How I Built a Web 2.0 Site for $12,107.09

So I do you have my. Okay, so I am the co founder of a company called Troomers. It's a long story. I'll give you the whole scoop. All right, so I was born a poor child in Honolulu, Hawaii. My father worked in the sugar cane fields. I worked at Apple from 1983 to 1987. I was Apple's software evangelist. It was my job to convince people to write software for computer that had no installed base, no development tools, no hard disk, which was okay because there was no software. And that's sort of how I cut my teeth in marketing. I went on from Apple to start several software companies. I was a columnist for Forbes at one time, for Macworld at one time, for Mac Week at one time. And then I returned to Apple in 1995 as an Apple fellow where I was chief evangelist officer as opposed to CEO. And then I left Apple to start a early stage venture capital firm called Garage Technology Ventures, where I still am. And that is my checkered past. How many of you use Macintoshes in this audience? This is a well enlightened group. Most of the groups must be because you're marketing. Most groups that I speak to are 95% Windows and 5% Mac. And after giving literally hundreds of speeches, I've concluded that the people who are using Windows are oppressed. That's the only explanation because no one voluntarily uses a Windows machine. On the other hand, no one refuses to use a Macintosh. So that is my background. And along the way I got this strange idea. I was a moderator of a panel at Stanford and it was a very interesting panel that had the CEO of farc a Hot or not high five, plenty of fish and suicide girls. These are not five sites you may have heard of, but there's five sites. And these sites were on slide also. So these sites are made up of these entrepreneurs. Most of them are one or two person operations and they were getting literally millions of hits. Millions of hits. And for example, Hot or Not, it's about five people. Have you heard of Hot or Not? Okay, how many of you have not heard of Hot or Not? This is how you separate the young people from the old people. It's probably because you're all hot. So you don't question whether you're hot or not. So the way Hot or Not works is you can put your picture up on Hot or Not and then the world can vote whether you're hot or not. So it's, it's, you know, it doesn't exactly change the world unless you're voted Hot. And anyway, this is a company that has founded by two guys and they, they came home from a party one night and they were trying to, they were arguing whether this girl was hot or not. And they said, well, why don't we let the Internet decide if she was hot or not and let's let people decide that. So they sent out literally 40 emails and in the first 24 hours, there's something like 40,000 hits on the site. And I heard that. And now apparently they're selling just millions and millions of dollars of advertising on this site. And I heard this story and I said, what am I missing? You know, there's no technology there, there's no patent pending, curve jumping, paradigm shifting business model. That's not a quote. V. What am I missing? So these two guys spend all day looking at pictures of good looking women. And that's their business. And they get paid for that. Now to make it even funnier. Of course, one of the problems with something like this is what about porn? Because anybody can upload a picture. So when they started, James Hong, who's one of the co founders, had his parents looking at all the pictures prior to posting. And then one day his father called him up and said, you know, we're seeing all these pictures of people having intercourse and various forms of sex. What should we do? And that's the day he decided that he really should hire more people because his mother and father were looking at all these dirty pictures all day trying to decide if they were hot or not. So this is a long intro. So I looked at that, I said, well, I don't want to do a site like that. I want to do something. And now I'll give you the romantic marketing notion. All right, so, because we're all marketeers here and you know, the way you can tell if a marketing person is lying is his lips are moving. So I'll tell you that the marketing spiel for my site, Troomers is that I would like to further the democratization of information. And we start. See, she's hot. She's hot. So we start off, you know, thousands of years ago where if you were the pope or you were a king, you had scribes and they would write things down for you and they would translate things for you and they would transcribe things for you. But obviously you had to be the pope or you had to be somebody very rich to have a scribe. Fast forward a few hundred years and they invented the printing press. So now you could print the Bible and many people could read The Bible. You didn't have to just be royalty or the Pope. Then. Fast forward a few hundred more years. There's Macintosh Laserwriter and Aldous Pagemaker, further democratizing information. Fast forward a few more years. Now anybody can have a website, but you still needed a computer. You needed to know HTML. You had to have a host, you had to do all this kind of stuff. Fast forward a few more years. Now you can have a blog. And on that blog you can tell the world. But you still have to set up an account with TypePad or Blogger or something like that. You still needed some expertise. So I wanted to make it even more democratic. I wanted it so that you didn't have to own a blog or a website or a printing press or a scribe or a Macintosh or a laser writer if you wanted to tell the world something. So I started a website called Troomers where you could post information, true rumors, hopefully. And you could post it by a text message via phone online, obviously email, or you can even call a phone number. Send 650-329-2020 and you can leave a voicemail. That voicemail will be transcribed into text and posted automatically on a website where thousands of people can read this. I don't care if you post I saw Steve Jobs driving in the carpool lane all by himself. I don't care if you unveil the next Watergate. I don't know if you are the first person to figure out that Paris Hilton's cellmate has now been picked so that she's with a nice person. That's the nature of the