I spoke with Mark at Buck’s Woodside about how he conceived his successful products, the process of growing those sites into successful companies, and what makes a successful consumer Internet startup. The most interesting part of the interview was when Mark described how his first startup took off very quickly, once he arrived at a solid concept. Mark created ONEList and it took off overnight because it solved a fundamental pain many people were experiencing. Making mailing lists at the time was a painful process, and ONEList made it easy. Bloglines was another good idea because it solved a problem Mark personally was experiencing, how to keep up with the many blogs he read. Furthermore, Mark leveraged the marketing and PR relationships he had built at ONEList to get press for Bloglines which spurred their growth.