Web Masters

The original three founders of Rotten Tomatoes share the story of building one of the Internet's most popular movie review websites.

Show Notes

Rotten Tomatoes began as a hobby project. Senh Duong, the original creator, started posted reviews for movies he enjoyed on a small, personal website. Pretty soon after he began, lots of people started relying on those reviews in order to choose the movies they wanted to watch, and the site's traffic began growing exponentially.

Unable to handle the growth by himself, Senh turned to two friends he used to enjoy watching movies with back in college -- Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang -- and, together, the three college buddies decided to turn the little move review website into a business.

That business became RottenTomatoes.com, which is still one of the most popular and trusted online resources for movie reviews. You can hear the story of how all three original founders built it on this special, 75th episode of Web Masters.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What is Web Masters?

Web Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.