Interview With Bobby Chang – COO of RapidShare

Bobby is the COO of Rapidshare, one of the worlds most visited websites, with an Alexa ranking of just 15! Bobby takes his time to share with us what its like to run Rapidshare and some of the ideas behind it, a great interview with a very clever man! Background information on Bobby:

I live in Switzerland and I am 39 now. My motivation is the thrilling times we live in and especially what the internet has made possible over the last 20 years. Nowadays everyone is connected, you can drop me an email and we can share thoughts. That’s just great isn´t it? To be part of that revolution is just thrilling.

1) Tell us about your main project, RapidShare ? Why did you launch RapidShare? Where are you at now with RapidShare?

We launched RapidShare to make it fast easy and secure for people to send files that are too big to be sent by email. We launched it in October 2006, but we had a lot of experience in this arena already because the inventor of 1-click hosting is one of the founders of RapidShare.
 
2) According to Alexa RapidShare is the 15th most visited website in the world, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to promote their website?

Actually, we never did anything but create a good service. That’s all.
 
3) I understand that you have no advertising on RapidShare, do you think this is important for a website´s success?

I think it is a matter of concept what kind of service you are setting up and what you think is important for your users, there is no general yes or no answer to that question. So far we decided not to do advertisement.
 
4) RapidShare sole income comes from its Premium Membership, what are the benefits of offering a premium membership over FREE memberships? Any tips for entrepreneurs trying to promote a premium service?

If you want people to sign up for your service, it is a good idea to give them a free membership to try it out. Another reason is to enable everyone to share with everyone, regardless of their membership status. This way we are making it a universal service and whoever likes it and uses it a lot, can sign up for a Premium account, benefitting from more options like being able to organize the files in the premium zone or  paying in advance for your customers or friends to let them download content with more comfort without waiting for downloads.

5) Sharing pirated content must be a huge problem for RapidShare, what do you do to discourage and prevent it?

We tell users that it is forbidden to share copyright protected content. Apart from that we delete links to files, if the owner has made us aware of a copyright infringement. This is a very complicated matter since the jurisdiction is different in every country.

Many governments (Britain, France, Sweden etc.) have made it their task to find a solution to the problem, but it is a very complicated matter. Governments have to balance copyright, the right of access to information via the internet and privacy. Also, there are no technical filtering systems available at the moment that are universal, reliable and 100 percent failure proof.

Which brings us to the next point: In the virtual world we often see that infrastructure is not sharply differentiated from content. Let me give you one example: DHL, UPS or other logistic services are not held responsible for the content of the parcels they deliver. This has a reason. If they were, parcel services would become very expensive because of the enormous insurance sums these companies would have to pay. It is the same with news agents, they are not held responsible for the content of the magazine (that is the editor in chief) or with highways. Imagine the toll-road service company was held responsible for every pirated CD transported in one of those cars? I guess many road companies would sell their assets as soon as they could. But to whom? Who wants to take such a risk? What sounds ridiculous in the hardcopy world, is done on the internet every day. Very often everybody in the value chain is held responsible for everything, instead of differentiating between infrastructure and content. That’s why there are so many problems. Many copyright laws were not made for the internet. But if we do not learn to differentiate between infrastructure and content providers, nobody will invest into infrastructure anymore.

Also, there is another problem that is very special to German law. In Germany it is allowed to make a private copy of the music you bought and share it with your friends and family. This makes copyright protection very complicated because we cannot look into users´ heads and tell, what they intend to do – will the file be shared privately or will it be published in a forum? The latter is illegal in Germany, the former legal. So the only thing we can do is delete links after they have been published. Also, we do not only have to comply to copyright, there is also the rules for protecting privacy, which are very strict in some countries. So you see, it is quite a complicated field.

6) What have been the benefits of launching RapidGames ?

With RapidGames we can provide patches, trailers and demos through a very fast platform. Many users like to pick up their patches through us if everything else is congested. We intend to extend the entertainment part of our website, the next step will be the launch of RapidMovie.

7) I understand that you use over 4,5 Pet bytes of Storage on your servers, could you give us a incite into having host one of the largest websites in the world?

The servers are hosted in professional data centers with high security measures, redundancy and all that. Just like any other professional system. They are run on a proprietary OS that was developed especially for one-click-hosting. It is a very lean and efficient system and I guess that’s the key to speed and availability.

Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?

I think it is both. You must have it in your blood and you must be willing to learn through mistakes. And you need to be tough and endure flops.
 
9) Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on? (You can name more than one)

Steve Jobs. I think he is a great man and has created great things. And what is more, he has always hit the nerve of the consumer.
 
10) Do you have any favourite business related or entrepreneur related books that you can recommend to other entrepreneurs?

Not really. My advice is not to read books, but set up a business instead and learn from mistakes to be more successful next time.
 
11) What is the best advice you have ever been given?

Enjoy your job and spend time to develop your business – then you will be successful.
 
12) What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?

Listen to what others say, but always decide for yourself, because it is you who has to live with the consequences in the end. If you have to lend money, be careful not to loose your independence.

13) How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks for your sites?
 
I do not really separate on- and off-time. In a way I am always working, which does not mean I never go on holidays of course. And there is no routine day really. I take care of our support and the abuse department, discuss business development and look for new partners, talk to journalists and speak on conferences, just the technical side of the business is managed by someone else.

14) If the Internet had not existed – what do you think you would be doing?

If the Internet did not exist, I would surely work on creating it.

15) What do you like best about the Internet?

Free access to information, whatever you are looking for, the internet will have the answer. That’s one thing. The other one is that you can find people sharing your ideas and having similar problems around the globe very easily. That´s great and makes innovation so much faster these days.
 
16) What do you like least about the Internet?

If I cannot connect to it.

17) Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

My private plans are having a family with two kids and a nice house.