It’s taken a few days for me to process this, but my startup, Stir.com, is no more. On Friday, May 14, we shut down the servers, turned our traffic over to Singlesnet, and began to prepare for the next phase in our careers. That day might have been one of the hardest I’ve yet experienced.
Over the last two years I’ve literally spent every spare moment thinking about my website. Our team dealt with the twists and turns came our way. Some were our own response to the marketplace, and others were part of a strategy tax. Regardless of the source, the team found a way to make the impossible happen.
A few months ago we got an even greater challenge. Make more happen with even less. Go viral, with less resources. Even after our marketing budget was reduced to virtually zero, we started to grow our traffic. After reducing the size of the team, we continued to put out feature after feature. We had a new design ready that would be far more user friendly. After nearly hitting bottom, I was starting to have hope.
Then we had a meeting with our former GM.
Even with some positive momentum, we were told that we weren’t part of the strategy anymore. Even our role as “skunk works” for experimental acquisition and features wasn’t going to be needed. We were done.
I’ve given a lot of passion to things in my life and this was no different. We’d been in survival mode for a long time, and I worked obsessively enough that I even stopped going to wine tastings with a group that I helped form. The sacrifices were real, and after all of that it truly and deeply hurt to see it all go away.
We were never a normal startup. We didn’t have the pot of money in the bank that we had to manage and we never had to worry about making payroll. We had a corporate parent that could fund us with some portion of their profits from other endeavors. That meant they could pull funding whenever they wanted. We were a budget item more than an investment.
I’ll say that I’m proud of all of the things that we accomplished. I feel more confident than ever with my ability to execute on bold strategy. Here’s to the next startup
Sure lots of people have tried plenty to make money of the internet, but it really comes down to two basic options. The first, make a lot of money off of a few people. The second is make a little of of a lot of people. There are a few that manage to make a decent amount off of a lot of people, but that’s the dream of everyone.
Making just a bit off of a lot of people is in so many ways the common business on the internet. Anything that relies on advertising as it’s business model falls into this category. Content businesses, blogs, photo sharing, etc. Successful ones can make decent amounts, but there’s a real hard part to these businesses. You have to get the lots of people to make that work, and usually that takes investment. This is a tough place to play. Ever since I had heard of the Internet, people were talking about eyeballs and meaning this model.
The other option is the rarer one. Make a lot off of a few people. Theladders is a solid example of this. They’ve sliced off only a small portion of the market, and asked them to pay to participate. While part of what they are selling is exclusivity and intent, they cleverly segmented in a way that they can make a decent amount off of an individual. They can take this cash and invest to get more people, making a nice cycle of growth.
There’s a moment of truth with making a lot off of a few people. It comes when you ask someone to get out their credit card and pay you for the value you’ve delivered. If too many say no, you never had that kind of business in the first place, and you are back to needing lots of people and eyeballs.
I’ve also seen some people convert their lots of people into a few devoted paying customers. Texts from last night is releasing a book. Only a small percentage of their audience will actually buy it, but it’s worth lots more to them than the advertising. Bloggers become consultants for particular industries or business ideas. One engagement can pay more than months of ad revenue.
There’s a constant in the good businesses. They have some people that see extreme value in the product they deliver. Sometimes it only takes a few.
Tags: Business, business models, investment, value
There’s a media darling out there that’s been hard to ignore. It’s been on South Park, the New York times, and college campuses everywhere. I’m talking about Chatroulette. The issue with it is also very obvious in the coverage. The aynomous nature of it creates some really bad behavior. Most notably, people exposing themselves on camera. While it’s part of what makes it so talked about, it’s not going to help in the long run make it a destination that people want to return.
At DownToEarth, I learned quite a bit about dealing with bad behavior. We implemented RealRatings to verify profiles, using other people to help reward good behavior. We implemented other tools that helped us kick out those bad actors. Now, we’re taking those lessons and applying them to StirChat.
To be honest, it took us a bit to get to this point. We started out with just a basic video chat with more or less the same as ChatRoulette. We had to have the basics right before we moved to our advanced version. I’m happy to say that we’re now ready to show off our video chat tool, Stirchat.com.
We’ve just launched a leaderboard on the site. During the conversation, a member can rate someone as “cool” or “fool” and this helps determine their ranking. If a person chooses to register, they can keep their rating over multiple sessions. Registration is optional, and we don’t reveal the username to the other person. This should help incent good behavior on the site, while still keeping the air of anonymity There will be more benefits for these users over time.
On the other side of the tracks, we know how to get rid of bad behavior. Early tests aren’t perfect, but they’re also promising. I’m convinced that we can solve the penis problem.
We’re excited about improving such a media darling. I’m eager to hear what other people think of our improvements.
Our slogan – More Talk, Less Cock.
Tags: chatroulette, Stirchat.com, video chat tool, webcam chat
Just a bit ago I was named General Manager of Stir.com. It has been an interesting transition to stay the least. We’ve always had a very open environment and generally had some great team chemistry. We had a nice set of principles that everyone agreed with, and we all had a shared vision of creating a social network that was focused on getting people off the computer and out on the town.
