You need to tell a story.
Most people particularly into technology
are horrible at telling stories
You need to tell a story.
Why did you start eBay?
Why did you start Google?
Why did you start Apple?
You can even make up the story, after the fact
One of the great legends of Silicon valley
is that eBay was because of
Pierre Omidyars' girlfriend wanted to sell
pez dispensers.
Okay. The truth is that he really wanted to
create a perfect market where demand and
supply cross each other. The perfect market
And to have a perfect market, you need to
eliminate geography.
The story of the pez dispenser
is after the fact.
Now, I'm not encouraging you to lie
but I am telling you a story is
-much more powerful when you launch.
Why you two in a garage knew there was a
-better way to search.
Or you wanted to bring personal computers
-to more people.
Or you wanted a place where people could
upload videos of people dropping menthos
into Diet Coke.
(laughter)
Whatever it is, tell a story
The next thing is
you need to plant many seeds
This is completely contrary
to classic marketing.
Classic marketing is you plant a few seeds,
because you know exactly who is going to
embrace your product
and you water and fertilize just those seeds.
You focus.
I think that's just completely wrong
In the old days, you would focus on
the A-Listers and the top tier journalists.
I.E, Wall Street Journal
New York Times
Business Week
Fortune and Forbes.
What you did is, you sucked up to them
because you hoped in these
great oracles of wisdom and knowledge
would embrace your product
and tell the hoi polloi
and the great unwashed masses to embrace
your product.
Okay, so you sucked up to them.
If you didn't have time to suck up to them,
you hired a PR firm and paid them
ten thousand bucks to suck up for you.
Then, the PR firm would hire an
oriental art history from Wellesley to do the
sucking up for you.
Okay, this doesn't work anymore
because the world has been inverted.
The world has been inverted.
And now, for you to reach critical mass
with a product, it's not because the
Wall Street Journal or the New York Times
blessed your product. It's because
lonelyboy15 embraced your product.
and lonelyboy15 told his twenty friends,
who told their twenty friends,
who eventually told Tiffany517
and lonelygirl to also embrace your product.
And what happens- this is how Twitter
and how Facebook happens.
It's not because the New York Times
saw Facebook, or Twitter
on the first day they launched and said
"Ha ha, we have seen the future
-we know with total certainty some day
Facebook will have more members
than every other country except
China and India.
Show me a New York Times, Business Week,
Fortune, or Forbes article that
predicted the success of Twitter or Facebook.
or Apple! or Yahoo!
Pick any of the success stories, none of them.
So what you need to do
is plant many seeds.