I don't mean to belittle I Move You in making this comment, but would companies like this exist (as companies, not side projects) if they didn't have programs like ycombinator to catapult them into the spotlight? It seems to me that without the adrenaline shot that is ycombinator + techcrunch, one would have an incredibly difficult time successfully bootstrapping an idea like this that depends so much on the network effect.
I don't think your comment necessarily has to be viewed as belittling them...obviously a big part of getting into ycombinator (or any other credible incubator) for startups is the opportunity to get access and credibility (and getting into the program to begin with says something as well because it is competitive and the idea does happen to have the potential to be a homerun due to the so-called network effect, especially with some sort of groupon like approach to monetizing these activities). To those who say someone got it just because PG liked them, of course the charisma/leadership of a founder is a major factor in success, and the ability to forge strategic partnerships (friends of your business) is huge. Bootstrapping and owning the whole pie is great, but of course you have to have some knack for marketing your idea and figuring out creative PR because no one is going to find you hiding in your garage (ie to actually see your service and signup). Ycomb and techcrunch are two great 'shortcuts' so to speak but obviously aren't the only ones.
So in reference to your question about whether they could actually exist as companies rather than hobbies without Ycomb and techcrunch, I'd say 1) it's a good thing they have those avenues to take a shot at succeeding with their idea and 2) i'd love to hear from other users what they view as some of the other top blogs and incubators that can make or break a young startup at an early stage.
PS the first thing i thought when i read about this idea is that i'd love to find a local activity with my wife as we've just had our first child and need to drop some ice cream related pounds :)
Actually I'm pretty sure PG hates me (jk). As a female, non-tech biz/dev founder, I don't fit the typical YC mold.
Andrey (my cofounder) is the amazing developer behind the entire product, and before we accepted YC money we bootstrapped the company for 6 months. I'd bootstrapped the company as an LLC for a year before that.
As our rate of growth started to accelerate, and we had more opportunities for revenue-generating deals (phenomenal as a 2 person team) we saw YC as the perfect opportunity to expand more quickly.
Could we do Contagion successfully as a bootstrapped firm? Sure. But we were also in a unique position to go after a larger opportunity.
We analyzed the 37signals approach, weighed the risks, benefits, and resources at hand, and decided to go with YC, a TechCrunch launch, and raising a seed round.
As for those ice cream related pounds, Andrey and I would be happy to help you move them off :).
No worries, we don't view this as belittling. I actually bootstrapped the company for a year, did the go into debt thing, give up possessions etc. before my cofounder Andrey joined up.
We also closed our first revenue deal at 600 users, pre YCombinator.
We discussed the benefits of YC in great detail before applying, and again before accepting the invite. In between, I met with 10 of the YC alum founders to learn what value they extracted from/redistributed into the program.
We went through a similar values clarification session before we accepted angel/seed money. The funding we've taken to date is convertible debt and will allow us to grow at a faster rate than a smaller, bootstrapped, 2 person 'lifestyle' business.
Pre TC launch, we were growing at a steady rate month/month with no effort/cost to acquire users, but we decided we'd like to catalyze the company with the adrenaline shot you mention.
As you said, the network effect is very challenging to generate with bootstrapped resources. When we saw the opportunity to grow at a faster rate, we went for it, and it's been a great ride so far.
Yes, there are plenty of companies out there that very much depend on a network effect and aren't Y Combinator-funded: Digg, Facebook, Quora or Stack Overflow, to name a few.
Additionally, 3 of the 4 had major PR behind them. Kevin Rose was on ZDTV/TechTV where he publicly talked about (and where I first heard about) Digg; the Quora guys got famous as the "ex-FB executives" who left to form their company; and Stack Overflow was huge because Joel is one of the most famous programmer-bloggers in the world.
The first, prototypical YC TechCrunch launch article doesn't always tell the whole story behind a company's history and founding (in our case there wouldn't be room ;).
Probably not. I'm currently bootstrapping a search sharing network at Seekier.com and it's extremely tough to gain any sort of traction without any previous exposure or network, which unfortunately results in me making replies such as this. The only alternative is to implement Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google Connect integration to help spread the word organically through those networks.
