(the marketing part starts around minute 37 of the above 51 minute video from Jawed Karim–the often forgotten 3rd Youtube co-founder)

a) Pitched a bunch of Wired.com reporters. Womp, womp. Didn’t work, got no replies.

b) Pitched VCs. Womp, womp. They thought youtube was “cute.”

c) Email all their friends. Womp, womp. Followed HotorNot.com’s formula, as the HotorNot.com guys never did any marketing beyond emailing their friends.

d) Put up ads on craigslist asking women to make 10 videos and put them on youtube, and the youtube founders would pay the women $100 (if the founders liked what the women looked like). Womp, womp. The youtube founders got no responses.

e) Revamped Website (e.g., external player, related video, easy video sharing). Ding, Ding, Ding! Youtube grew in popularity on Myspace. Slashdot.com covered youtube.com and the traffic never went down after that coverage. The frequency of viral videos grew as more users uploaded more videos.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “I need to do what youtube did—revamp my product”. If that’s what you’re thinking then I’m really sad. Letter c) from above should suggest that following somebody else’s blueprint just isn’t the key. You have to play to your strengths.

The youtube guys didn’t have any friends at Wired.com. They didn’t have any friends at a VC firm (although one of the youtube guys is related to Jim Clark of Silicon Graphics and Netscape fame). They didn’t have any “sneezers” for friends. Los Angeles, where the craigslist ads were posted, didn’t have women that were interested in posting videos to youtube.

What youtube did have was this: experience at paypal, which sold to eBay for over a billion dollars, Chad – a UI expert with an art background, Steve and Jawed skilled/tested developers– helped scale paypal from couple hundred users to a 60 million users over 5 years. You don’t learn how to scale like that in school boys and girls.

What do YOU have??? Play to YOUR unique strengths.

How much effort does it take to say “Hey Everybody! Look at me! Buy my stuff! Support me! Send clients my way! Give me! Give me! Give me!” This is an instant turn off. What ever shall we do? Allow me to explain a scenario that really happened, and exemplifies the notion of selling around a product.

So what happened?
1. I thought what he had to say was interesting.
2. I realized that I never heard of this Richard St. John guy.
3. I decided to see what this dude has done, so I Googled his name.
4. I went to his Website and watched the 6-minute version of the 2-minute video above.
5. I tried to discover why this dude is qualified to tell me anything.
6. I checked his offerings.
7. I went to Amazon.com to see if I could “look inside.”
8. Test drove his book by using the “Surprise Me!” feature…repeatedly.
9. I like what I see, and I purchase the dude’s book.
10. And now I just blogged about this dude…again.

What Richard St. John did, YOU want to do. Not once did he mention that he actually had a book in his 2-minute presentation. He was just interesting enough to cause me to seek him and his offerings out. Focus on being interesting, or “remarkable;” that is, worth remarking about.

So why not make it easier for potential users to discover your value proposition? You should really have a demonstration of your Website on youtube or some other video sharing Website. Examples are forthcoming.

Clearly this applies for things outside of Websites. Do you have a new useful tool for farmers? Maybe the tool is for housewives? Do you sing? Do you dance? Maybe you cook? Maybe you’re a public speaker? How great would it be if people could at least get a sample of what you talk like without having find your Website.

A lot of little changes have been happening all over the Site. The goal obviously is create net value for the users, and so the minor changes should do that. I’m sure the minor changes are far from over. So by today next week, I’m almost certain there will be some new/different/modified stuff up at eSposure.

More later…

• 1st place was patented technology to manage your online information.

• 2nd place was technology to help prevent people from missing their medications.

• 3rd place went to some sort of cancer thingamajig.

So I like to make predictions, b/c if it comes to pass then I really seem psychic.  Who am I fooling?  Anyways, I believe that I said in a previous post that Indiana seems to like the biotech side of things when it comes to competitions. I suppose the non-biotech folks just got to work harder! The folks that won 2nd place IMHO, from speaking with them, I (or anyone for that matter) can tell they are well on their way.

In other news, I was accepted into the Ycombinator’s startup school. I can’t wait to go.

Regarding esposure site development, there’s a high likelihood that the countdown may have to be pushed back once again :o(. Oh how I love the dip.

The biggest ideas were selected to pitch. Apparently, esposure.com wasn’t considered big enough idea. So I didn’t get the opportunity to pitch. I will, however, have the opportunity to pitch on Friday. I will be competing against faculty, grad students, and Research Park (Purdue’s Incubator) companies. This time the prediction is that I WILL PLACE in the elevator pitch contest.  I know people in the Midwest have a slight bias toward biotech sort of stuff.

The Website

I should be talking with the developers tomorrow about the status of the Website. This should be the final round of feedback. I’m so confident, in fact, that I’ve resurrected the countdown clock from the dead!

So it’s been a while since the last update. So here’s a quick update:

• Another 5 – 6 business days for the esposure to be fully implemented

• Executive Summary for Esposure has been submitted to Incubcity for consideration

• I will be competing in the elevator pitch contest at Indiana Entrepreneur Bootcamp

Now it’s prediction time! Otherwise, why would I write this blog post :o). I predict esposure.com will take home the 1st place spot. They only give you 1-minute to pitch, so I’m going to have to get innovative and create a completely new pitch from my incubicity pitch. This will be interesting…stay tuned.

I can’t put my finger on it, but I got a “feeling” about this bootcamp…

So I decided to just kill the countdown clock. I just saw the current state of the Website, and it’s unclear when the esposure launch will be right now. We got a ways to go, but this is all a part of the Dip.