

Zaarly: How To Get 100,000 Subscribers In 3.5 Months – with Bo Fishback - andygcook
http://mixergy.com/bo-fishback-zaarly-interview/

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paulhauggis
This is a great interview. But, the guy that started Zaarly worked at an
organization for a few years that allowed him to get in contact with huge
stars with lots of followers. He even mentioned emailing Ashton Kutcher well
before starting Zaarly.

This is similar to how Kevin Rose was able to get Digg insanely popular within
a short amount of time (through Cnet).

The morale of the story? Know how to utilize your connections.

The idea is genius and I can see why it's successful. It fills a very real
need that otherwise hasn't been filled with services like Craigslist and Ebay.

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gwillen
I tried Zaarly, encountered a bug, and -- for the first time ever -- had
someone actually respond in the Olark chat widget when I said something about
it.

(After googling them, the person who responded was a "marketing coordinator",
so hopefully my bugreport gets passed on unmangled to the developers. Still,
very cool to have anyone at all actually responding to me.)

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davidspinks
Glad we were able to help!

Members of the Zaarly team from pretty much every department sits on the
livechat at different times. Everyone from marketing to design to development
spends time on there to learn from actually talking to users first hand.

Your bug report will be delivered untarnished, I assure you (=

David Spinks Enforcer of User Happiness

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jamesgagan
tl;dr - get ashton kutcher and demi moore to tweet about it.

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instakill
That's where I stopped reading.

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AndrewWarner
You're not curious about how he got those two people to invest in his company?
Or how he turned their support into subscribers? Or how Zaarly got those
subscribers to get their friends to try its service?

Even if you don't like me, I hope you don't lose sight of what Zaarly did or
what you can learn from it just because it has a few well-known backers.

~~~
Klinky
Okay how about "have a founder who knows Levar Burton & have him tweet to a
landing page before you're even live...". This is such a huge boost out of the
gate, I don't know why you try to downplay it.

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ajsharp
I'm one of the first engineers to join Zaarly, I've been with the company
since pre-launch (late April). I can tell you from analyzing the traffic
statistics myself that these traffic bumps are extremely short-term. Tweets
from celebrities give you a spike for a few minutes, but that's about it.
That's useful for sure, but it won't get you to 100k users by a longshot.

Still, if you're looking for a _lesson_ to gleam from the whole celebrity
thing, it's that networking is important in business (shocker). Networking and
connecting with people -- especially those who are well connected -- who are
excited about your business can be beneficial, but only if you do the other
things right (building the product, attracting users, etc).

But seriously, you're _completely_ missing the point if what you got out of
this was "find some celebs to rep your brand".

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Klinky
Regardless of how you slice it the celebrities were integral to the marketing
strategy of Zaarly _from the start_. They added credibility & interest that
would not otherwise be there, not just on twitter, but on a national level.
You talk to some news editor and ask them "some tech startup that's going to
do some marketplace thingy just launched..." & they're going to say "yeah, so
what?" if you respond "well Ashton Kutcher liked it" the editor is going to
say "Now that's somethin' we can write about!". Also every fluff piece in the
future is going to mention the celebs, who knows what that does for SERPs &
traffic.

Yes there were other social media & offline marketing strategies. Yes there
was a lot of hard work but you cannot escape that the title should have been
"Successful & seasoned founder with cash to burn & celebrity connections
garners 100k users in 3.5months." It's still impressive & he used his
connections & resources wisely. Kudos. My beef is less with Zaarly & more with
the title of the article.

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jscore
Wow, what a sensationalist headline, how's the CTR?

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jamesgagan
Yes, and then in the interview, Mr. Warner says something like "if people
think they can just watch these interviews, take notes and then replicate the
success, they are delusional". So he's pretty much admitting the article is
pure link bait and there's not much chance another startup will have the same
luck. Bo Fishback himself says in the interview that it's unlikely it could be
replicated. The thing is, I actually _do_ want to be able to watch, take notes
and repeat the steps other founders used to get traffic and users. So give me
realistic and concrete examples of what is possible for the average founder to
do to get users. For example, the other day I went on Yahoo Answers and
answered a bunch of questions with links to my website. It was boring and
tedious, but the next day I had about 100 referrals to my site from Yahoo
Answers. That's the kind of thing I want to learn about - it's simple enough,
repeatable and it works. Just doesn't make for sensational headlines.