business. So I wanted to completely democratize information. That's what I wanted to do. So now end of spiel about Schumer's as a company. Now I'll tell you some numbers. And the title of this speech is How I built a web 2.0. For each time I use a buzz phrase, I get another million dollars in pre money valuation. This is a Web 2.0 user generated content, citizen journalism, long tail social media site for a grand total of $12,107.09. And the message here is on several levels. As marketing people and as entrepreneurs, I just want you to know that, you know, many VCs pontificate about how you should start a company and how hard it is to start a company or how easy it is to start a company. And you know, yeah, you should get on TechCrunch and you should get on Engadget and you should get on Boing Boing and we need to set you up with Walt Mossberg of the Wall street journal. Basically, VCs are full of shit. And so I wanted to find out what it's really like to start a company today. And so this is what I did. So the title of the speech is How I built a Web 2.0 user generated content Citizen Journalism Long Tail Social media site for $12,107.09. I will do this by revealing numbers that most entrepreneurs would not feel comfortable with revealing. But I'm a different kind of person. So the first number is zero, absolute zero. That refers to the number of business plans we wrote. Because I think that business plans are bullshit. It might be a good thing to get the founders together and you discuss the strategies and all that. But generally speaking, you have no idea. We have no idea what's going to happen with Schrumors. But everybody has it in this mind that VCs have this number, that five years from now we have to be at least a 50 million dollar company to be interesting. If we say 500 million, it looks like we're on crack. If we say 5 million, it's not important enough to be funded. So let's just pick $50 million, download the approved VC sales forecast that makes everything come out to 50 million and put it out there. Okay, so there were zero business plans. The next number is also zero. This zero is the number of VC pitches we made. We made nothing. This is a $12,000 company. You know, back in the heyday of the dot com days, you could raise $5 million if you could boot PowerPoint. Seriously. Believe me, I know. Because I wrote checks like that. I will tell you right now, if you can boot PowerPoint, you could raise a million dollars. Pretty much. It's not as frothy as before, but it's getting there. And so we decided we wouldn't do any pitches to VCs. And it's just, life is better because I'm a VC. I've been on the other side. And it's basically a six or nine month process. Don't let anybody kid you. I mean, the stories of two guys meet John Doerr at Bucks in Woodside and on the back of a Napkin they raise 5 million bucks. The reason why you hear that story is because it never happens. That's why you know who Wayne Gretzky is and Michael Jordan is not. Because everybody's Michael Jordan and everybody's Wayne Gretzky because it's so unusual. So we made zero pitches for venture capitalist. The next number is 7.5. 7.5 refers to the number of weeks from the time that we registered trumers.com to launching the site. This is a very interesting number. I'm not bragging about this because I'm technically an expert. I am not, I am not at all technical. But I'm telling you, in this open source world and we're using WordPress, you can go from the moment you decide on a company to actually open up a website in seven and a half weeks, this is unheard of. It used to take six to nine months and a million dollars if you're lucky because the programmers always say, and believe me, I've heard all the pitches, we have three proven programmers, I've worked with them for years, I know they can deliver six months later. Well, it's just not quite there yet. We may have to add another few more people. We need some QC people now. We need to raise another million dollars. So I'm basically telling you in this web 2.0 world, and I use that sarcastically, you can go from the idea to shipping in eight weeks. It really is possible. Another way of looking at this is before, it would take $5 million to do a stupid idea. Right now it takes a million dollars to do a stupid idea. Really, if you tried, you could do stupid ideas for $12,000. And this changes the dynamic. This changes the dynamic because now you don't have to raise money. $12,000 you could put on a Visa card, right? So you don't have to Suck up to VCs for six months. Life is good. You can do 80 stupid ideas. I mean, it's, it's a nice world. The next number is $4500. $4500 is the total cost that I paid for the software development of shipping or releasing troomers. Interesting story. I'm not at all technical. This could be zero. If I were technical, I could have done it myself. But I am not at all technical. But the point here is that when people tell you, well, we need a million dollars, we need to hire three engineers, they're going to work for 1.8 man years. It's not true anymore. 4,500 bucks. I hired a company out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota and I've never met them, I've never seen them face to face, but they delivered. So, you know, I guess I could have sent it to India, but it's not clear to me. India could design a website. Maybe they can program in COBOL for B of A, but not to design a website. So 4,500 bucks was the total cost of software development. The next number is $4,824.13. That was the cost of legal fees because I had to incorporate a company, I had to create stock, I had to do a lot of things. So it cost as much for legal fees as it did for software development. And that's actually good news. I mean, this number could be lower. It could be lower if I use my uncle, the divorce lawyer. The problem is, if I had saved $4800 here, knock on wood, if Trumer's ever become successful and it's acquired or we take it public, or, you know, who knows what will happen? I just don't want to have to spend $100,000 undoing all the stuff that Uncle Joe the divorce lawyer did, because the last time he incorporated a company was when he was a second year law student. And it was a sort of, you know, lab experiment in law school. So I think this money, $4,800, was well spent. We used the top tier