Truemors: How Guy Kawasaki built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09
(Photo Credit: Karagos)
Guy Kawasaki talks lessons learned, and numbers involved in creating Truemors last night at PARC.
The Numbers
0 - Number of business plan drafts
0 – Number of pitches made to venture capitalists
7.5 – Number of weeks from registering truemors.com to launching it
4,500 – Cost of software development by Electric Pulp
4,824.13 – Cost of legal fees to set up new company
399 – Cost of logo from LogoWorks
1115.05 – Cost of domain registration
55 – Total number of domains registered to “surround” truemors.com at Network Solutions
1.5 – number of full time employees
3 – Number of times Tech Crunch wrote about Truemors
261,214 – Number of page views first day
14,052 – Number of visitors on first day
0 – marketing budget
24 – Number of years spent to make $0 marketing budget possible
405 – Number of truemors posted on first day
218 – Number of truemors deleted as junk, spam, or inappropriate on first day
3 – Number of hours before the site was hacked
36 – Number of hours before Yahoo recommended that we do not use their hosting service
29.95 – Monthly Yahoo fee
150 – Monthly break even after switching from Yahoo
2 – Number of days before Truemors was labeled the “ Worst Website Ever”
246,210 – Number of page views on the day Truemors was labeled the “Worst Website Ever”
150 – Number of Google hits the week before launch
350,000 – Number of Google hits after 11 days
The Lessons:
- The blogosphere is full of angry people
- $12K goes a long way these days
- You can work with a team that is thousands of miles away
- Life is good for entrepreneurs these days
Questions? Ask in the comments