So when I was given my opportunity, it’s not like there were a ton of changes that I had in mind. For the most part we were headed there anyway. None of the above has changed.
There is one thing symbolic about my move out of marketing and into a broader role. Going forward, our product has to be the marketing. Stir can be a remarkable site, and we have to build genuine word of mouth. I’ll have far less time to focus on paid marketing. Luckily I now have an intern to help with social media and other content creation. She’s turned out to be a real asset.
That’s also the challenge here. I’m good at the paid marketing model. I love to measure ROI, click rates, and work on improving cost of acquisition. I’m an experimentalist that loves to constantly improve his marketing. Now I’ll have to take those same principles and apply them even more to the product.
There’s also this aspect of my leadership that come through teaching. I’m used to being the expert on a the subject and helping my team learn in the process. Now I have to lead things that I don’t have expertise in. It’s a different role to tell people to do something you couldn’t do yourself. I’m excited for the opportunity, and I’m sure I’ll learn a bunch.
Tags: General Manager, Marketing, social media, social network, stir.com, Technology/Internet
Just a little thing we’ve been working on over here at Stir. We’ve seen that instant anonymous video chat is hot right now, especially for our user base. We created a website, stirchat, that’s starting very strong. However, we thought we could do one better. We’re letting everyone else in on the fun. We’ve made it into a widget that can be posted to just about anywhere. Facebook, iGoogle, myYearbook, or blogger. Just click on “share” and grab it for yourself. It’s very engaging.
Find someone to party with at Stir.com
More Party People. More Party Places.
Spring is finally here in Dallas, and that means that I could break out the shorts and head into the office via pedal power. It’s great to get back on two wheels. It’s been a while since I’d done it, so my ride was more than a bit slower than it used to be, and I’m more tired after the short ride than typical.
For me it’s a great way to fit exercise into my otherwise busy day at Stir.com. About the only other workouts that I get are lifting my kiddos who love to get thrown about. My daughter calls it “dancing”
I keep looking over my shoulder at the bike. It creates a strange pressure in the office. Its obviously far better if I get home before dark. Makes dodging the cars that much easier. The bike then becomes an ever present reminder that I need to leave at a relatively fixed hour. I’m not sure if that makes me more efficient or more edgy. It might be both.
It feels strangely good to get back to writing again. I’ve been oddly silent for a few months, for a reason that I’m about to explain. During this time I learned a lesson about what really drives me to do this, and how hard it is not to write.
The reason I’ve had to be silent is that I’ve known that we were going to be moving away from our dating site of downtoearth, and creating a meet and hangout site called stir.com. It was a drastic change of course, and revealing that information would hurt downoearth in the meantime. Why would you sign up for a dating site if you knew that it wasn’t going to be a dating site in a few months. I’ll have a post on the genesis of stir in a bit. There’s a lot to it.
I will say it absolutely stunk to watch out numbers go down month after month. There were somethings that people couldn’t see in our traffic, most notably that it was actually growing among young people, but as a marketer growth is my business and it felt like I was failing as as the numbers fell. But again, why would you continue to execute hard against a site that you knew would be transforming in a few months. Even worse, I couldn’t say anything in response. (I’m sure that PR people would advise never to comment on traffic numbers) I knew DTE could be growing, but I knew that I’d intentionally taken my foot off the gas.
I tried writing a few posts about things other than my life in a startup, but they didn’t really seem inspired. For that matter, I didn’t even want to write about the dating industry since I wouldn’t be part of it directly in a short bit.
Oddly it’s that life in transition stuff that you really want to talk about the most. Speak when you should be silent. Silent when you should speak. Just generally awkward. I was always worried I’d say the wrong thing. I had written a post about the “last” feature we’d ever launch on downtoearth, user interests, but deleted it when the tone seemed somber rather than triumphant.
In short, it feels good to be back. I’ve had a chance to launch two brands to the web in just over a year and that’s a pretty rare experience. It’s made me grow as a marketer and that feels great.
Tags: dating, downtoearth, Marketing, stir.com
When you are a kid, there are a lot of influences on you and your general outlook on life. Parents are obvious, music is pretty common, teachers are important. For me, there was one that was critical, and seems pretty unusual: the movie ‘Real Genius’ It happened to be on cable last night, and I couldn’t stop watching it.
Certianly, the movie has it’s fair share of quotable moments, but for me there was something deeper. There were a couple messages in in that I just needed to hear at that moment in my life. For that matter, I need to hear them often.
The first was that it’s OK to be smart. It’s possible to be smart AND cool. Prior to that moment, the two seemed on opposite ends of the spectrum. Once my eyes were opened to that possiblity, I started to meet more and more people that fit into that bucket. There was one, who’s name I will never remember, that introduced me to punk rock. He just oozed cool, and that moment of influence is still with me. It’s worth mentioning that I met him on a state math team competition, so it’s pretty obvious that the smart was there too.