local law firm to do all our corporate legal and corporate finance work. $4,800. The next number is $399. $399 refers to the cost of designing this logo. I use a company called logoworks out of Utah. The way logo works is you go up there and you write a brief and you say, well, the name of the company is Trumer's. I'd like it to be, you know, web 2.0.ish. I like it to be retro. I like it to be hip. I want fish in it. I don't want fish in it. I like sky blue. I don't like sky blue. I like sans serif fonts. I hate. I hate serif fonts, whatever it is. And they give you about 10 designs from three different designers, and you pick a logo. And then, you know, you go through this process of you saying, this yellow is too yellow, this black is, you know, sort of Steve Jobs mode, this black is too black. And you go through this process, and $400 later, you have a perfectly good logo. I mean, I might not win an award, but it's good enough. So that's what it costs to develop a logo today. 500 bucks, 400 bucks. $1,115.05. This is the total cost of all the domain registrations I had to do. This is an interesting number. So it costs one fourth of the development cost just to register domains, because. And second piece of data here is that, you know, how everybody complains that all the good domains are taken. Well, I'll tell you, Trumor's T R U E M O r s was not taken. You may argue that's not a good domain, but certainly you don't have to do all these kind of gyrations where you spell something purposely wrong with two X's and two K's so that you can get the domain. Trumor's was not taken. Tru mors was taken. I tried to buy that, but the guy said, well, I really don't want any money. I would like a percentage of the company. And I said, I don't think so. Now he is in an interesting situation, this fellow who owns trumors.com because in a sense, many people may type Tru mors thinking they're getting T r u e M O r s so he may get traffic because of me, right? On the other hand, I have so totally surrounded him that he cannot do anything with his website because I own Trumer's T R U E M O R S M O U R S In case you're from the UK, I own trumors.ca.de.tv.org.net. everything in total, I own this next number. 55. I own 55 domains, right? Related to the word Trumors. This is an interesting data point. You got to buy a lot of domains. Now, I had no idea. Now I did it wrong. I used Network Solutions, which is about four times higher than GoDaddy. Right? Theoretically, I could have done this for probably 400 bucks. Four or 500 bucks, I could have done at least half. But at the time when I did it, what was going through my mind was, God, you're only going to spend 12 grand. What's the difference if it's 12 or 12 5? Most entrepreneurs wouldn't think like that. This is a sign that I'm too old to be an entrepreneur. But I thought, you know, just as this was happening, there was a domain registration company that went out of business. And I thought, well, for 500 bucks, why don't we just let Network Solutions do it? It's like one less thing to worry about. And you know, GoDaddy had that ad on the super bowl where the woman was like flopping out of her dress. And I thought that was rather tasteless. So I cannot support GoDaddy in that. So that's why I did Network Solutions. So that's why there's 55 domains. So if you start a company and you really want to protect Your domain. Just figure, rule of thumb, you probably need to buy about 50 of them to protect it. Okay, the next number is 12,107 and 9 cents. And believe it or not, that is to the penny exactly how much we spent to launch Troomers. And again, I think this is remarkable that you really can do things cheap these days. Now you may think, well, you may say, you know, Guy Trumors is a stupid idea. And believe me, we got ripped in the blogosphere. I can tell you that we were probably mentioned two or three hundred times in the blogosphere. Maybe three were positive. Most bloggers said, this is a stupid idea. Guy should know better. Guy is lowering himself to Perez Hilton's level. Does the world need more gossip? It's only a WordPress stupid template. What's the big deal? They said it's just full of spam. 50% of the bloggers said it's full of spam. 50% of the Bloggers said Guy is censoring too much. I don't know which half to make happy, but you have to do one. So we've elected to kill spam and kill things. But the point here is that for 12 grand you get a shot. 12 grand, you get a shot. The next number is 1.5. 1.5 refers to the number of full time equivalents we have working on trovers. I'm the 0.5. There's also somebody working basically full time on it right now with me, my co founder. So one and a half people. Three. Three refers to this. This is the number of times TechCrunch wrote about Trumors. And I'll tell you, most marketing people, most entrepreneurs would be thrilled to be in TechCrunch once, right? You suck up to Mike Arrington, you want to be in TechCrunch because you heard TechCrunch can launch a company and we were mentioned three times. I wish I could tell you. Well, I could tell you it's because I'm this great marketing person and I really understand how to do marketing. So I'm three times what any of you are because your goal is one and I got three. Let me tell you something, I had nothing to do with this. Well, I mean I did and I didn't. So the way I got three was Michael Arrington found out about Trumors before it was public. So he thought he could like, you know, break the story. So that's number one. At the time, the website was password protected, so somebody gave him the password. So second mention was when he broke into the system took a screen dump and put it on TechCrunch. Make my day, Michael. I especially loved his justification because people were saying, well, you know, Michael, you violated Guy's non disclosure. He gave you this password, and you weren't supposed to, like, go in there and do a screen dump and make it public. You're violating something. And he said, no, nobody. I have no relationship, no NDA with Guy. Somebody just gave me the password, and I went there and did it. So I was thinking about this. You know, this is interesting morality. So what you're telling me is I went into this house and I stole everything. But I'm not a thief, because nobody told me the house was full