We were actually surprised at the lack of results relative to more traditional media and PR coverage. Getting celebrity tweets helps to get a few users, but it won't get you close to 100k in a few months if you don't do the other things right.
There's absolutely more to this video than just that. I've been pondering the whole "chicken & the egg" predicament for my launch; just as recently as earlier today. I've yet to find/hear a good recent startup story about going 0-100 in a heavily 2-sided business. A lot of the bigger, hyper growth startups (Yelp, GroupOn) seemed to single marketplace launch. It's great to finally hear of someone doing a large launch and the tactics they used.
Thanks Andrew, I felt it was one of your best interviews.
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.
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.
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".
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.
