Spreading The Word

In the endless sea of startups, one of the toughest challenges is finding a way to stand out from the crowd enough to get the magical "buzz" factor in gear. Without a strong network of contacts, finding a way to get people to try out your new site could get frustrating. Most often, we look to our friends and family to help us get to critical mass, but unless they can help you spread the message to the masses effectively, that's all you'll have in the end. I recently came across a really interesting concept that addresses this issue in a very clever way. Wahooly has established a base of highly influential users (bloggers, twitter fiends, industry pundits) that can help get out the word for your new startup. They're gathering applications from which they will select 200 companies to present to their users, who will generate buzz in exchange for a small piece of the action. For example, a company can offer 5% equity to be shared between 5,000 Wahooly users, who's influence could reach huge audiences and immediately draw mass attention to the site. This investment in the company motivates the Wahooly users to pull out all the stops when sharing the news with their networks because they don't get rewarded if it doesn't succeed. You can also use the Wahooly base as your initial beta users, giving you instant mass and valuable feedback. All in all, it's worth checking out as a means of accelerating the development of your business refinement of your site. Here's a link to learn more about Wahooly.

1 comment:

  1. This is a very interesting idea, I will be following it's development. Thanks for the heads-up!

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