
High School teen turns down $8M in ads on his popular Covid Tracker site - onetimemanytime
https://www.businessinsider.com/high-school-student-avi-schiffman-made-a-coronavirus-tracker-2020-5
======
PragmaticPulp
The $8M number is unverified. It's a claim that the guy has made to various
media outlets. He's now also claiming he's given up an estimated $30m in
advertising revenue, again by his own estimates:

> One offer in particular would have contracted Schiffmann to keep up the site
> for $8 million, which he turned down, and he says he likely could have made
> over $30 million if he'd put up his own ads, but he says that's not the goal
> of the site.

Obviously, someone with an $8 million advertising budget would rather just buy
the site from him for a few million. Also, no one I've talked to had seen the
website before these media stories. Something's up with the claims.

In fact, his site doesn't appear to have been all that popular until all of
the news articles about "Teen creates popular website" started circulating on
March 3rd:
[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ncov2019.live)
If anything, it appears that the popularity was bootstrapped by getting media
attention claiming the site was popular.

I have no doubt he has a lot of traffic, especially after bootstrapping it
with all of these media pieces about turning down $8m, but I think he's
smartly realized that the reputation boost of having a popular website and
multiple media pieces from large outlets is worth more in the long run than
what he'd actually receive from legitimate advertising sources:

> Instead, he cares more about the connections he's made from the project.
> "Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow,
> they'd at least read my business plan."

I just hope he doesn't overplay his hand and lose people with increasingly
exaggerated claims.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Early March was also the time people really got scared of Covid so...

As for the claims, yeah they are his claims and no doubt he's milking it for
traffic. If he has anything close to 30m visitors a day, no doubt a lot of
"cures" and related stuff can be sold. But it may short lived, all he has
others can do it.

>> _" Now I know a ton of VCs and investors...if I started a company tomorrow,
they'd at least read my business plan."_

I made $XX million in 4 months when I was 17 also opens doors. And the money
is, essentially, FU money.

