
What is viral marketing? (original article by Steve Jurvetson) - sharpshoot
http://www.dfj.com/cgi-bin/artman/publish/steve_may00.shtml
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sharpshoot
If you read founders at work, sabeer bhatia of hotmail argues that DFJ claim
they came up with the concept. I wonder if this is true :)

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brlewis
Technically, this article does not conflict with Bhatia's account on p. 22 of
Founders at Work. "It was actually Jack's idea to do that. We ran it by our
VCs just to make sure it was OK. When you alter somebody's email, you've got
to be very careful."

The article writes, "Tim Draper persuaded the company to include a promotional
pitch for its Web-based email with a clickable URL in every outbound message
sent by a Hotmail user."

According to Bhatia, Tim did persuade the founders that it was a good idea;
it's just that the idea didn't originate with Tim.

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zaidf
It is sort of ironic(and of course, debated) that the concept of viral
marketing came out of a VC's mind:)

