In 2007 a comedian went to his Dad (a Sequoia VC) and explained how hard it was to find funny videos on YouTube. They came up with the idea of a comedy site with a Hot or Not style voting system. After 6 months of negotiation, they persuaded comedian Will Ferrell to become a partner and create some videos.
The site, http://www.FunnyOrDie.com launched with 30 videos, 29 of the videos were horrible but one was The Landlord (http:// www.funnyordie.com/videos/74/the-landlord-from-will-ferrell-and-adam-ghost-panther-mckay). Within a few days the site was one of the top 100 most trafficked web sites in the world. We thought we had a magic formula: video platform + anchor celeb + UGC = gold. We created an action sports site with Tony Hawk, a food site with Tom Colicchio, a comedy site with Larry The Cable Guy and expanded internationally (with sites in the UK & Brazil). Our head count & burn rate rapidly went up with this investment. In 2008 the economy started to sour. Our VC, Sequoia Capital had a meeting with all their CEOs and presented these slides: http://www.slideshare.net/eldon/sequoia-capital-on-startups-and-the-economic-downturn-presentation?type=powerpoint. We were warned that tough times were ahead we needed to cut any fat and focus. We trimmed our team by 1/3, closed down all the extra sites and international offices to completely focus on Funny or Die - something that likely saved the company. Funny Or Die now has ~ 80 people, is profitable and likely to make $40M in revenue this year: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/funny-or-die-will-ferrell-dark-knight-landlord-mike-tyson-adam-mckay-280412 Mark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funny_or_Die http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksmallcombe On Apr 11, 9:02 pm, "Mick Liubinskas (Pollenizer)" <bigm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey everyone, Pollenizer is putting together a little book on focus > and how it can help turn ideas into businesses. > > It's a very collaborative book and I'd love to include contributions > from the community. > > If you have a good, scary, funny story where focus helped or lack of > focus hurt, please go here and tell us: > > http://bit.ly/HyvKW9 > > Cheers, > > Mick "ISBN" Liubinskas -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Vist http://siliconbeachaustralia.org for more Forum rules 1) No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. 2) No jobs postings. You can use http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/jobs To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
