Clovis graduate gains big attention with Web site

Law student calls his site the YouTube of documents, with 500,000 viewers a month

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In the past few months, a Clovis graduate's Web site has been the talk of the Internet.

Law school student Matthew Dildine, who graduated from Clovis High in 2000, helped launch a Web site in October that now gets more than 500,000 viewers a month.

Dildine, 26, calls his site the YouTube of documents. The site -- www.docstoc.com -- is a growing library of more than 120,000 professional documents. Users can upload or download documents such as rental agreements or cover letters for free.

"You do these things and they kind of take a life of their own," Dildine says. "People use this site for all kinds of reasons. It's kind of crazy."

Chinese pop fans download sheet music of Guang Liang, a musician from Malaysia. Teachers share lesson plans, and law students browse through hundreds of legal documents.

The site, less than a year old, has attracted the attention of Internet leaders. Docstoc's investors include a co-founder of Myspace, founder of LowerMyBills.com, founder of MP3.com and an investor in Biadu.com, China's version of Google.

"We have some really big time investors in our industry," Dildine says. "When we say those names, people turn their heads."

Dildine grew up in Clovis where his entire family currently lives. He and his wife plan to settle here after he finishes law school at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Dildine got his start in the World Wide Web at his father's Clovis consulting firm where he designed Web sites for the family company. He and his father plan to open an Internet-based business when Clovis is his home again.

"We have always liked the idea of having a family-owned business in Clovis because we love the community and believe in its future as a center for technology," Dildine said.

He's also says he's looking forward to regular trips to Full O' Bull Sandwich Shop.

In the meantime, law school and Docstoc are Dildine's priorities.

Docstoc is the brainchild of Jason Nazar, the company's founder and chief executive officer. Nazar owned a consulting firm for new businesses and had trouble finding professional documents for his clients. He decided to do something after spending hours on Google looking for employment agreements and financial documents.

"It was really hard for people to find documents for professional use, so I saw an opportunity to build something like YouTube or Flickr for documents," Nazar says.

YouTube and Flickr are Web sites that allow users to share video clips and photos.

Dildine and Nazar, who met at law school, began talking about creating a Web site where users could share documents. Dildine helped design and market the site over take-out food.

"Our meetings were at a kitchen table with Chinese food, and now we have an office in Beverly Hills with employees and law firm bills," Dildine says.

The company receives income from investors, who have donated about $750,000 so far. Eventually Nazar and Dildine plan to sell the site for millions. They may not be far off from their goal. During its first month, Docstoc had 200,000 viewers and the site has garnered the attention of industry experts. The company was asked to be one of 40 presenters to speak at a prestigious Internet convention in San Francisco, which was attended by the brains behind Facebook and Yahoo.

"Everybody who's anybody in the Internet industry was there," Dildine says about the three-day conference called Techcrunch40.

Dildine attributes his Web site's success to the service it provides to Internet users.

"At the end of the day, we're offering a product that people need," he says.

During the Web site's first month, Dildine and Nazar combed the Internet for useful documents and downloaded their own documents from law school. They held online competitions for "computer geeks." Whoever uploaded the most information to the Web site won an iPod.

Dildine marketed Docstoc on popular Web sites to attract more traffic to the site. Nazar visited college campuses to introduce the site to students.

Kenneth Natelborg, a Docstoc user, found out about the site after Nazar visited one of his college classes.

The law student now uses the site to study for exams. Docstoc is the leading provider of free legal documents, according to Natelborg.

"I use it to look up everything. It really has tons of documents on it," Natelborg says. "If you're looking for any kind of paper on anything, it's got it."

E-mail Gabriel Alexander at galexander@clovisindependent.com.