Calcanis Leaving AOLCalcanis Leaving AOL

Mr. Calacanis sold his company, Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs, to AOL last year and continued to run it from offices in Santa Monica, Calif. This year he took over Netscape.com, transforming it from a Web portal into a site that lets users vote and comment on news articles.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to manage someone like myself, but he embraced it. Whenever he was in town we spent time together and he would randomly setup calls to chat me up. He was 100% open with me about all the challenges of his job and AOL's future. He took me to dinners with all kinds of famous and powerful folks, and proudly introduced me to them as "someone you need to know and spend time with."

He made me feel like part of the team which was something I frankly didn't think would happen when we sold AOL our business. He did this with everyone however. He would get to know you and then he would drill down into the finest details of what you were working on. He would look at Engadget, Netscape, and my personal blog every day and send me comments. He would ask me about things I wrote six months ago--he's a detail guy like that.

At the same time he didn't assume he knew better than "the kids" he had working for him. He made us feel like peers and he listened intently to our opinions and advice. He asked great questions and he pushed us to think big.