~~~
AndrewWarner
Here are some of the things they did to get to 100k members. (I couldn't
squeeze them into a headline, but the substance belongs in the interview, not
the headline.)

\- Bo got well-known backers because he did something that many other founders
put down -- he got a job. He worked for the Kauffman Fund, which introduced
him to the startup community's founders, investors and other supporters. He
built up a reputation by helping the community. That helped him get top
investors and supporters.

\- When some of his famous backers tweeted links to his site, he converted
those hits into email subscribers so he could build a relationship with people
who were interested in Zaarly's vision of the world.

\- He converted early fans into communities. These communities met both online
(Facebook) and offline (meetups) and helped introduce others to Zaarly.

\- Zaarly cultivated evangelists, some of those evangelists came up with
promotion ideas that Zaarly's team couldn't have come up with on its own. One
guy lived on nothing but what he could order on Zaarly, as a way of
dramatizing how helpful the service could be.

\- To ensure that new users who wanted to hire help on Zaarly got service, it
partnered with other companies. At SXSW, for example, they teamed up with
rickshaw drivers and paid them to fulfill requests. (If anyone reading this is
trying to build an online marketplace and is having trouble solving the
chicken and egg issue, I think our discussion of how Bo activated his
marketplace through partnerships like this will really help.)

I don't want to turn this comment into a rehash of every point in the
interview, but I _promise_ that I care about useful tacts and ideas. I give
you my word that I go after them and pack them into my interviews.

That headline is backed by hours of research before the interview, and a
mutual goal with Bo during the interview.

~~~
aymeric
Andrew, I just watched the video and reading your summary here actually helped
me a lot in synthesizing what has been told in the interview.

I just wanted to let you know I got a lot of value in reading your summary
too. The tactics outlined in the interview stood clearer when you wrote them
in a list.

Thanks for everything you do with Mixergy.

~~~
AndrewWarner
Thanks. I'm looking to hire a writer this year to do this kind of summary for
my interviews.

I can see that it'll be helpful.

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kurtvarner
Wow, the Zaarly story blows my mind. It rivals the Airbnb story. Since their
launch I've always wondered how they overcame the initial "chicken and egg"
problem.

Get past the first 15 minutes or so, and there is a ton of value in this
video. I highly, highly recommend watching the entire thing.

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davidtyleryork
Balancing the two sides of a marketplace is one of the toughest tasks for an
early two-sided platform. Great work!

~~~
jonbischke
You're right David but, as someone who has built a couple of marketplaces, I
find that founders often don't spend enough time on the "tougher" side. The
common mistake (been there, done that) is to spend something like 60% of your
time building the harder side and 40% of your time building the easier side.
Instead, you should probably spend something more like 98% of your time
building the harder side and 2% of your time building the easier side.

Which is the harder side? Generally, it's the people with the money. :)
However that's not always the case. If you've stumbled into a massive market
with high demonstrated spend it might actually be harder to build the supply
side. I'd side that's likely the case with a company like AirBnB (they've done
a great job building both sides of course).

If you can build the more difficult side (usually demand) it will typically
pull supply out. It typically doesn't work the same in the opposite direction.

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peteretep
Mixergy looks good - can anyone comment on if it is?

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chaosmachine
I've been a paying subscriber for a few months. It's hit and miss. The value
you get really depends on how well the information lines up with your
particular business model.

A lot of the courses feel more like product demos ("here's the hard way to do
it, or you could just sign up for my service, look how easy it is"). Not that
they're worthless, but it's hard to give impartial advice and pitch your
product at the same time.

(And you can't really expect people to just give away their best secrets. The
best tricks are the ones that would stop working if everyone was doing it...)

That said, a few of the courses have inspired me to explore ideas I would have
otherwise dismissed, and some of those ideas have worked out pretty well.
Ultimately, $25/month is not a lot, if I bring in one extra sale, I've made a
profit.

Just don't expect pre-packaged miracles.

