This is a great interview. But, the guy that started Zaarly worked at an organization for a few years that allowed him to get in contact with huge stars with lots of followers. He even mentioned emailing Ashton Kutcher well before starting Zaarly.
This is similar to how Kevin Rose was able to get Digg insanely popular within a short amount of time (through Cnet).
The morale of the story? Know how to utilize your connections.
The idea is genius and I can see why it's successful. It fills a very real need that otherwise hasn't been filled with services like Craigslist and Ebay.
I tried Zaarly, encountered a bug, and -- for the first time ever -- had someone actually respond in the Olark chat widget when I said something about it.
(After googling them, the person who responded was a "marketing coordinator", so hopefully my bugreport gets passed on unmangled to the developers. Still, very cool to have anyone at all actually responding to me.)
Members of the Zaarly team from pretty much every department sits on the livechat at different times. Everyone from marketing to design to development spends time on there to learn from actually talking to users first hand.
Your bug report will be delivered untarnished, I assure you (=
We were actually surprised at the lack of results relative to more traditional media and PR coverage. Getting celebrity tweets helps to get a few users, but it won't get you close to 100k in a few months if you don't do the other things right.
There's absolutely more to this video than just that. I've been pondering the whole "chicken & the egg" predicament for my launch; just as recently as earlier today. I've yet to find/hear a good recent startup story about going 0-100 in a heavily 2-sided business. A lot of the bigger, hyper growth startups (Yelp, GroupOn) seemed to single marketplace launch. It's great to finally hear of someone doing a large launch and the tactics they used.
Thanks Andrew, I felt it was one of your best interviews.
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.
Wow, the Zaarly story blows my mind. It rivals the Airbnb story. Since their launch I've always wondered how they overcame the initial "chicken and egg" problem.
Get past the first 15 minutes or so, and there is a ton of value in this video. I highly, highly recommend watching the entire thing.
You're right David but, as someone who has built a couple of marketplaces, I find that founders often don't spend enough time on the "tougher" side. The common mistake (been there, done that) is to spend something like 60% of your time building the harder side and 40% of your time building the easier side. Instead, you should probably spend something more like 98% of your time building the harder side and 2% of your time building the easier side.
Which is the harder side? Generally, it's the people with the money. :) However that's not always the case. If you've stumbled into a massive market with high demonstrated spend it might actually be harder to build the supply side. I'd side that's likely the case with a company like AirBnB (they've done a great job building both sides of course).
If you can build the more difficult side (usually demand) it will typically pull supply out. It typically doesn't work the same in the opposite direction.
I've been a paying subscriber for a few months. It's hit and miss. The value you get really depends on how well the information lines up with your particular business model.
A lot of the courses feel more like product demos ("here's the hard way to do it, or you could just sign up for my service, look how easy it is"). Not that they're worthless, but it's hard to give impartial advice and pitch your product at the same time.
(And you can't really expect people to just give away their best secrets. The best tricks are the ones that would stop working if everyone was doing it...)
That said, a few of the courses have inspired me to explore ideas I would have otherwise dismissed, and some of those ideas have worked out pretty well. Ultimately, $25/month is not a lot, if I bring in one extra sale, I've made a profit.
I've been consuming the free interviews for about a year and subscribed to Mixergy Premium about 2 months ago and it rocks.
I wrote a blog post the other day with a list of things you can do to afford Mixergy Premium in 2012[1] which is basically just me saying I think it's awesome and valuable and that $200 for 1 year is such a small amount of money that you can make it back in any number of really trivial ways.
Andrew also offers a 100% money back guarantee so that if you think the paid service is junk he just gives you your money back. Can't lose! I love it. Keep up the great work Andrew :)
Mixergy is awesome. The thing I love about it is that it gives you tons of things to try out.
No one single interview is going to give you the silver bullet for your business, though. In fact, many times you'll hear one interviewee say "Tactic X was wonderful" and then another say "Tactic X was worthless."
But there's so many good interviews and Andrew is great at extracting the core of the ideas that there's no reason you or I couldn't try the tactics and see how they work in our respective situations.
[+] [-] paulhauggis|14 years ago|reply
This is similar to how Kevin Rose was able to get Digg insanely popular within a short amount of time (through Cnet).
The morale of the story? Know how to utilize your connections.
The idea is genius and I can see why it's successful. It fills a very real need that otherwise hasn't been filled with services like Craigslist and Ebay.
[+] [-] gwillen|14 years ago|reply
(After googling them, the person who responded was a "marketing coordinator", so hopefully my bugreport gets passed on unmangled to the developers. Still, very cool to have anyone at all actually responding to me.)
[+] [-] davidspinks|14 years ago|reply
Members of the Zaarly team from pretty much every department sits on the livechat at different times. Everyone from marketing to design to development spends time on there to learn from actually talking to users first hand.
Your bug report will be delivered untarnished, I assure you (=
David Spinks Enforcer of User Happiness
[+] [-] jamesgagan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewWarner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsharp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aslewofmice|14 years ago|reply
Thanks Andrew, I felt it was one of your best interviews.
[+] [-] instakill|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jscore|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jscore|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesgagan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kurtvarner|14 years ago|reply
Get past the first 15 minutes or so, and there is a ton of value in this video. I highly, highly recommend watching the entire thing.
[+] [-] davidtyleryork|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonbischke|14 years ago|reply
Which is the harder side? Generally, it's the people with the money. :) However that's not always the case. If you've stumbled into a massive market with high demonstrated spend it might actually be harder to build the supply side. I'd side that's likely the case with a company like AirBnB (they've done a great job building both sides of course).
If you can build the more difficult side (usually demand) it will typically pull supply out. It typically doesn't work the same in the opposite direction.
[+] [-] peteretep|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaosmachine|14 years ago|reply
A lot of the courses feel more like product demos ("here's the hard way to do it, or you could just sign up for my service, look how easy it is"). Not that they're worthless, but it's hard to give impartial advice and pitch your product at the same time.
(And you can't really expect people to just give away their best secrets. The best tricks are the ones that would stop working if everyone was doing it...)
That said, a few of the courses have inspired me to explore ideas I would have otherwise dismissed, and some of those ideas have worked out pretty well. Ultimately, $25/month is not a lot, if I bring in one extra sale, I've made a profit.
Just don't expect pre-packaged miracles.
[+] [-] timjahn|14 years ago|reply
In my eyes, Andrew Warner is the same caliber of interviewer as Charlie Rose. He's a natural and was born to do it.
This results in very thorough interviews that provide actionable tips that you can think about and apply to aspects of your own company.
[+] [-] dools|14 years ago|reply
I wrote a blog post the other day with a list of things you can do to afford Mixergy Premium in 2012[1] which is basically just me saying I think it's awesome and valuable and that $200 for 1 year is such a small amount of money that you can make it back in any number of really trivial ways.
Andrew also offers a 100% money back guarantee so that if you think the paid service is junk he just gives you your money back. Can't lose! I love it. Keep up the great work Andrew :)
[1] http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/A_list_of_things_you_...
[+] [-] WadeF|14 years ago|reply
No one single interview is going to give you the silver bullet for your business, though. In fact, many times you'll hear one interviewee say "Tactic X was wonderful" and then another say "Tactic X was worthless."
But there's so many good interviews and Andrew is great at extracting the core of the ideas that there's no reason you or I couldn't try the tactics and see how they work in our respective situations.
[+] [-] davidspinks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andygcook|14 years ago|reply
You can get the podcasts for other episodes here - http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mixergy-audio-podcast-cha...
[+] [-] DSauter|14 years ago|reply