The CEO sat across from me in jeans and a vintage t-shirt, sipping down a lattee with his iPhone perched on the table. My first question for him was how could a company that charged for nothing stay in business? Why are you doing this for free? I asked. The CEO, Michael Szymczyk, replied "Why not?". He explained that the business model they engineered was engineered for results. Advertisers no longer pay for the services, but for the customers those services deliver. "We want to be able to make available to every business what was once only available to the few. The small business can now compete with larger companies and corporations that once dominated the search results. We want to give everyone that provides great value a fair chance at success."
Hot! won't do business with just anyone, however. They will not do business with any firm that engages in behavior they deem to be unethical, including oil companies and certain multinationals, which they refused to name. On the other hand, they offer incentive plans for non-profits, start ups and any company that invests or is in the alternative energy business. Szymczyk laid out a bold plan that calls for global expansion and a client base of over 100,000 clients by 2011. "At that point, we want to eventually create the next great search engine, one that goes far beyond Google. Something you would see in science-fiction movies like A.I., where it's like you're in Oz and asking a wizard for the keys to the kingdom. That's the search engine we want to create. A search engine that's relevant and knows everything, including human psychology and gives to the consumer exactly what they want when they hit search. That learns from each user and provides custom results based on their previous search history. An intelligent search engine, that's probably the name people will give to it."
For now, Szymczyk's plans are not so ambitious. His company is still getting off the ground and for now, will work with Google when it comes to generating revenue for their client base. They hope to raise enough capital to invest in this search engine of the future and have it ready by 2015. At that time, Szymczyk says, "the industry will be entirely different...it will be like we've landed on Mars, only it's a world entirely different from what we previously thought and expected. It's not something we'll be able to envision, only experience."
Whether they'll actually be able to achieve this dream by charging nothing for something, remains to be seen. For now, it's a bold plan and as Szymczyk leaves the table, engaged in a hot conversation with a potential client on his phone, I can't help but wonder if they might just pull it off. The next Google? It may very well be.
