Reddit's co-founders populated the content themselves. This has been mentioned in interviews with both Huffman and Ohanian and can usually be found in write-ups about "Growth hacking."
43 karma · joined July 29, 2013
Hefner's story is far more fascinating of a case study. There's adversity, adoption to radical industry and cultural changes, there's controversy, and ultimately there's success through hard work and iteration. So, if you're a founder just now learning about Hefner because of his death, I strongly encourage you to go and read about him and his company's story.
I honestly think we're going to see Augmented Reality (AR) devices go through the same steps and backlash that Google Glass received until it finds the right place/industry to be used. Right now that's looking like education and design, but I could be wrong. Glass looks like it's going to own the medical field if the revival of the product is handled correctly.
Toward the end of the book, Harris talks about how being zen is great, but also not terribly effective in the modern world, specifically in the modern workplace. So it's ok to be chill about some things, but there are other things you absolutely can and should get mad about. Otherwise, you're not living your life, you're just being a zombie.
Here's the other one: I almost died. It was July of 2013 and I was laid up in a NYC hospital for over a week after a near fatal heart attack almost took me out. All of my work, writing, consulting, speaking, all ground to a halt. (I even missed doing a Tedx talk. I know it's not the same thing as a TED talk, but still. It sucked.)
I wouldn't be able to work again for months while I recovered. By the time I got back up to speed, I had no money in my bank account and most of the places I was getting work from had dried up. The good thing about working in marketing is that there is plenty of work. The bad thing is that you're easily replaceable.
So, I started a new project involving building a hand built wire service for a tech company (because places like CISION are overpriced), and then I started advising tech companies exclusively when it came to doing PR without spending a ton of money. The work and word of mouth spread, and I was back at it almost a year later.
So, it's possible to start (or restart) with virtually nothing. The trick is getting to know as many people as you can and making sure you're regularly VISIBLE to those people. So even if you do go away for a while, you can easily remind them that you exist.
Then, you have to use your lunch hour or anytime you can sneak away to get the deal done.
That's if you have a budget.
If you don't, I like the idea of hiring a sales person.
P.S. I wrote a book on branding and marketing. If anyone reading this want a free .pdf copy, feel free to email me at bj@bjmendelson.com
But ...
1. People don't share how we often think they do. They can be selective. So the idea that you just need 1,000 and that 1,000 is going to love and share your stuff actively is kind of bogus. Maybe 100 of them actually do it, then the 900 others either sometimes (or not at all) pass on your stuff. So you need way more than 1000.
2.There's rarely such thing as a true fan (except, again, in rare instances.) Customer loyalty today can be gone in a second if you say or do the wrong thing. So there's an assumption you're going to maintain all 1,000 overtime that doesn't hold up. That means the alleged multiplier effect of having the first thousand doesn't (always) exist.
3. You might get 1,000 loyal people, but they don't have a ton of money or resources or whatever to sustain doing the thing you want to do. 1,000 enthusiastic people who show up at your band's free show is great, but when only 25 of them show up to a paid gig, that's a whole other story, and this happens a lot more than you'd think.
1. The 1,000 True fans thing doesn't work. You need (eventually) 200,000 people who like you and your product / website / app / whatever to visit your thing twice a day. (That number comes from a successful mall developer in the US who runs multiple hundred million dollar properties. The 1,000 True Fans thing is sort of like The Long Tail book in that, it's great on paper, but not so much in reality.
2. I hate to say this, but it's all about the brand. WHY are people going to take their (increasingly) limited time away from something that they love to spend it with you. Yes, quality and consistency are key, but if you don't have the proper distribution, you can have the best stuff in the world and it won't get you anywhere because nobody knows you exist.
You have to develop something that is unique to you, that also is attention getting to other people. (I know, easier said than done.) Then, you need to position that something using other people's platforms and resources (media outlets, connections) to grow your audience. This has been true since the beginning in the Internet era, by the way. (Almost) everyone grew rapidly by using someone else's platform and audience to get there.
3. Finally, you should know your 200,000 people backward and forward. The first 1,000 you should know by name. What they like. What they don't like. What problems that they have. How do they spend their time. Where do they get their information from? And then engineer everything you produce around that, so that the next 199,000 that are like the first 1,000 think you're talking directly to them and not some vaguely defined general audience.
Email for the free .pdf book: bj@bjmendelson.com
This will sound weird, but I feel like eBay would probably be really good for that because people around the world are aware of it and have been conditioned over the years to expect to find anything. Even houses.
That said, eBay sucks. So there's certainly room to challenge it, but cutting into that kind of market share and brand awareness may take more money and publicity than it is worth.