2000s — Crash, Recovery, and New Ventures

Post-AOL (~2000–2001)

After the AOL/When.com exit, Ted took a couple years off. "Kids were young, the internet wasn't fun." He helped startups informally but wasn't running anything. The dot-com crash hit in 2001, resetting the industry.

Ofoto (Nov 2003–May 2005)

James Joaquin — When.com co-founder — had become co-founder and president of Ofoto (Kodak's online photo platform, later Kodak Gallery). He called Ted "out of retirement" to help with product management and specialty products.

Ted's father had worked at Kodak in Rochester — a personal connection to the company. "I thought these guys aren't going away, and it would be exciting to help them make the digital transition. Instead, it was kind of depressing."

Kodak's Digital Disruption

From Ted's vantage point at Ofoto: Kodak's leadership knew digital was coming — they had built one of the first digital cameras. "They were not as stupid as people might say." But they thought the transition would be slower than it was. When mobile phone cameras got good enough, the change was sudden: "All of a sudden nobody wanted prints anymore."

The structural problem: imagine the management team telling shareholders "we're going to be one-fifth the size" — the shareholders would demand a new CEO. So everyone privately acknowledged the end was coming while publicly maintaining the status quo. "In private conversations everyone would say the end is coming, but we don't know when."

Ted had respect for the Kodak people he met — they'd been doing the same thing for a hundred years, and "your time frame is a little different" when you're a century-old company.

Rearden LLC / OnLive (June 2006–Jan 2007)

VP Product Marketing & Business Development at Rearden LLC. Marketing and business development for launch of Mova Contour facial motion capture system. Co-developed the business plan for OnLive, a cloud gaming/streaming platform. OnLive was a visionary but ultimately doomed company — it streamed video games from the cloud years before the technology and bandwidth could reliably support it. A classic "right idea, wrong time" venture (a pattern Ted would recognize from EO).

Pcore (~2005)

Worked at Pcore. Details TBD — referenced in life events CSV but not elaborated in other sources.

SuperSecret.com (April 2007–Jan 2011)

Founded SuperSecret.com — "growing up, as a game." A social entertainment platform built in Flash. This was the social media era, and SuperSecret targeted younger users with game-like social interaction.

Personal

Ryan born (January 10, 2001)
HBS 15-year reunion (2003)
"LifeLine" project (~2005, details TBD)
Dot-com crash (2001) and Web 2.0 recovery (~2004)
Recession (~2007)
HBS 20-year reunion (2008)

Films

"Borrowing" (2010) — Student film
Special FX films — Fun projects with Premiere Pro and his kids
"Mom & Dad" documentary — Writer and producer