Jon Epstein

But magazines have this really long lead time.

of two months like so by the time a magazine came out either the review had been written before the game was done or the game might have even been off the shelf so there was this this information gap and we realized that online with the real-time nature of online publishing would allow us to really serve the gamer community better and not just give them you know john hold on i don't mean to cut you out this is all still under game spot or have you transitioned into game five

No, yeah, so we took in some external investment.

We ended up selling it in parts to Ziff Davis, to their ZDNet subsidiary.

Okay.

In retrospect, maybe a little early, but it was for some younger guys, and I was the oldest of the three.

It was a decent exit.

We sold it for stock in ZDNet.

So at the peak, it was worth about $45 million as an exit.

And by the time we were able to sell the ZDNet stock, we're worth a little bit less than that.

So I think, you know, we view it as like we all got a pretty nice house out of the deal.

And some track record.

Not quite.

I spent a couple years after having sold it to ZDNet.

First of all, we ran it inside of ZDNet for a while.

And I stepped into an international role.

I really wanted to get experience in doing business in different countries.

And ZDNet had joint ventures.

It had wholly owned subsidiaries.

It had licensees in something like 30 countries around the world.