The second lesson was that it’s possible to work too hard. There are times when you pour yourself into what you do. I’m guilty of it all the time. I love what I do, and success is important to me. I want to save the world, be a good dad and make a good wage while I’m at it. But, push too hard and it’s pretty easy to realize that you are likely to miss on one of those many goals. It’s pretty easy to crack under the pressure. I’ve found myself doing that on many an occasion, and when I do, I realize that i’ve let myself get out of balance. Sometimes you just have to let go and have a good time for a bit.
The third lesson was that you have to question authority. Ok, this might be a bit of a stretch. But the two geniuses were betrayed by their professor with less than pure motives. It meshes well with my general philosophy (and the punk rock from lesson one) so it seems important as well. People’s motiviations aren’t always what they seem. While it’s easy to be cynical about that, you can also just accept self-interest as a fact of life and expect it without assuming malice.
In the end, its one of those watershed moments that make you set off in a direction. Since then, I’ve wanted to be charming, smart, driven, fun, and inquisitive. It’s doubtful that the movies creators had such lofty goals in mind, but it really was an influence on me.
Tags: authority, life balance, Real Genius, work
One of the real advantages of working in a start up is the relatively limited number of meetings. I’m no fan of the meeting. It usually seems like there’s 10 minutes of useful information for every hour in a meeting. I do understand that they have some merit at times, but too often they get thrown for the sake of having a meeting. So much of our team conversation is informal and happens in small bursts. For that matter, we’ll often instant message one another, even when we are in the same room. It leaves my schedule very open, but my days really busy. Strangely, it feels perfectly natural to work in that way.
However, my home life is the complete opposite. The kids have to be dropped off and picked up at defined times. If my wife and I are going out, we have to plan for a babysitter and schedule that. It’s not uncommon for us to have three or four things that are scheduled in a day. There’s lots of overlap. We’ll have friends over, wine tastings, hockey games, skating lessons, church, and any array of other things. Of course, I also work lots on the weekend so I fit that in during all of the gaps. I kind of end up running from place to place.
It’s funny that the same bad habit that I had in meetings some times haunt me during my busy weekends. I’ll frequently check my messages at less than ideal times. Any little lull and I’ll make the move toward the Blackberry. It’s just as bad at home, where I’ll find my way to check not only my email, but twitter, webtrends and other feedback.
There have been nights where I have two happy hours, tickets to a hockey game, and family plans. It’s the overlap that’s the hardest part. Sometimes things just have to get cut short or blown off. I’ve had to make those drop in appearances occasionally. When there’s too much to do, that’s just a choice that has to be made.
Just while I have been writing this my wife added two things to my weekend calendar.
The strange thing is that I don’t think I would want it any other way. My family life might be more corporate than my professional life, but I’d rather enjoy the energy of the multitude of activity. I’d rather have a full day of activity than the lulls.
However, I still don’t understand people that are energized by a working day that’s full of meetings. Could some one please explain the thrill in that?
Tags: corporate life, family time, meetings, scheduling
One of the more interesting things about “living” online is the sheer number of places that we need to maintain our identity. From the social networking perspective, I have three: facebook, linkedin and twitter. All have their own followers/friends and all have different purposes in my mind. I try to keep facebook personal, linkedin professional, and twitter conversational. To me that’s the idiom that fits in each the most.
There are also a few promotional tools that are out there. We have a twitter account and a fan page on facebook for downtoearth. While I’m not the only one maintaining them, I do spend time thinking about how they are received and what is the best strategy
However, one could easily argue that a blog is another identity to be maintained. I don’t know the people who read this as well as those from my other identities, but they are very valuable to me. The public nature of my thoughts here doesn’t make it any different. Again I maintain two regularly. This one on personal matters and www.skal8.com for professional marketing observations and commentary. I also try to update a blog on wine tasting and notes, but usually don’t find the time to do much there.
Then there’s comments that I choose to place on others blogs. I’ll admit that I don’t do this very frequently, but when I do I always wonder to which identity I should link. I usually end up linking back here. It’s sort of a way to make a signature. With facebook connect, it’s even a bit different, since it brings in my profile.
To me it’s fascinating. I’ll admit there are elements of my life that I don’t want crossing. My family is a large part of my life, and i’d be willing to bet that dating industry analysts don’t have much interest. (for that matter I’m not sure I’m that interesting at all) I try to keep each area focused on a particular niche of my persona. I don’t add links to my facebook account on on skal8 to keep them separate. I’m also pretty sure that all of my personal friends don’t want to hear me trumpet every achievement I have professionally. I don’t want people to know everything about me. It’s not a matter of being devious. It’s just about being private.
It feels like I use all of these, at once (Photo: Stabilo Boss)
However, I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. It all seems to bleed over the more I get possessed and involved. All of this stuff takes time, and I have less and less of that than I ever have. I’ve seen tools that integrate some of these identites, like tweetdeck and various blog widgets. Any advice on the best way to do all of this?
Tags: facebook, identity management, linkedin, social networking perspective, twitter