PBS NewsHour Covers Xamplify - Twice!
Paul Solman, business correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and long-time best friend of Xamplify's CEO, Jeffrey Klein, covered the company twice through friendly interviews, apparently to pitch it to potential investors.PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Dot-com Slide
Paul Solman with Jeffrey Klein turned the news segment on dot-com slide into a pitch for Xamplify Inc. "But Klein was prevailing in the marketplace, a rather more significant achievement... His firm, Xamplify, was luring top talent with a cutting-edge idea...Now Xamplify has a core competency: The ability to classify customers by discovering their learning styles via a short questionnaire." Right! Finally, Paul Solman seemed to blame "venture capitalists (who) have kept changing their tune." Jeffrey Klein joined him by appealing to "the rarest thing of all... (an) independent mind that's willing to say "no, this won't work;" "yes, this will work." Nice try, Mr. Klein and Solman.PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Stock Options
Paul Solman and Jeffrey Klein paint a picture of a company reluctant to give stock options because it believes in its future so much! The topic of Stock Options deserved many other more suitable candidates but here we were listening to Jeffrey Klein and his dear friend Paul Solman, with presumably a smiling Jim Lehrer in background nodding his head in approval.Paul Solman, the business correspondent mentions that
Xamplify is hoping to change the internet by helping large firms tailor their web sites to the psychological profiles of those who visit them. Bob Burnett, on the left, is one of the company's main investors. ...
...One of the Bay area's great fortunes was made by Levi Strauss 150 years ago... But at Xamplify, where a Levi Strauss heir is one of the investors....
And finally, this classic exchange between Jeffrey Klein and Paul Solman:
Wow!HOWARD LEE, Executive Recruiter: We're also finding out that some companies feeling very, very success-oriented are a little reluctant to give up pieces of the business.
PAUL SOLMAN: Indeed, we found such reluctance at Xamplify. CEO Klein gives his prospective hires the choice between more pay and fewer options, or...
JEFFREY KLEIN: More options and less cash. And we generally prefer that they take all the cash, but of course, not a single person has done that.
PAUL SOLMAN: You would prefer they take cash?
JEFFREY KLEIN: Yes. I... You know, I guess to be honest, I'd prefer they take a few options, because you want them involved in the business. But of course, all our internal indications are they're going to be worth quite a bit of money, so we don't want to give too many of them up.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now this brings up a classic objection to options: That if you believed in your company's future, you'd rather pay cash than give away pieces of it....