

How Angie Started Her $60M List - petercooper
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703843804575534493983291732.html

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Mc_Big_G
_Q. You literally knocked on people's doors?

A. Yes. I was a pretty reserved, quiet person, so that was one of the hardest
things I've ever done. I remember one of the first houses I went to, her name
was Patty...she bought two memberships...Then she asked me: How many
memberships do you have now? I said, 'Well, that makes three!' (Laughs.) ...To
this day I thank Patty for taking a leap of faith._

This is almost my exact experience with Foreverlist except that I went to an
auto swap meet and walked around for two days taking photos of cars and
talking to people. At the end of the second day I had no actual paying
customers, mainly because I was offering the first month for free, and then a
guy named Mike approached my wife at the booth and asked if I could meet him
at his car. She called me and I literally ran over to his car. We talked for a
while and I took photos of his car.

A few hours later he showed up at the booth and I had already created his
listing and showed it to him. He paid me immediately, despite the free month
and then, to my surprise, told me WHY he paid me. He told us about something
he had read on the internet which was this:

 _"If you associate the letters of the alphabet with numbers and add them up
to get a percentage, you get 98% from the words "hard work", but if you add up
the letters in the word "attitude", you get 100%, so a person with right
attitude is always a winner…"_

That's a pretty cool way to get your first customer.

~~~
eru
Nice. (Though the quote is completely nuts.)

~~~
Mc_Big_G
_Though the quote is completely nuts._

haha Yeah, but he meant well. :)

~~~
eru
Yes, and Bill Gates surely adds up to 666%. (You just have to choose the
numbers right.)

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loganfrederick
Two of the angel investors in Angie's List teach at Ohio State University,
where I go to school. Anecdotally:

-Both have said it's worked out as a great investment.

-One had about a 20% stake when it was first started (not sure where his stake is now).

-The other had the most interesting story. One of the people (based on the prof's story and the article, I assume it was Bill Oesterle) went to my professor pitching for the funding. After the pitch, my professor wrote Bill a check and Bill responded back with something to the effect of, "Are you ready to lose this money? Because you're never going to see it again."

It's had a happy ending for everyone I know who is involved.

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adelevie
Her first office/storefront was in a small city near Columbus called Bexley.

I know this because the storefront used to be a baseball card store that I
frequented back in the day. I remember resenting Angie's List while having no
idea what it actually was--but somehow it was to blame for putting the card
store out of business!

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thewordpainter
i wonder if she had started it today if she would have been able to charge all
the money up front?

as much as it's exclusive info, i think many more people would be inclined to
start a similar company.

as it is, she has probably shielded off some would-be competition by her
market share.

~~~
there
i think most people now would ask, "how is this better than yelp?"

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I think if you asked 1000 people on the street, by far a greater percentage of
them have heard of Angie's List than Yelp.

I've been using the web since the days of ISPs providing a browser with their
own brand (I'm looking at you, Netcom!) and email & Usenet before that. I
_still_ have never heard Yelp mentioned outside HN, but I hear "sponsored by
Angieslist.com" on NPR all the time.

Don't underestimate the power of offline marketing.

~~~
there
i suppose it depends on the area. i'd say a far greater percentage of people
around here (chicago) know of yelp than angieslist. businesses have yelp
stickers on their front windows in these neighborhoods.

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vaksel
if Angie's list was legit, they'd let you see the names of the companies and
how many reviews they had before you signed up.

the fact that you get 0 information before you signup, just tells me that this
is just a scheme, where they trick you into signing up, hoping to collect that
first month's revenue. I mean hell...they even have a "sign up fee" on top of
their dues.

The whole "paywall is a way to keep fraud out", is just bs. Any business can
pay the $10 bucks to get reviews. $100 gets you 10 reviews that people would
actually trust..which is worth the "investment".

~~~
alexro
Don't they offer a free one year before switching you to a paid account?

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vaksel
only in new areas where they have nothing to offer you.

~~~
alexro
That's brilliant. During this first year they build up their inventory on the
reviews the free members give away. And then charge new members from day 1.

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pitdesi
I've never used the list, but I don't understand what she offers that Yelp
won't soon offer when it reaches critical mass in those categories... Am I
missing something? The things that they list as "differentiators" don't
actually differentiate significantly from Yelp... and it's $50 a year!
<http://www.angieslist.com/angieslist/visitor/howitworks.aspx>

~~~
wtracy
Reviews on Yelp are anonymous, which provides opportunities to game the
system.

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thwarted
Seems like anyone with $50 could game angieslist's system.

~~~
bmelton
You've got to believe that significantly reduces the likelihood of somebody
writing a bot to register new accounts and vote-bomb the service though. I
mean, having written the occasional ballot-stuffer in my day, I don't know of
too many customers who'd be willing to pay $50 for each entry, or at least if
they were, that would probably reduce the number of fake votes from thousands
to one-offs.

~~~
thwarted
There's no doubt that a $50 charge is a significant hurdle to overcome for
someone wanting to ballot box stuff _using a bot_ on a review site, but for
this to be a legit contrast to "free" or "anonymous" services, you have to
assume that the free/anonymous sites are overrun with bots stuffing the
ratings. Each review/vote counts for more if there are less of them. Look at
any on-line review site: the wide majority of the entries have at most a
_handful_ of reviews/ratings. In order to attempt to influence that one way or
another, you only need to have an extended family-size worth of accounts ("Hey
cousin Bob, use angieslist to find your next plumber, then can you write a
negative review of my landscaping competitor?"). The key is how the site
mitigates that. angieslist charges $50 to discourage it -- angieslist also
discourages it by having reviews of services you don't continuously need/use a
lot of (how many painters can one person hire and review?). Yelp has automated
review filtering technology. I assume Google has some algorithmic method. I
don't know what citysearch does. I don't think _which_ method you use to
discourage/mitigate ballot box stuffing matters as much as that you do have
_something_.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog, and nobody will even _suspect_
you're a dog if you have $50. Exactly how much verification of the accounts
occur? I guess for $50, angieslist can afford to follow up on every account.
But in order for that to be effective, the people who pay $50 have to think
they are getting $50 worth of service/benefit out of it. It seems to be
effective in angieslist case. I, personally, don't use enough of the kinds of
services that angieslist lists in order for $50 to be worth it (although, I
guess getting screwed for $51 by some shady service provider just once might
be enough to make it worth it).

