Dick Costolo is cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner. Previously, he co-founded and was CEO of Spyonit.com and Burning Door Networked Media. Dick holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Visit his blog here.

Most services these days seem to have one or two founders, but FeedBurner has four. How did you and the other three founders meet each other? How did the idea for FeedBurner develop, and why did you choose the name?

We met at Andersen Consulting in the early 90's and have worked together through four startups over the last 12 years. The idea for FeedBurner was an evolution of work we have been doing at the intersection of meta-data and media since 1996, but we really came up with the idea for FeedBurner in October of 2003 when we were having lunch and talking about the future of content distribution and the need for publisher services. We batted around a bunch of names. We wanted to capture the notion of distributing content for you. There were a lot of rejected names. The final two were FeedBurner and FeedRunner.

You have a unique advantage of having one foot in the world of blogging, and one foot in the world of Web 2.0. What advice would you give to a blogger, and what advice would you give to an entrepreneur?

My advice to bloggers is to write frequently. Bloggers who write frequently seem to find their voice more readily and establish an audience who come back expecting to engage in conversation frequently. My advice to entrepreneurs? Goodness, my advice to entrepreneurs is not to listen to other people's advice. There are fifty reasons not to start a company, and when you start it, there are fifty reasons not to continue to pursue it when you run into the first spot of trouble (which will be the first of many spots of trouble, even if you're the next Google). You have to focus solely on what you want to accomplish and ignore everything else.

What is life like in the FeedBurner offices? What are some interesting and unique aspects about your company?

It's great. We have a totally open work environment with no private offices, so everybody is right out in the open, no walls, no doors. We try not to have too many meetings. We each have our team meetings on Monday, and one all hands meeting Friday morning and that's it. I think all companies have their own personalities. I'm sure our company is no more or less unique than any other - one interesting thing about the company is the total focus on transparency internally and with customers. Everybody in the company knows what's going on at all levels, and the open environment fosters that. We are a very flat organization....reporting relationships are not really stressed and anybody in the company can advise or comment on anything that any other group is working on. That's healthy and prevents fiefdoms and it's fun.