I think you are absolutely right...it will be extremely tough to gain instant traction without a previous network. However, as fast as the tech world moves, I think taking a bit of an old world approach can really pay off. Take a step back and think about forging real friendships and loyalties, and letting it happen slowly. You can build a lot of social capital by just doing favors for other people...but obviously try not to be Don Vito Corleone "Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me, and you won't refuse"
So, I want to encourage you to start building that network now that will become your 'previous exposure or network' by fostering genuine relationships with people you want to meet and even your current competition.
Obviously not. These are just a couple MIT/Ivy/Stanford kids who PG liked and decided to give 20k to spend time at summer camp. No one could bootstrap this. The technology inst hard to copy, so if it could be bootstrapped we see a lot of them. Also, it over relies peoples use of Facebook, Twitter.
Can you not be dismissive of others' efforts and accomplishments in this manner?
They have just launched. They haven't had any news, good or bad yet. PR and 20k is nothing. You could get that streaking a football game on national TV and selling some of your stuff. If you think media attention is worth something, you don't know anybody who has been famous and broke.
Let these people perform on their own merit before you write them off so callously.
Youre right. I wish them well. Hope they make millions. I just think these talented individuals would have done better for themselves had they not focused on a trendy/hipster social network site (do we need another?) and more on "bootstrappable" software businesses.
Is it really that trendy? We're trying to move online behaviour to real life. This is something that hasn't been done much, short of Groupon. But definitely hasn't been done much in the name of healthy actions.
Our next step is to build in sensors like Nike+ and do verified activities, which should be pretty cool but hardly trendy/hipster.
Actually, neither Andrey (my cofounder) nor I (Jen) graduated from any of those schools.
I am an English major (with a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies of all things), and Andrey graduated with a CS degree from UToronto (he's Canadian, eh).
We started by bootstrapping the company for 6 months.
You bring up an interesting point about our current reliance on Facebook and Twitter.
We recently added email functionality to help with that, but if you've got ideas about how we might improve we'd love to hear them.
Interesting concept. I think we're going to see gaming mechanics applied to a lot of social activities in the near future. This is a lot more appealing to me than checking in or something. Or at least it would be if I could do 50 situps and survive it.
This is such a great idea - I find that it's very easy to rationalize myself out of the goals I set, but as soon as another person is involved it makes it 10x harder to back out... it's sort of like the inverse of the Milgram experiment.
Why I think they are onto sthg: think of it as "behavior programming" (like Mydunktank we had put a short post on this http://blog.quantter.com/post/874726318/getupanmove-me-mydun...) It seems simple and stupid and may be overlooked as such but this what great ideas are made of. As pg said http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html: "if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign."
It's interesting that you say "behavior programming" because that is exactly how some would define marketing. This startup, in its current state, is basically just an outsourced marketing campaign for Cabot (that might be a bit reductive of the concept, but in terms of where the revenue is coming from, that's what this boils down to). It will be interesting to see if other companies sign on to the concept and adopt the same type of campaign. It will also be interesting to see how they deal with reinventing themselves when companies tire of issuing the "I Move You" challenge.
You're right. I compare the Cabot campaign to a glorified Facebook fan page with the added engagement of people doing things in real life around the Cabot brand. Lots more to move on from there.
As I mention in another thread, we're working on building in Nike+ and other sensors so you can actually verify you did something. That's our next big step.
1/ "behavior programming": it is what you do with it that determines if it is "marketing" or not. I think of the Gamepocalypse of Jesse Schell: games&reward mechanics are there (like mattmaroon just said). But now who will win? Big selfish shortsighted corporations driven by profit, maximizing shareholders wealth? or more open types of organizations driven by value to people first and money later.
2/ think of all the health pb in general. Huge. Now isn't it important for insurance companies or the government to get more healthy behaviors from us? The possibilities are numerous. And nobody has nailed this yet.
Therefore I agree it is interesting to see how they'll be reinventing themselves along the way.
You're absolutely right about our initial business model. We marketed 'activity campaigns' as an adjunct to traditional online 'ad campaigns.'
Instead of providing CPMS, we sold to Cabot based on a "CPA" model (clicks per activity).
We saw early that this pseudo-ad model would provide us with a nice small chunk of change, but would be mostly a biz-dev company and challenging to scale.
As a result, we're pivoting and moving towards a CPA2 model, where CPA = completions per action (this is where verifying the user has completed an action becomes vital).
Looks pretty nice. Small bug that I found while wanting to show the website to a friend: when you want to send a challenge by email and it asks you to login.. I get a 404 after email/password creation.
