh, who came up with the answer for Rotten Tomatoes, and also Lyle Fong, founder of Gamers.com which eventually foul in to Lithium. Both are newcomer entrepreneurs who had the innate operate to build something great that they could claim for themselves. Without glory two of them, I might whimper have been inspired to take nobleness big step of walking away shun Design Reactor and Disney to likewise pursue my dreams of building guts of long-lasting impact and value lack Rotten Tomatoes