Jeff Taylor's claim to fame is the Monster.com employment site, which he founded in 1993. After selling it to TMP Worldwide for $900,000 in 1995, the company then went public and was renamed Monster Worldwide. Taylor has since parted ways with Monster, but the company is still a growing brand under the leadership of current Chairman and CEO Sal Iannuzzi.

After holding several executive positions at Monster (including "Chief Monster"), Taylor left the company in August 2005 to launch Eons.com, an online community for baby boomers (which I once described as "a site where those over the hump come to say 'I'm not dead yet' and post photos and blogs detailing their mid-life crisis rendezvous" -- er, sorry, Jeff). Next up on his list of ventures is Tributes.com, a spinoff of Eons.com for online obituaries [Ed. note: Hint to Eons members?], which is set to launch in September. Taylor spoke with Internet Evolution yesterday to drill down on the past, present, and future.

Internet Evolution: You left Monster in 2005 to found Eons.com. What was your motivation for that?

Jeff Taylor: I had started Monster as an idea in December of 1993. I had I guess what I would call a "360 degree entrepreneurial experience." I was founder, president, CEO, chairman, and in my last three years I was Chief Monster. I have this observation that you start alone and you end alone as an entrepreneur... and that my job was really to keep giving away my job over and over again until I felt like I kind of completed the experience. It was clear to me that I was an entrepreneur, but I also am a CEO.

Monster was in 34 countries when I left and a brand that was well known kind of across the world. I had an excellent experience. But I was working with baby boomers around my whole job experience, and I started getting really curious about what the baby-boomer population was going to do around retirement -- or what I was referring to as kind of "graduation" -- and that's what gave me the idea for Eons.

IE: Monster was born in the 90s before the dotcom bubble. What did Monster do right that some other dotcoms didn't?

Taylor: I think a combination of a powerful yet unorthodox name that actually has meaning around being the biggest database -- a "monster database"; or a big idea -- a "monster idea."

I think the brand position where we targeted the job seekers, even though it was the employer that paid the money, or human resources that paid for the service. We had a very good business model. We were really a buyer/seller marketplace. And the friction of job seekers wanting employers, and employers wanting job seekers... We were really first to market with the jobs database.

We [also] really innovated the modern online resumé. And the idea of storing resumés in a database into eternity, as opposed to retiring them to a box that was officially saved for seven years because of human resource rules.

I think the employee culture and attracting talent with a mission that people really felt they could be a part of. And then being able to duplicate that mission and that culture not just in the United States but all over the world. Hiring local teams, local language, local culture, local management I think was critical to our global success.

IE: What would you say was the biggest threat to Monster.com?

Taylor: Along the way I thought it might be Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) because there was a thought in the 90s, and even until the last few years, where getting in Microsoft's headlights was not a good idea. But I think the bigger threat always felt internal from our part. You know, being able to get to the full potential of the product. But I think Monster as much as anybody did accomplish that.

IE: Monster benefited from all the online job seekers after the first Internet bubble burst in 2000. How are our current economic woes helping or hurting your Websites?

Taylor: With Monster, you have since 1950 -- or for sure since 1970 -- a buyer-seller marketplace that tips in favor of the job seeker. The current environment is cornering kind of a mid-decade slump here. We had a similar slump in 80s and then in the 90s. Skill shortages are pervasive among companies -- you could pick one job in almost every company where companies have skill shortages. I think they'll continue to hire, but I think we're headed toward the worst labor shortage we've ever experienced. Not only do you have an economic cycle that'd be in favor of the job seeker, but you also have 78 million baby boomers that are going to retire. I think it's going to be a huge challenge for companies to keep talent in organizations, and I think there's going to need to be some innovative new thinking on how to embrace the mature worker and tap into the brain trust in that generation.

Tributes, which is my newest company, is a growth story, not only because I'm really just establishing the marketplace, but death is a growing business. You know, 2.5 million deaths this year, growing to 4.1 million a year in 2015. If you look just at the number of transactions, if you want to talk about the business cycle, the Tributes business should be an emerging and very interesting business. The idea of people actually getting involved in writing and telling their own story is going to get more and more interesting as people realize that story can live on.

IE: Looking back as a veteran of Monster.com, do you have any regrets from your time spent there?

Taylor: [Some] would say I sold too early. I think the reality is I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't. I hadn't really done business outside of New England. So to think about having a global brand -- it really took the talent of hundreds of people. I don't have regrets about selling the company... I did amazingly well, I feel blessed for what I have. I also became an expert in the field, in a public space for an important Internet brand. And I'm really proud of that.

One of the challenges with being more high-profile and starting a new company is... the written word and the naysayers are so strong, and I think stronger for someone who's found some success. You forget how hard it is to build a company and how anxiety-provoking and exhilarating it is at the same time. I feel blessed to have what I have and so curious about the possibilities of what I'm building. It's an exciting time to be an entrepreneur.

IE: I read that Eons.com had to lay off a third of its workforce due to a steep decline in traffic. Is that true? If so, what went wrong?

Taylor: It is true that we layed off a third of staff, but it was not due to a steep decline of traffic. The steep decline of traffic had to do with us stopping spending money on search engine marketing... Search engine marketing was producing traffic that was coming and looking at one page and spending seven seconds. It wasn't creating what I would call engaging traffic. We were progressively spending more on search engine marketing from April until August of last year. Once we were able to identify the trend of less engagement and to be able to follow it to see that it was consistent, then we stopped.

We laid off our staff because we made a decision to change from being a portal for baby boomers to become a social network for baby boomers. We eliminated our editorial staff and a lot of the employees associated with building and maintaining the portal. We basically have hired new people with social networking experience.

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