of stuff. Nobody told me that the house wasn't locked. I just went there all by myself. So it's purely serendipitous. So I thought that was interesting morality. The third time that TechCrunch wrote about me is when we actually launched. So it was a very interesting phenomena. Three times to be in TechCrunch. The next number is 261,214. That is the number of page views on the first day we opened. Hallelujah. I could have never predicted this. I was amazed myself. And I will tell you, there's an interesting TechCrunch effect. The TechCrunch effect is the first day you get something like this. The second day, it drops by 3/4. The third day, you're back to where you were again. So this holy grail of getting in TechCrunch is a very, very temporary high. Don't get obsessed about it. The next number is 14,052. This is the number of visitors on the first day. This is the TechCrunch effect. This goes down to 4,000 on day four. Day five. The next number is 405. 405 refers to the number of trumors posted on the first day. Interestingly, the next number is 218. This is the number of trumors we had to delete. So roughly half was crap. Basically, this was guy socks. Trumor socks. Steve Jobs is an alien. You know, Amazon is a place where you can buy books. Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina. You know, just high quality stuff. Well, first. First of all, you know, guy sucks. It doesn't qualify as a trumor. It may be true, it may be a rumor, but it's not a true rumor. It's one or the other. So we had to delete half the stuff. This is down a lot now. We probably have to delete about 10% of the stuff today. And 3. 3 is the number of hours before the site was hacked. Very impressive. This is the most impressive thing I've seen about Trummers. Three hours after we opened, someone had already been able to shut it down. That was, you know. Well, most people would never admit that it could have been hacked. Very few people would publicize it like this. But I thought that was very interesting because, you know, I come from a company called Apple Computer, and basically Wozniak sort of hacked the AT&T phone system, right, The Bell phone system with his blue box. So that's my heritage. I admire people who can do this. I hope this hacker, whoever he is, becomes the next Wozniak and comes to garage for funding. But it was very interesting. In three hours, they had hacked the site. I was very, very. I was very impressed, Very impressed by that. 36. 36 is the number of hours before Yahoo. Small Business told us, you know, guy, you have too much traffic. You need to go away. Because we were in the Yahoo. Small business ISP business, you know, that part of their site where you can host a site with Yahoo. And they said, guy, we don't want you as a customer anymore. Very fascinating. That was one of the high points of my life. The day we were told we had too much traffic for Yahoo. $29.96. This was our break even point. Because per month, $29.90, if I could sell $30 of advertising, I would be profitable. I would be profitable. This is because that's what Yahoo. Small business cost until they threw us out. So once they threw us out, the next number is 150. 150 is our new break even point. So we. The bad news is we've quadrupled our break even point. Oh, my God. $151. That's all we need. If any of you want to run a banner ad for $151 a month, you could put me into profitability. Life is good. Life is good. The next number is 2. 2 refers to the number of days that Truman's was public before it was called the worst website ever, ever, ever. Now, how would you like to get up in the morning one day and find out that your company and website was called the worst thing ever? Not in news journalism. Not in the Silicon Valley. Not built on WordPress. No qualifiers. Ever, ever. You have the ugliest baby ever. This 246,210. That is the number of page views because the Inquirer called Trumer's the worst website ever. If you have the ability to get an online publication to call your company or product or service the worst thing ever, you will get a quarter million page views. Hallelujah. Again. I wish I could tell you from the outside looking in just amongst us marketeers here, you would think I planned all this. I planned the leak to Arrington. I planned the leak of the screen dump. I planned the launch. I planned all these bloggers ripping me. I planned the Inquirer calling it the worst website ever. I planned nothing of this. None of this is just pure dumb luck. The next number is 150. 150 refers to the number of Google hits that you would have gotten if you typed troomers into Google. 150. Okay then 315,000. That's the number of Google hits after 11 days. So we went from 150 hits to 315,000 hits in 11 days. I still don't know how this could have happened. There's a part of me that refuses to believe that there are 315,000 pages in the world with the word trumors on it. But if you can believe it, I can believe it works for me. But that's how fast Google can. I mean, your hits can increase in Google. 11 days. 315,000. The next number is zero. Zero refers to the absolute marketing budget. We spent nothing on marketing. Literally nothing on marketing. Everything was done by email. I sent an email to Michael Arrington saying that it's open now. Have at it. I sent an email to Seth Godden. And my close friend Seth Godden writes, you'll love this story. So in my blog called how to Change the World, I interview Seth. I talk about his book the Dip. I do all these things for him, right, to help him sell more books. Because I like his stuff. I like him. So I say, all right, Seth, can you write about troomers? And he says, yes. And he says, yeah, I'll do it next week when you're open. I say, fine. I'm expecting this glowing thing, right? And Seth writes, from the moment I saw Trumors as a beta site, I disliked it. Is that the funniest thing you ever heard? So you know, when Seth comes out with his next book, you probably won't read about it in my blog unless. Unless I say, hey, you know, I have a pre print, pre publication copy of this. And I must say, I disliked the book from the moment I read it. Very funny story. Seth is my friend 24. So this is not about Kiefer Sutherland. One of the things that I got ripped for was many, many people said the only reason why Troomers is