Former Blockbuster Online Founder Joins Inflatable Madness

September 30th, 2006 Davis Posted in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix |

David Perkovich used to be the Blockbuster’s Vice President of Online Subscription Services, but earlier this week he joined inflatablemadness.com as their CTO. Inflatable Madness is a media distributor that operates as one of the top power sellers on eBay and he will be helping to manage their proprietary software that allows them to monitor up to a million auctions at any one time. Perkovich’s may have only been a Vice President with Blockbuster, but he made his mark on the company when his site was choosen to be the genesis of the Blockbuster online program.

Originally Perkovich had started his own DVD by mail service through a subsidiary named Net Learning Inc. that he called DVD Rental Central. When it became clear that Netflix was starting to gain traction with their DVD by mail service, Blockbuster knew that they needed a solution so they turned to DVD Rental Central as a way to jump start their own program. When Blockbuster first purchased DVD Rental Central, they rebranded the site as FilmCaddy.com and quietely begun using it as a testing ground for what would later become Blockbuster Online. After Blockbuster moved FilmCaddy.com from the testing phase into the mainstream they rebranded the site as Blockbuster Online. Perkovich later left the company and started a movie trading website named Movie Bandits.

MovieBandits Hosted on Zooomr

Movie Bandits worked a lot like Peerflix except you would mail your DVDs to a central location instead of directly to another customer. Movie Bandits was an interesting idea, but one that never took off. The registration on the site is still active, but currently nothing being hosted there. Interestingly enough though, like Netflix co-founder Jim Cook, Perkovich also tried to start his own Netflix for Wine program through a website named Wines-Shiped.com, but that never took off either and currently Movie Bandit’s parent company lists that domain for sale.