Misc. Pieces re: StartupWhatever.com (intros & overviews)
Please ignore aesthetics & focus on core concepts for now
#DesignerNeeded #Obviously :)
Editor's Note: As of today ( ), it has been over 120 Months that we have been procrastinating the public launch of any of our [whatever]... Oooh, maybe we should buy 120Months.com to explain how much time we've wasted?! (Did I mention IamADD.com?!?)
OVERVIEW & OBJECTIVES
- Thoughts/Theories - Pertaining to Persistently-Pervasive Problems & Pitfalls (ThoughtsOnStartups.com)
- Entrepreneurial Epiphanies, Lessons Learned, and the Prologue/Premises for all our Plans (IamNOTaCEO.com)
-
Innovative Improvement Initiatives (ReThinkingStartups.com)
-
100+ Strategically-Structured “Starter Startups” (StarterStartups.com)
Managed, Marketed, Monetized via: - Part-Time “Pursuit of Proof” Programs (CoFounderator.com)
— *All our “Starter Startups” will benefit from Shared Resources & Economies of Scale as part of:
TheWhateverNetwork.com
A Cross-Promotional collection of Products, Services, Viral Content, Social Movements, Charitable Causes, Entrepreneurship Experiments, Side Hustles, Starter Startups…
10+ ENTREPRENEURIAL EPIPHANIES & LESSONS LEARNED (IamNOTaCEO.com)
1. My First Epiphany - Most entrepreneurs / founders will put “CEO” on their first business card when starting a company. And I was no different back when I started my first company. But I quickly eventually realized a few things... (full column soon)
2. "I'm Fired?!?" - In 2007, I made the (difficult) decision to “fire myself” as CEO of my first company - and it quickly became the BEST decision of my entrepreneurial career! Six months later, we had raised $850,000 in funding - and six months after that, we were a profitable 7-figure company... (full column soon)
3. Strengths, Weaknesses, and #SelfAwareness - I SUCK AT MANY THINGS! I am great at a few things. My (relatively unique) experience/expertise is creating/evaluating viral concepts with the potential to reach/engage huge audiences... (full column soon)
BACKROUND & BIO:
Jeff Goldblatt is an Atlanta-based entrepreneur with ~15 years experience with various B2C startups (and an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School). As creator of The Rejection Hotline®, 300+ Humor Hotlines, National "Get Over It Day", and 40+ viral ventures that have each/individually reached Millions of people - and have collectively engaged audiences over half a BILLION, he became a nationally-recognized authority on viral media and content creation —
[Jeff's extended bio - including 12+ years creating "Viral Whatever" - can be found at ViralWhatever.com]
4. From a small JOKE to a Million-Dollar Startup - The Rejection Hotline / Humor Hotlines / RH Brands - #MyStartupStory ... (full column soon)
5. The Stomach-Punch Feeling of Losing 4 Million Dollars... (full column soon)
6. My Battle With Burnout... (full column soon)
7. My ENTP Epiphany... (full column soon)
8. My ADD Epiphany... (full column soon)
9. Entrepreneurial ADD - Curse or Gift? ... (full coming soon)
10. 80% Done... (then I lose interest and my brain gets hyper-focused on a new challenge...
...80% Done? --> 80% D --> 80 D --> I am 80D --> Iam80D.com / IamADD.com... (coming soon)
11. An Open (Thank You) Letter to Mark Suster - which (ironically? coincidentally? embarrassingly?) has sat on my laptop, 80% DONE, for over a year...(full coming soon)
10+ THOUGHTS & THEORIES - Pertaining to Pervasive Problems & Prominent Pitfalls (ThoughtsOnStartups.com)
* * * * * * * *
10+ IMPROVEMENT IDEAS & INITIATIVES - Plus a Plethora of (Primarily PART-Time) Programs - ReThinkingStartups.com
WHATEVER CATEGORIES
“Whatever” Categories — primarily just for internal organizational purposes
StartupWhatever.com- Thoughts & Theories - Pertaining to Pervasive Problems & Pitfalls (ThoughtsOnStartups.com)
- Entrepreneurial Epiphanies & Lessons Learned (IamNOTaCEO.com)
- Innovative Improvement Initiatives (ReThinkingStartups.com)
-
Strategically-Structured “Starter Startups” (StarterStartups.com)
Managed, Marketed, Monetized via: - Part-Time “Pursuit of Proof” Programs (ReThinkingWhatever.com)
— *All our “Starter Startups” will benefit from Shared Resources, Economies of Scale, and a Cross-Promotional Network Effect as part of:
A Cross-Promotional Network of WHATEVER — Products, Services, Viral Content, Social Movements, Charitable Causes, Entrepreneur Experiments, Side Hustles, Starter Startups… all benefiting from shared resources, economies of scale, and additional ReThinkingStartups.com strategies!
The unifying theme tying together StartupWhatever.com and The Whatever Network…
Just because [whatever] exists one way, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon — or re-imagined entirely!! We are kinda obsessed with this idea! [ReThinking Terminology & Definitions, ReThinking Processes & Methodologies, ReThinking Startups & Side Hustles, ReThinking Products As Content As Marketing As WHATEVER!!!]
300+ pieces of viral audio content, originally part of a million-dollar company (The Rejection Hotline & 300+ Humor Hotlines’ phone numbers that collectively received 475 MILLION phone calls!) Sadly, the company shut down in 2014. But a comeback of sorts is now underway!
