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How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

mixergy.com

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Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#11

Post by [deleted] »

grosenbush wrote: post #7
axod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the title really puts me off. Similar titles that put me off: "How I built a startup in N hours" "How I built a business with just $N" where N is designed to be small to increase click through. In society we're all looking for too many short cuts. Too many easy fixes. Fat? Nah - don't exercise and eat healthily, get a diet pill! Also the whole rags to riches story is a really tiresome angle to take on things IM…

Agreed but if you listen to Mixergy the #1 message that I hear from the guests is that they put so much hard work into their businesses. The titles get people to click the links but the interviews stand for themselves after that. Keep up the great work Andrew!

[deleted]

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#12

Post by SwellJoe »

Mongoose wrote: post #8

Whitepages.com always seems to recruit very aggressively at career fairs at my school (U of WA). They'll be at a booth nestled in between Intel and Google pitching their hearts out. Commendable, to say the least. However, they majorly over-played the "rockstar programmer" meme by handing out branded drumsticks and guitar picks last year. I always laugh upon noticing my pair of Whitepages.com drumsticks when unpacking…

And, yet, you still have the drum sticks...and everyone that happens to think highly of you will let a little of that goodwill rub off on the brand that's on your sticks. That sounds like an excellent marketing expenditure, to me.

The best you can hope for from schwag is that most of what you give away doesn't get thrown away, and actually gets used for a few months, or longer. Sounds like this one worked out well. At conferences, you can always tell what the worst schwag is by looking in the trash cans on the way out of the expo hall. The stuff that gets thrown away immediately is utterly wasted; the stuff that makes it into the suitcase and gets back home with someone is the good stuff.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#13

Post by Mongoose »

SwellJoe wrote: post #12
Mongoose wrote: post #8

Whitepages.com always seems to recruit very aggressively at career fairs at my school (U of WA). They'll be at a booth nestled in between Intel and Google pitching their hearts out. Commendable, to say the least. However, they majorly over-played the "rockstar programmer" meme by handing out branded drumsticks and guitar picks last year. I always laugh upon noticing my pair of Whitepages.com drumsticks when unpacking…

And, yet, you still have the drum sticks...and everyone that happens to think highly of you will let a little of that goodwill rub off on the brand that's on your sticks. That sounds like an excellent marketing expenditure, to me. The best you can hope for from schwag is that most of what you give away doesn't get thrown away, and actually gets used for a few months, or longer. Sounds like this one worked out well. A…

I'm not arguing against the efficacy of the drumsticks. They're vastly more unique and useful than the heap of lanyards, mints, and stickers that accumulate after conferences or career fairs. They're one of the few pieces of schwag that I'll probably have with me 6 months from now. So, in terms of their goal as marketing tools, they're perfect. My only issue was with the overuse of the "rockstar" title being applied to developers.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#14

Post by thesethings »

Mongoose wrote: post #13
SwellJoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, yet, you still have the drum sticks...and everyone that happens to think highly of you will let a little of that goodwill rub off on the brand that's on your sticks. That sounds like an excellent marketing expenditure, to me. The best you can hope for from schwag is that most of what you give away doesn't get thrown away, and actually gets used for a few months, or longer. Sounds like this one worked out well. A…

I'm not arguing against the efficacy of the drumsticks. They're vastly more unique and useful than the heap of lanyards, mints, and stickers that accumulate after conferences or career fairs. They're one of the few pieces of schwag that I'll probably have with me 6 months from now. So, in terms of their goal as marketing tools, they're perfect. My only issue was with the overuse of the "rockstar" title being applied…

Agreed on the rockstar thing. I started to see a lot of people complain about this, so I wrote about it here: http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping-grandmas-and-ninja-...

You're exactly right with the overuse. It didn't have to be innately bad to say "rockstar," just a couple of things have conspired to make it so...

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#15

Post by frossie »

On the more general topic of whitepages.com:

The thing that frustrates me about whitepages and similar sites is they don't allow me to build up my own phonebook. Say I want to look up the number of a restaurant - after I have done that once, I want to add it to a virtual address book, maybe even something I can sync with my mobile phone (eg. via Google contacts or something else that nuevasync supports).

Does anyone here know of a site allowing that?

I know, I know, I have asked this before... (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=754175) - hope springs eternal, though.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#16

Post by coffee »

seiji wrote: post #2

I thought we convinced mixergy to both stop making crazy headlines and to remove the "VOTE FOR ME!" link on pages? :-\

Mixergy's content is stellar, nothing spammy about it, so what's wrong with a "VOTE FOR ME!" link and headlines that grab your attention... Are we all against marketing quality content?

The fact that the headlines even cause a stir is all the reason to keep'em...

Stop all your crying, go watch some of his interviews, and learn something...

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#17

Post by dusklight »

Hey Andrew I'm glad to see how much work you are putting into becoming a better interviewer, I haven't watched all of your interviews but from the ones I have seen, I can see you are really refining your technique and pushing the boundary between what your interviewees want to reveal and what they actually reveal.

But you gotta decide once and for all, are you going to be an asshole or not? Because I can see your frustration when you catch your interviewees in a lie or manipulation of the truth, and you let them get away with so much because you want to be nice. Go for the kill!

You don't have to be aggressive or adversarial to get at the truth -- for example, Sacha Baron Cohen and James Lipton are 2 very different kinds of interviewers, but they have both learnt how to put their interviewees in a position where truth is revealed. You do have to be willing to allow some people to hate you because you made them tell the truth, because some of them will. Otherwise all you are going to get is the same ol marketing PR spiel again and again.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#18

Post by rasikjain »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #3
seiji wrote: post #2

I thought we convinced mixergy to both stop making crazy headlines and to remove the "VOTE FOR ME!" link on pages? :-\

I actually didn't realize I used this formula for my headlines until someone pointed it out here on HN. Now that I notice it, it saves me so much time to search for an alternative.

Great interviews by Andrew all the time. The range of questions Andrew covers are phenomenal. Just finished listening to one of his old interview with founder of Twitpic.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#20

Post by mynameishere »

dusklight wrote: post #17

Hey Andrew I'm glad to see how much work you are putting into becoming a better interviewer, I haven't watched all of your interviews but from the ones I have seen, I can see you are really refining your technique and pushing the boundary between what your interviewees want to reveal and what they actually reveal. But you gotta decide once and for all, are you going to be an asshole or not? Because I can see your fru…

Sacha Baron Cohen...learnt how to put their interviewees in a position where truth is revealed

Absolutely false.

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