: Author of the book, "The Leap" and co-founder of the home design website, homeportfolio.com.

June 07, 2000

netLibrary presents author and cofounder, Tom Ashbrook, who discusses his new book, "The Leap" and his home design website, homeportfolio.com

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NetLibrary: netLibrary is pleased to welcome you to an interactive discussion with Tom Ashbrook author of "The Leap" and co-founder of "the Internet's 'uber-site' for home design," homeportfolio.com. Tonight Tom will chat about his new book, and his Internet success story! Tonight's chat is one of netLibrary's "Talking Business" series, featuring a number of prominent authors discussing today's hottest business topics; including e-commerce, customer service, and the Internet. Without further ado please welcome Tom Ashbrook. Hi, Tom, we're glad you're here!

Tom Ashbrook: Hi. It's great to be here with Talk City and netLibrary.

DYI: I've read that you were a reporter. Did you always have a flair for home decor or is this something you've picked up recently?

Tom Ashbrook: I was in the news business for more than 15 years. Much of that time as a foreign correspondent reporting from Asia and all over. I always had a deep love of great design but at homeportfolio.com the home design tap root goes back to my partner, Rolly Rouse, who has a deep background in residential architecture. Over the past several years, since conceiving and launching homeportfolio.com I've also become very engrossed in home design. It's a pretty compelling subject. But at the outset, it was simply the available vine that I found to grab on to, to get into the Internet. It was a subject I knew right away I could bring a passion to.

Hans: What made you decide on home decor for a web site?

Tom Ashbrook: If you've ever built a home or renovated a house or just redecorated, you know how very difficult it is to make plans and product selections around home design. Many people see their home as their greatest work of art. But achieving the homes that we dream of can be extremely difficult and frustrating and people often fail. They fall short of their vision. We saw that the Internet would make it possible to network the home design industry in a new way that would make it much easier for consumers to dream and act on their home design dreams much more successfully. That is what attracted me to home design. That plus the fact that it was a very large $250 billion industry that we came to believe we could transform. And we are doing that. At the margins today, but on a path that is fundamentally revolutionary. If I step back a bit, I'd also say that this was an area that I could intuitively understand and intuitively see how the web would change. I was going on 40 when I began to look away from my old career. I saw the Internet coming, and like many others, was tremendously excited by the possibilities it suggested. I didn't have a business school background or a technology background or a pot full of money. I needed to find an area where I could plunge in. In my case, it wasn't going to be in circuit boards or routers. It had to be an area that I could viscerally enjoy and understand. For me, that was home design.

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