After covering File123.com on the Web Hosting Show, Matthew Dusig the CEO and Co-Founder got in touch with me. It’s not every day I get to pick a CEO’s brain and I was really interested in learning more. I tossed out the idea of asking him a few questions – and he gratefully accepted my offer.

The personal file and backup hosting services area seems a little crowed at best right now. Why make your mark there with File123.com?

If you compare File123 to all the other file and backup hosting services, you’ll see some major differences. Primarily, File123 focuses on helping people backup important paper documents, where none of the other services allow users to fax or scan in documents.

We’re focused on disaster preparedness. There are many important documents in a real-world file cabinet that will be destroyed in the event of a natural disaster. All the other services only help you to back up your hard drive.

What is your personal background in the hosting business?

My personal background is in the online industry, but not specifically hosting. I’ve built many successful online web systems since 1999 and understand the requirements of building scalable and redundant systems for storing data. Amazon S3 provides the storage hardware that services File123, which allows us to focus on new technology solutions to increase customer satisfaction.

Where do you see the most need for a service like yours?

Every night, when you get home from work you probably check you “real” mail. After you throw away the junk mail, what do you do with the other paper documents that you know you need to hold onto? File123 provides a digital solution for storing those real-world documents.

In addition to storing real-world documents, File123 OCR’s all documents (paper and digital) to make it easier to search for keywords within your documents. Also, File123 converts all documents into PDF files. If you upload a word document, you can immediately save your file as a PDF. File123 provides PDF conversion for free.

Where do you see yourself focusing in the future or are you more worried about the present right now?

There are many more services that File123 will offer in the future. I can’t discuss them all today, but File123 will continue to evolve into a very robust online application.

I want to thank Matt for taking the time out to talk with me here – and if any other CEOs are watching – your welcome too. Just drop me an e-mail. Here are just a few more good things about File123.com worth talking about.

File123.com Feature You Will Not See Anywhere Else:

PDF Conversion: File123 provides free PDF file conversion.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Search for text found within any image or document.

FAX / SCAN: Easily store paper documents.

EMAIL: Instead of emailing attachments from work to your gmail or yahoo account, email them to your personal File123 storage account.

USER INTERFACE: File123 provides a state-of-the-art Web 2.0 user interface that features drap ‘n drop for files and folders, large and small thumbnails of all your files, and customized folder design.

Need more information? Hear me talk about File123 on episode 119 of the Web Hosting Show podcast.

Give File123.com a shot. In a market where there is a lot of competition I think these guys stand tall and maybe even taller than some of the more popular choices out there. They have both free and paid options – so there is no reason to not at least sign up for that free 1GB of space.

Talking with Dan from Press Advance was a very enlightening experience to say the least. I never realized how much work they really did for folks really. You could count me in the group of folks who said, “How hard is it to write a press release?”.

After this interview though I have to say I have a new found respect for the process and the work around it as well. That’s not all we covered though, here are some other topics talked about on this week’s podcast:

• Some Hosting News and Gossip
• Interview with Dan Garon from Press Advance
• A Little ‘Bit of News on Intenet 2
• Even Hosts Are Getting into iPhone Hype
• Calling Out the Podcast’s Haters

Haven’t tuned in yet? What are you waiting for? I can promise you you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you might even learn a thing or two along the way.

Along with my interview with Troy we also discussed on this week’s podcast:

• Should I Give Web Hosting Talk Another Shot?
• What are Landing Pages for Web Sites?
• Top 10 RSS Feeds from the Hosting Industry
• Get a Web Hosting Education, Without the Boring Stuff!

Plus toss in a few Angela Lansbury and midget references and you have the show in a nutshell.

There are very few places Online where you will see Web hosting personalities interviewed and it doesn’t sound like an info-mercial. Thankfully Reseller Guide is one of those few places that get right to the juicy ‘bits.

Jesse Rasch is an entrepreneur who co-founded DynamicWeb Hosting which eventually grew to become WebHosting.com and InQuent Technologies. He started the company in 1996 with the help of his partner Mike Apted. The company grew quickly and eventually entered the web hosting wholesale market by providing branded web hosting to large telecoms. In 2000 he sold 51% of the stake to AT&T for 115 million in cash! Jesse has a great blog that goes over the story of how he got started and it is a great read. Here is a quick timeline before we get to the interview.

Check out the interview Reseller Guide did with Jesse Rasch. It is a good read for anybody even slightly interested in the Web hosting business.

One thing that I have not done in a while is an interview with somebody. In fact, I think it has possibly been a year or longer since I posted one on any of my Web sites I run.

Well, that is all about to change – but I need your help. I want to write and post up a few interviews (maybe weekly, every two weeks, monthly) right here on Mitchelaneous.com.

So I have the drive, the inspiration and the willingness to get this done. What am I missing? I need somebody to talk to. You see that is where you come into the picture.

I don’t care if you are Bob Parsons from Go Daddy or Jimmy down the street with his new Web project. As long as you have something to say and it is somewhat related to the Web development and Web hosting world I would like to talk with you.

Just drop me an E-mail and let me know what you do and your ideas and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

+ Listen to All the Hostingcon 2006 Interviews on WebHostingShow.com!

+ Secrets of Marketing
+ Microsoft at Hostingcon 2006

I posted an interview with Lou Honick of HostMySite.com yesterday and this Friday I’ll be posting an interview with Ian Andrusyk of FastServers.Net. Along with the Web Hosting Show special I posted yesterday, and the new audio intros for the show, I am pretty excited here. It seems like there is a lot of interest in the Web Hosting Show again.