getting any exposure is because it's Guy. So Guy's visible, Guy's obvious. Guy has a popular blog, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's the only reason people care. And so, you know, my take on this is, okay, you have a firm grasp of the obvious. Many people are writing about this because it's me. What am I supposed to do? I mean, so 24 refers to this factor of am I supposed to feel bad because I am who I am and I'm getting a lot of publicity for something I launch. What do you want me to do, hide it under a rock? You want me to call it fake GK? What do you want me to do? So 24 is the number of years I spent making so that I could ship something with zero marketing dollars. So it's not that this is a recent phenomena from 1983. Today, I've been working on my brand, my reputation, so that I could do something without having to buy an ad, so that I wouldn't have to suck up to Michael Erick, and so I wouldn't have to go to demo and spend 40 grand. So I wouldn't have to go to, you know, all things digital and suck up to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. I mean, that's the whole point, right? So 24 years and 4. 4 refers to the top four things that I learned from this whole experience. So the first thing is no longer do you need a million bucks to do stupid things? Now you only need 12 grand. Life is good. You know, I tell people, well, if I need more capital for troomers, I'll go make another speech to raise capital. In fact, I'll go make a third of a speech. TechCrunch effect lasts only a day. That you should know there's a myth about TechCrunch that it launches you forever. Really? I think the effect only lasts a day. Third thing I learned is that do it yourself marketing is not only possible, but it's fun and easy. I hope you can read into my body language that I am just having a blast. I just love doing troopers. And I think what's made it really fun is the fact that so many bloggers hate it. Really, it's universally hated, and it's a very interesting phenomenon. And, you know, I think all of us in this room, including, you know, including what you just heard from my colleague, the previous speaker, that, you know, we need to make sure that bloggers like it and bloggers talk about it and all that. Because bloggers can launch you. I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure the bloggers. If Trumer's fails, I guess the bloggers can claim credit that they tanked it. But if Trumor succeeded, it will definitely succeed. Despite what the blogger said, I am no longer convinced that a bad blogosphere reputation can tank a company. I am also not at all convinced that when the blogosphere loves a product that it means it'll be a success. I think it's just one data point. And if you were to stop or reverse yourself or change your path because of what the bloggers say, I think that would be a mistake. I think that the blogger Sphere is basically 2,500 people talking to each other. And you need to be careful about that. Don't go overboard trying to just suck up the bloggers. It's a different thing. It's not as clear as if the bloggers like it, everybody else will. Because bloggers are not normal people. Many of them are still living with their mothers. And the fourth thing that I learned, I'm sure that'll get into press and bloggers will hate me even more. As long as they say Guy Kawasaki, comma, founder of Troomers Linked, is an idiot because he says, I still live with my mom and we have dead cats in our refrigerator. So be it up the page count. The fourth thing that I learned is ignoring. Ignoring, not ignorance, is bliss. It really is. It's bliss. And it is absolutely necessary. You cannot let these people grind you down. They're going to tell you it can't work, it won't work. VCs will tell you it can't work, it won't work. Everybody's going to tell you it can't work, it won't work. If you listen to these people, these bozos, you will never do anything. Now, there are two kinds of bozos in the world. I really studied bozosity. There's two kinds of bozos in the world. One bozo, slovenly, disgusting, body odor, dandruff, pocket protectors, rusty old car. This bozo is easy to ignore. This bozo. You say you're bozo. Why should I listen to you? You telling me it can't be done, shouldn't be done, isn't necessary. I don't have to listen to you. You're a loser. Why would I listen to a loser? If you listen to a loser, you are a loser. That's not the dangerous bozo. The dangerous bozo is rich and famous. And therefore many people think smart. Big leap, Big leap. Okay? Rich and famous doth not equal smart. Not at all. And so this dangerous bozo dresses in all black German car, you know, country club for you women. This female bozo would have Prada, Kate Spade, all the good stuff, right? That's the dangerous bozo. Because that bozo, you say, wow, this person says it can't be done. That we can't give away infinite bandwidth and infinite server space and allow people to upload illegally obtained video. That company would never fly. And. And that Geez, eBay. This concept of ebay will never work because the fundamental premise of ebay is you have a crappy printer and you want someone to buy it without seeing it. It's not the fundamental concept of ebay. So the first question you have to ask yourself about eBay is, OK, so if I'm the buyer, how do I know the printer works? And if I'm the seller, how do I know I'll get paid? Besides that fundamental problem, there's nothing wrong with ebay. So if you're a bozo, you would have listened to someone like me say that. That's the problem with ebay. The problem with YouTube, you heard already. The problem with Google, it was the 10th search engine. The problem with Apple, two guys in a garage hacking into the AT&T phone system. These are people you want to fund to start Apple Computer? I don't think so. The message here is sometimes you just need to ignore people. This doesn't mean that if you ignore people and you do something stupid, you'll necessarily be successful. But if you ignore people and you don't even try, for sure you won't be successful. And I said, this is number four, but I'll give you a fifth as a bonus. The fifth thing is, boy, I really learned $12,000 goes a long way in this world today. You can really do a lot of damage with $12,000. And if you would like a copy