We do a lot of crawling various data sources. We spent over 3 years building a really great infrastructure to do this well. This is how we can present rank tracking for you and your competitors over time. The last time I checked, I think the number was actually over 500k... I should update that page!
They are also a big company that donates to the government so I doubt they're expecting serious ramifications from this bill's passage to their bottom line.
Yes, and then in the interview, Mr. Warner says something like "if people think they can just watch these interviews, take notes and then replicate the success, they are delusional". So he's pretty much admitting the article is pure link bait and there's not much chance another startup will have the same luck. Bo Fishback himself says in the interview that it's unlikely it could be replicated.
The thing is, I actually do want to be able to watch, take notes and repeat the steps other founders used to get traffic and users. So give me realistic and concrete examples of what is possible for the average founder to do to get users.
For example, the other day I went on Yahoo Answers and answered a bunch of questions with links to my website. It was boring and tedious, but the next day I had about 100 referrals to my site from Yahoo Answers. That's the kind of thing I want to learn about - it's simple enough, repeatable and it works. Just doesn't make for sensational headlines.
Here are some of the things they did to get to 100k members. (I couldn't squeeze them into a headline, but the substance belongs in the interview, not the headline.)
- Bo got well-known backers because he did something that many other founders put down -- he got a job. He worked for the Kauffman Fund, which introduced him to the startup community's founders, investors and other supporters. He built up a reputation by helping the community. That helped him get top investors and supporters.
- When some of his famous backers tweeted links to his site, he converted those hits into email subscribers so he could build a relationship with people who were interested in Zaarly's vision of the world.
- He converted early fans into communities. These communities met both online (Facebook) and offline (meetups) and helped introduce others to Zaarly.
- Zaarly cultivated evangelists, some of those evangelists came up with promotion ideas that Zaarly's team couldn't have come up with on its own. One guy lived on nothing but what he could order on Zaarly, as a way of dramatizing how helpful the service could be.
- To ensure that new users who wanted to hire help on Zaarly got service, it partnered with other companies. At SXSW, for example, they teamed up with rickshaw drivers and paid them to fulfill requests. (If anyone reading this is trying to build an online marketplace and is having trouble solving the chicken and egg issue, I think our discussion of how Bo activated his marketplace through partnerships like this will really help.)
I don't want to turn this comment into a rehash of every point in the interview, but I promise that I care about useful tacts and ideas. I give you my word that I go after them and pack them into my interviews.
That headline is backed by hours of research before the interview, and a mutual goal with Bo during the interview.
Thanks, Andrew, for posting a transcript of the interview as well as a summary of some of the things Zaarly did to reach 100k members. From reading the transcript, it appears that being featured in the Apple and Android app stores was also extremely helpful. I was surprised to see the press exposure didn't really help, though.
Andrew, I just watched the video and reading your summary here actually helped me a lot in synthesizing what has been told in the interview.
I just wanted to let you know I got a lot of value in reading your summary too. The tactics outlined in the interview stood clearer when you wrote them in a list.
Excellent synthesis Andrew, thanks for summarizing this. From my perspective, you really nailed it with the third and fourth points -- fans, communities and evangelists. It was truly amazing to see how excited people got about Zaarly and how it's morphed into a really unique and active user base.
I'll probably get down voted for saying this but that's one of the reasons I'm jumping off the Android ship this year, and, no, I'm no aApple fanboy.
I've had the original Nexus, Nexus One, Nexus S and wanted to buy the G Nexus but if google/samsung are willing to put a device that can't function under normal operating environment, then they shouldn't have done at it all.
See, with the iPhone (4S), I know Apple would never put out a device like this. It might not have things like a notification LED that blinks when u have a message, but the thing is bullet proof -- it just works.
The mentality is certainly different. I want a finished product, and not be a beta tester for a company.
It's no accident Apple sticks to their time-proven design: small 3.5" screen, no LTE, etc.
And as I get more busy with my life (business, etc), I could careless about the "openness" of the Android platform--it's not like I'll be compiling ROMs all day.
I just want something that works and won't let me down in the 11th hour and with Apple I know that won't happen.
Well, i don't think there is much of a difference between an iPhone and the Googlephones i had. It's round about one day of usage for both. You can get more days with less usage and turning off stuff, for sure, but ever since Apple and Google entered the market i've not seen a substantial difference in battery life.
I am wondering which manufacturer will be the first to deliver a decent smartphone that works for one week, that'd probable one of the best selling smartphones ever sold..
What would be the refill/recharge time for this car? Is the alternative to have a 100gallon gas tank or towable battery array?
I can charge my phone in under an hour. I can do so in the car, at my desk, or any of hundreds of other places given the ubiquity of micro-usb. For me, once I can go all day on a charge any excess capacity just means more weight/bulk.
A week-long battery would be obscenely large, the phone unnecessarily heavy all while providing nearly zero benefit to my use case.
I like how you use the word "phone".. a few years ago i had a phone that held weeks without recharging, that was awesome.
Now: god forbid if i forget my charger when on business trips!
Battery tech is constantly advencing too, but instead of using that extra power for longer battery life they put in more useless stuff. Who needs a fing barometer in his mobile!?
And by "phone" I mean "always-on internet-connected portable computer". Come to think of it that may be the source of the dissatisfaction: thinking of your device as a phone rather than a portable computer that also makes phone calls.
Can any reasonable person honestly think manufacturers aren't trying; really? It's starting to sound like a people actually believe this is a conspiracy.
You are aware that there is a difference between software bugs hitting a subset of users, and a deliberately putting in features that the battery cant support, like gigantic screens and LTE, no?
I just got a 4S, and it seems noticeably worse than my 4 (which I only had for a few months after its initial release). It might just be that I've been playing with it more in the first week of owning it (coming off a year and a half with no smartphone), but the battery has consistently been down to 5% after 12 hours.
