Hasta La Gadget!

Bill Nguyen radiates enthusiasm. It’s constant and infectious, and when he attempts to sell you on his latest project, it’s hard not to get excited — this alone seems reason enough to want the guy on your team. Nguyen also has more than his share of experience heading startups — some have even gone so far as describing the Houston native as a “serial entrepreneur,” certainly not a stretch, having founded Onebox.com and Seven Networks early in his career.

It was the creation of Lala, however, that really put Nguyen on the map. The service was founded in the mid-’00s, around the concept of CD swapping, users mailing physical discs to one another in little red and white Netflix-like envelopes. The site shifted gears soon after, being reborn as a streaming service. The concept was born from Nguyen’s typically utopian vision of free music streaming, in hopes of spurring purchases amongst a dedicated audience — the actual product, not surprisingly, was far more of a compromise, limiting the streams of users who didn’t already have that music stored in their PC. Read our full interview after the break.