of this presentation, I don't know why, but if you want a copy of this presentation, send me an email on guyrumors.com and my friends at Ethos3 Communications did this presentation for me because I know that I can't do great slides. Someone should tell Andy that too. But where is Andy? Where is Andy? Is he still here? Where is he? Man? I'm going to give him 12 grand to fix his slides. God. So this is. This is my presentation about troopers. And really I learned It's a very interesting marketing lesson. I hope you found it interesting. This is the numbers from the inside. This is how it really worked. So this is Trumors and this is how I started this Web 2.0 user generated content, social networking, patent pending, curve jumping. All we need is 1% of the rumors in the world and you know how much money we will make company for $12,000. Thank you very much. Thank. You're such a great speaker. Yeah, right. Why am I getting set up for something? I'm not getting set up. Honest. On behalf of the Silicon Valley, this is cool. We have given you a wonderful gift. How much you love. I love hockey and thank you so much. That is cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're so entertaining. We still have a couple of minutes if you'd like to do a Q and A. I got lots of time. Did anyone have any questions for Guy? We can get a mic up in the audience for questions. Anyone? Yes. How long did it take you to overcome the hacking that happened? About an hour. But it was a very tense hour. Probably show you this. Yeah, it was a very interesting, intense hour. Maybe it was two hours. But you know, it was kind of our fault. So if you put my computer back on the screen, whoever's controlling the box, this is what Troomers looks like. So the key here is, you know, we believe in total democratization of information. So this is how you can call that number. You can text the message via phone, you can send an email or you can post online. And we have here the latest area is whatever's just come in through the world. And the greatest is the people have voted these as the most interesting troopers at any given moment. To post something online. You just go over here and let's say your name is Valley Wag. Just picking a name randomly email and you choose a category. Like I don't know, I won't even pick a category. And you say Steve parks in handicap spaces. And you say that's Otto, right, That's his car. And that's all it would take you to submit a trumor. And that goes. And in about half a minute or even faster now you've just told the world that Steve Jobs parks in handicap spaces. So that's. I don't know how it could get more democratic than that. No registration, no nothing. That's what we're trying to do, make it as democratic as possible. So that's how Truman's work now. Am I not on Mike anymore? Did you cut the power? I should Put another slide up there. One number of microphones. Working as marketing people. I'll tell you something, I'm a marketing person and I appreciate guerrilla word of mouth marketing. So this is how you can use Troomers as marketing people, right? Let's say that you work for Yahoo and you're announcing a new kind of Yahoo website. Or you want to just sneak the fact that you're going to combine Yahoo photos and Flickr. So you go up to Troomers and you say, did you hear that Yahoo is announcing a new social networking website for left handed AARP members? Then you link to that website and now it's a trumor. As far as we're concerned, that's a trumor. Now if you went up and said, you know, visit the Yahoo website, click here, we would delete that because that's just pure advertising and marketing. So if you can, if you can position it as a rumor, we love it. If you just go up there and say, you know, I'll give you, well, let's say you own a wine store store. Okay, so you want to put an advertising. You figure out no one's really censoring it. It'll be up there immediately. Why don't we put special sale on Robert Mondavi Cabernet $29.95. Click here to buy. We will erase that. However, if you put up a trumor that says did you hear that? You can get Robert Mondavi Cabernet cheaper than any place else in the world at this we would leave it because now it's a trumor. So the point is, as a marketing person or as a PR person, put it up as a trumor. We would love it. Put it up as advertising. We will erase it. That's just how it will work. But I'm a marketing person. I appreciate how you can work the system. I'm offering you a system that is instant, free, unedited and reaches millions of. Not millions. I wish that would be a lie. And reaches tens of thousands of people. So have at it. God bless you. I hope you do it. Yes, over here. Do I have a business model? Oh God, I forgot. I'm glad you reminded me. So here's the business model. If we get a lot of eyeballs, we will be able to sell sponsorships and advertise. You see an ad here for Breitling Watch. Okay, so now we're making all our ads. Start with the text. Did you hear that? Breitling has a watch that can save your life. This is a Breitling emergency watch. This brightening watch literally can save your life. You see that big knob by the five o' clock position? If you unscrew that and pull it out, it puts out an antenna that broadcasts the emergency signal. So if you're a backcountry helicopter skier and you get lost, you pull that out and airplanes within five miles will get the signal and they will rescue you. I mean, this is not a watch you pull out because you took the wrong exit on 101. So this watch can literally. This watch can literally save your life. Right, so this is the kind of advertising we want to run. Let's say you work for Audi. Audi has a new coupe coming out called the A5. Beautiful coupe, arguably the best looking coupe made. If Audi said guy, would you run an ad that said, did you hear that Audi makes the best looking coupe in America? With a picture of the coupe? We'd run it. That's the kind of advertising we want to do. So if you have a product or service that you can make some kind of claim like, did you hear that we have the cheapest. Whatever. Did you hear that we have the best resume service? Did you hear that we have the best pasta in town? Did you hear that the best real estate broker in Woodside is, you know, Alain Pinal? Whatever. All I need is $151. That's