Loic Le Meur is a serial French entrepreneur and blogger. He is the founder and CEO of video conversation site, Seesmic. An active user on Twitter, his company also owns Twhirl, one of the most popular Twitter and social software clients. With his wife Geraldine, Loic also founded and hosts the most popular web conference in Europe, LeWeb. The gathering brings together 2000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries.

Loic was named “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. He also advises the World Economic Forum and participates in their conference each year in Davos. Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. He lives in San Francisco, California with his wife and three boys. This interview was conducted at the Seesmic offices in San Francisco.

Wisdom 2.0 Interview with Loic Le Meur (pt. 1)

Soren: As someone is very active on Twitter and Seesmic, how do you think these kind of social networking sites are changing the world?

Loic: One very dramatic way is that the old way of advertising — trying to convince people to buy something — just does not work anymore. People now share more directly with one another what products or services they like and dislike. For example, this shirt I am wearing is called Icebreaker, and I bought it after 3 different people told me how much they liked the brand. I now own 5 pair. I saw a friend at TED recently and he saw my shirt and remarked, “Cool shirt. I own several by that same brand.” Now, I did not buy the shirt because I saw an ad by the company; instead, it was through hearing about it from my community.

The new trend is about people connecting with one another and sharing information directly. Sites like Twitter really support this. Therefore, the best way to make a successful product today is to worry less about advertising and focus more on making it high quality. If you do, people will talk about it and it will spread.

What do you think makes a good user of social sites, like Twitter and Seesmic?

Very little marketing is the first. Don’t continually put up posts trying to get people to buy something. It does not add to the community. Of course, I post about Seesmic and Twhirl, but as a percentage, these are quite small. Most of my posts are about my life or interesting articles I find online.

“The new trend is on people connecting with one another and sharing information directly. Sites like Twitter really support this.”

The second is to give to the community and share about yourself. Recently a Harvard professor joined Seesmic and for his first post, he submitted a question to the community, but almost no one responded. He asked, “Why did no one respond?” and it was because he had not taken the time to introduce himself to the community, to share something about himself so users could get a sense of his personality and interests.

Many people have lost their jobs and are thinking of starting their own business. As someone who has started many companies, what have you learned that is important as an entrepreneur?

I think it is important to start whatever you want to do. Don’t worry if it sucks. Put it up, get feedback, and slowly it will suck less.

Seesmic is still not what I would like it to be, but I think we have received the support we have from people like Pierre Omidyar, who invested $3 million in Seesmic, because he could see it and meet the community.

“I think it is important to start whatever you want to do. Don’t worry if it sucks. Put it up, get feedback, and slowly it will suck less.”

The second is to share your idea. So many people in Silicon Valley say, “I can’t tell you what I am working on,” or “you have to sign an NDA before I tell you,” but this makes no sense to me. If you have an idea, you can be sure that at least 100 other people have that same idea. So instead of keeping that a secret, share it, collaborate, work together. We are all so connected and I think those that work in the open and collaborate are more likely to succeed.

The third is to receive and respond to user feedback. I know many CEOs want to delegate this task, but to me this is the most important task of any company, and I spend much of my day doing it. I want to hear what people are saying about our company’s products, and I want to hear to directly – not through a report or filtered through someone else. This is key.

“If you have a great idea, you can be sure that at least 100 other people have that same idea.”

If I remember right, I think Michael Arrington said at one point that Seesmic was sucking less, and you have taken that as your tag line.

Yes, I guess his way of saying that we are improving was to say that we are “sucking less,” so I decided to make that my personal tag line: “I suck less everyday.” I think that is part of being an entrepreneur: you give it your all, knowing that you have to begin somewhere, but that if you work hard and are open to feedback, slowly your product or service will improve.

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