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In today's Brain Storm Business Podcast, I interview PlayCafe CEO Mark Goldenson.
Mark Goldenson, Chief Executive Officer

• Mark Goldenson, CEO, has eight years of experience in launching internet services. Mark was a product manager at PayPal where he managed registration and in-house CRM for 1,300 service agents.
• previously co-founded Woosh, and raised $21 million in funding.
• co-founded the Stanford Bazaar, a local online marketplace acquired by Stanford
• researched brain imaging of lucid dreams for four years
• completed coursework for a B.A. in Human Biology and a minor in Symbolic Systems

Dev Nag, Chief Technical Officer

• Dev Nag, CTO, has ten years of experience in developing internet applications.
• Senior Engineer at Google where he helped develop the back-end for all financial processing of Google ad revenue
• He previously served as the Manager of Business Operations Strategy at PayPal.
• He also launched eBay's private-label credit line in association with GE Financial.
• published six academic papers in medical informatics and mathematical biology
• dual-degree B.S. in Mathematics and B.A. in Psychology from Stanford.

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Issues we will discuss:

• What is PlayCafe?
• How did you come up with the idea?
• Did your background in Human Biology and Dev's major in Psychology effect your idea and programming development? Are you basing PlayCafe on marketing principles, or does your knowledge of how people think and how the brain reacts play a part in how you design your game show?
• What were the steps you had to put into place to make the idea a reality?
• How long has it been on?
• Is this something you will keep on the internet, or with the coming of interactive tv, would you move to mainstream tv for larger participation? Or do you want to remain solely internet based?
• As the fan-base and participants grow, that will mean less "big fish in a small pond" status for present users (which is part of its charm at this point). How will PlayCafe continue to give its participants the ability to still play and compete without being totally lost in the masses? (This reminds me of trying to call in to a radio for a competition, and not ever being able to get through. Will that eventually happen with Play Cafe?)
• Teams and Predicting Polls. Were these after-thoughts added due to participant ideas and requests, or ideas that were originally on the table, but postponed for future deployment?
• Prizes aren't really large at this point. $25, $15 & $10 gift certificates, $1 song downloads, etc. Is the draw of PlayCafe the prizes, or is it the thrill of getting to compete in a live program? And why would anyone just watch the show and not play? (I normally don't like shows like this because I don't feel like I know enough about everything to be good at it, but there were some questions I COULD answer that others struggled with, and that made me feel VERY good about myself. They were questions young people wouldn't have really known, like Bible questions and Spinoff TV shows.)

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I really encourage you guys to join me over at PlayCafe.com. Maybe we could have a Brain Storm! Team!!!! hehehehehe

Penny Haynes, 1st Podcast Publishing and Online Community Magazines