it, baby. $151. Life is good. Hundred fifty one dollars. If I sell tumors for $12,250, I make a profit. So that's what our model is. Yes. Behind you. Are you concerned at all? Are your lawyers concerned about any legal issues of libel scams? That's why there's a $4,500 legal bill. Yes. You know, we, I'll tell you, I've been very pleasantly support that there's very few libelous and slanderous things. Now we have in our terms of use not to do this. Don't do this. We will delete this. We also have in our terms of use, we are not responsible for anything posted, you know, blah, blah, blah. So there is some danger there. So we have insurance, we have all this legal mumbo jumbo to cover it. We are deleting crap, no question. But so far there's been very little. And I think it's because all the bloggers got it out of their system in the first day. So maybe they don't want to do it. I don't know what it is, but there's been very little. But you have to think about this. So yes, someone could go up there and say, guy beats his wife. Okay, as a trooper, we will erase that immediately. But it could be up there. Now here's the thing. So we didn't say that. So it's not like we slandered Guy, somebody else slandered Guy. Now you might say, well, you provided the mechanism for which the slander to occur. But if you apply that test, you know, how many of you have companies with websites where people can comment? You know, don't tell me only two of you. What? Everybody else works for a chip company. So you know, almost every company where you have a website you can put in comments. Almost every blog has unmoderated comments. Right. So you could go to TechCrunch today and say, I don't know, you know, Jane Doe is a cocaine addict who beats her daughter on TechCrunch in a comment on anything. And it'll be public, it'll be there immediately. What's the difference? So yes, it is a fear. But you know, you try to make as much legal protection as you can. You get insurance and you go for it. I suppose someone may have gone to Paul Brainerd at Aldis and said, well, Paul, aren't you afraid that someone using PageMaker is going to publish pornography? Yeah, but you know, that doesn't mean you don't do PageMaker. So it's a risk we run. Yes. What else? Yes, well, this is the question table. Did you guys pay extra or something? If you weren't well known, how would you have marketed this website? I'm sorry, if I weren't well known, I would suck up to Michael Arrington. You mean if I were two guys in a garage at Stanford or two gals in a garage, or a guy and a gal in a garage. Straight, gay, doesn't matter because you have to cover all the bases. I don't know, I would have probably done the same thing. It would not nearly have taken off so fast. It wouldn't have taken the heat. It would, you know, if Trumors were not Guy's company, I think the feedback would have been probably kinder and gentler. It's just that I'm a big target, right? And so, you know, if it's two 19 year old computer science. Okay, so at Harvard there's something a company called boredat. Have you ever heard of boredat? You guys are all too old like me. I never heard of boredat either. Don't worry, don't feel offended. I never heard of it either. So there's this thing called Boredat. And it's bored at Harvard, bored at Austin, bored at, you know, I don't know, Louisiana State. And all these people have these websites where you're bored at Harvard and so you're just sort of twittering all day, except it's not on Twitter. It's on a website and you're bored at Harvard. And so it's kind of a similar concept. And it has taken off in Harvard and all these universities. So I looked at that. So I looked at Twitter. How many of you are on Twitter? Well, somebody can maybe explain Twitter to me because, man, I tried to like it and I just. I just not excited about hearing when your cat rolls over. So. But I do respect it. For one thing, it is definitely viral. And so to get back to your question, I probably would have done the same thing. It would not have taken off near nearly as fast. I would have been slid a lot more, shall I say warm and fuzzy or people. I wouldn't have been above the radar in most cases, so I wouldn't have taken as much heat. I still would have done it. And I can't deny that being who I am was an advantage. But it also has its disadvantages, too, because now people expect, you know, something bigger of me than just this. Even my wife said, you know, why are you doing this, honey? You don't understand. I mean, there was like, you know, the Pope and then there was, you know, the guy who invented the praying press, and there was Paul Brainerd and there's Steve Jobs and, you know, this is the crowd I'm in. And she didn't buy that. It was a nice draw. Yes. Would you have invested in Trumors? Would I have invested in Trumors? That's a very good question. We would not have invested in anything that needs only 12 grand. Because 12 grand, the due diligence costs more than 12 grand. But that's not really the answer you're seeking, Right? So you're saying if I were a VC and let's say the company was really asking for a million or two, you know, sort of the sweet spot of VCs, two guys in the garage, two gals in the garage come in and say, we're going to website for rumors, we're going to allow anybody to post anything, and our business model will be get a lot of eyeballs, sell advertising and sponsors. Would we fund that? Probably not. Honestly, probably not. We would say, you know, boy, we just. People can go to Perez Hilton, they can go to tmz. They can go to all these places for the celebrity stuff. They can go to TechCrunch for all the tech. They can go to Value Ag for all the sadistic stuff. Why would we need another rumor website? It's going to be filled with spam and crap and whatever. But having said that, I will tell you that there are many companies that I would not have funded that turned out to be great successes. So the fact that I wouldn't fund Troopers might be a positive thing. Because I got to tell you, if somebody had come to me, if Google, if Larry and Sergey had come to me and said, would you fund the 10th search engine? Guess what I would have said. And if Jerry Yang and David Filo had come to me and said, we're creating a website where we keep track of our favorite websites, guess what I would have said? I mean, I was offered the chance to interview for the position of CEO of Yahoo, and I said, it's too far to drive from San Francisco. So, you know, I've turned down many. I have. And I. And I would have turned out many opportunities that have become great successes. So the fact that I would not invest in Truman's is probably a positive thing right now. I will tell you that I also invested in many companies that became great failures. So the fact that I would have invested doesn't mean you would have succeeded either. So I guess I'm telling you that what's it matter? I mean, at the end of the day, it's only 12 grand for caring out Lodge. Yes. Gaze into a crystal ball and tell me what you think. What's the future of marketing look like in your world? In my world of troomers or where do you think it's headed? I think it's headed for Web 2.0 user generated, patent pending. I love the Internet for the fact that you can market, you know, more or less free and immediate and trackable. I just love that stuff. I love experiments. I love to do things that, you know, I can tell you that TechCrunch causes 240,000 page views and, you know, 25,000 uniques in one day. I love that kind of stuff. I love those metrics. I love that you can measure that. You know, when someone puts a link on Troomers, 800 people will go to your website or not. I love all that kind of stuff. And I think that although I am 52 years old, I love when the system is constantly disrupted that, you know, just the concept of an advertising agency pitch is so foreign today. Right. They come in with their storyboards. And this is. This is the print. This is like, have you done any of these lately? Have you seen it? It's so different. It's all about, you know, we got to get your idiot CEO to blog because he's the company identity, and we need to optimize your, you know, your keywords so that Google searches you correctly and all that. I love. I love that it's completely. Just throws everything up and it's completely scrambled. I love the technology. I love when you can deliver stuff based on people's preferences and where they've been and, you know, sort of maybe a little bit of privacy invasion, but I love that kind of stuff. I mean, not invading privacy. That's a good. Truman, you know, guy likes to invade privacy. And I think if you can, as a marketing person, if you can unshackle yourself from thinking that it's about agency relationships and it's about, you know, giving away T shirts and putting on events and creating press kits and having press conferences and having giving away folders with CDs in them and swag and all that. Get that out of your mind, that more or less, more than ever, end users are running marketing, and you take your best shot and you pray and you. You also, you know, if you're not just praying, you also see what's flowing and you go with what's flowing. I think it's very hard to turn the river today. It's a, no pun intended, Herculean effort to change the course of a river. And a lot of these things like YouTube and Twitter, I don't know how you could have predicted that. I don't think a marketing VP introducing Twitter or YouTube would have said, this is how we need to do things, because this is how it's gonna work. There's no way. All you can do. My recommendation is you do a lot of stuff. Whatever succeeds, you say, that's what I knew would succeed. Dumbass CEO that I work for, he told me to do the stupid things. I knew this would succeed because that's how the venture capital business works. You know, when a venture capitalist, you make 20 investments and one turns out to be a Google, you say, hey, I knew Google was going to succeed. My partners did the other 19. That's how it works. What else? Yes. Does it make any sense at all or. Well, I'll give you a rule of thumb. The rule of thumb is the higher you go in most organizations, the thinner the air. Therefore, the more difficult it is to support intelligent life. So as a rule, of thumb. If the CEO is telling you to do something, you should do the opposite. Now, I could make the case today. I could make the case. You know, I did a panel of teenagers, and in this panel, I learned that a typical teenager sends 1500 text messages a month, right? And this teenager doesn't watch much TV anymore. The TV that the teenager is watching is on a TiVo. So when you watch the OC or whatever teenager watch Drake and Josh, I don't know, whatever they watch, you know, they're tivoing through ads, so why run an ad? And so I said, well, you know, if you're tivoing through ads and you're not watching TV and you're not reading the newspaper anymore, how do you figure out what's hot? How does an advertiser get to you? And you know what these teenagers said? Without hesitation. They said, we read magazines, paper magazines. They read People, Us Weekly, 17. I don't know. Whatever it is. So your CEO is telling you that we need to blog, not do print advertising. Now is the time to do print advertising. Just remember, when you're CEO, the air is thin. What else? All right, guys, I think that's. Oh, yeah. All right, one more, one more. One last one. Where did Andy go? Is he working on his slots? I think Andy is working on a slot. He should.

You've been talking about CEOs. You've asked people about Apple and Windows machines. Today, for the first time in 20 years, Steve and Bill Gates are on the same stage.

It was yesterday.

Yesterday. It was in the paper today.

Well, it was in Schumer's last night. But who's coming? So what if you're 12 hours behind? It's all right.

How about this for a rumor? OS11 goes head to head with Vista and runs on Dell and Compaq and HP boxes in Toshiba boxes.

I'd say that's a hallucination. I don't think that's going to happen. I would love to see it happen. You should see the Fireside Chat of Walt, Kara, Steve and Bill. It's quite humorous. They're just trying to, you know, they're just trying to kill each other with kindness. If you go to Troomers and search for the word Gates or Steve or something, you'll find it. You'll find the link to it.

It's technologically possible.

It's what? To find the link.

OS, whatever. OS 10, OS 11 on a. On a Dell or on an H.

Yeah, but I mean, if your aunt had ball, she'd be your uncle. So what? Think about that for a second. Thank you very much.