— Partners needed to test / run / manage / market (one, some, or all of) the following: 12+ Free Humor Hotlines, 12+ Premium Humor Hotlines, 12+ Free MP3 downloads, 12+ $0.99 MP3 downloads, 12+ AudioWTF micro-sites, 12+ AudioWhatever Category Sites… 300+ tracks via SoundCloud, 300+ tracks on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc. (via TuneCore?), Premium Service: Packages or Subscriptions, Premium Service: Private/personal Hotline #s, Premium Service: CUSTOM Hotline #s…
Re-Thinking: Business Cards!
- as a smaller/cheaper alternative to traditional greeting cards?
- as a new (cheaper!) Creative Content Canvas?
- as a mini Publishing Platform?!?
- as a physical representation, pass-around version, of internet memes?!
NO, we do NOT think t-shirts are a good business idea (overly-crowded space, no barriers to entry, etc.). HOWEVER…
A) our “Products as Content as Marketing” philosophy creates value beyond sales,
B) Tshirts are an easy, no-risk way to test MANY ReThinkingStartups.com strategies & marketing initiatives —
D) plus we do have a few new outside-the-bulb “ReThinking Tshirts” concepts we’ve been sitting on for a while!
A perfect application of ViralWhatever.com learnings (from our 40+ INDIVIDUAL Humor Hotlines going viral, despite the COLLECTION of 300 hotlines simply serving as a shared resources / inventory management page). 100+ Penny designs — MANAGED COLLECTIVELY / MARKETED INDIVIDUALLY!
Workshops, Experiments, Viral Thinking applied to ALL our efforts… Then, once we have 6 to 10 good team members on board, we are going to test/launch MANY new Viral Marketing campaigns!
Several Charity-focused initiatives (ask us about them!!) PLUS, all our PARTNERS will get to PICK the charity beneficiary of the products for which they are the first or primary partner on!
[Pick Your Product / Choose Your Charity / Manage, Market, Monetize]
MANY current and future phone related ventures!!! Both humor-based (the natural continuation HumorHotlines.com — our original 7-figure, viral content company) AND real/serious (non-humor) services utilizing our telecom knowledge/resources…
Twilio and Plivo developers — contact us!!
MANY Marketing programs, initially to help market all of OUR stuff (and help us identify great marketers, influencers, and team members!), but the more successful programs can then be spun off into real “starter startups” themselves if we think we can provide real value to OTHERS!
Can you really buy anything cool for just a dollar?? YES, YES YOU CAN!!! We will start slowly but eventually we will have 100+ products for $1.00 or less! (Actually, it’ll probably be 1000+ products if we also include individual CardWhatever.com and AudioWhatever.com products that start at $1.00. TBD whether those will be included or not.)
The category/collection for our products that are not shirts or cards or audio or hotlines — To be determined whether DollarWhatever.com products will be included here (since $1.00 IS cheap) or if we will keep the two separated and CheapFunWhatever.com is basically everything starting at $1.01… TBD
This is a tricky one… because we have a REAL (potentially-game-changing?!) startup concept (JustIntros.com) intended to compete with dating apps and professional matchmakers — but we also have some funny/immature and/or R-Rated relationship products/content/jokes… Not quite sure yet how we walk that line of not making our real venture seem like a joke when it’s positioned with RejectionHotline.com or YouGotGhosted.com or AdviceBeforeDates.com … Stay tuned!
As much as I want all of our stuff to fit perfectly into easily-categorized buckets, there still exist many that our just too random or “other”… they will be housed/managed via the MiscellaneousWhatever.com team
Look, not all our stuff is on a high intellectual level… this is a collection of stuff that is really really dumb (possibly even immature, maybe r-rated, hopefully not offensive, but no promises!)
Someone will run this site and just pick and choose which of our hundreds of products could be classified as “Gifts of Mom” or “Graduation gifts” or “Gifts for $1.00?!?”
The hope is that every month we will have featured Gift Whatever and Dollar Whatever and Tshirt Whatever and Audio Whatever and Card Whatever and … etc. — each with discounts on that Monthly Whatever!
— several concepts for each, but primarily will be images (free downloads?) and stickers (paid product?) with much of the same image-based content as our CardWhatever.com categories
Many topic-specific ways to group our products/content/marketing/whatever
21–30 — OTHER / Secondary / Future / Or potentially offered up as part of a “Pitch us on what you want to do with it… if we like it, we give you the greenlight to run with it!)
gamingwhatever.com / esportswhatever.com
gifwhatever.com
personalitywhatever.com
politicalwhatever.com
sportswhatever.com
videowhatever.com
coloringwhatever.com / colorwhatever.com
prankwhatever.com
humorwhatever.com
OTHER — talk to Jeff
P.S. Note to self: Make sure the following exists somewhere else:
STARTER STARTUPS:
- Intentionally Blurring Lines:
- between Startups & Side Hustles? (ReThinkingStartups.com),
- between Products & Content & Social Marketing? (ReThinkingWhatever.com),
- between Employees & Entrepreneurs? (PitchingForPartners.com), - Prioritizing POOOP?!? [Probability & Objectivity Over Optimism & Positivity]
- PART-Time Prior to PROOF! Sacrificing Weekends And Nights (theSWANstartup.com),
- Learning Curves SUCK; but "per-product" costs (time/money) decrease dramatically the 2nd, 5th, 10th time! Anticipate Pivots BEFORE you're forced to & A-B Test EVERYTHING - via Multiple Eggs in Multiple Baskets! (MultipleBaskets.com),
- Shared Resources, Economies of Scale, and Cross-Promotion (TheWhateverNetwork.com)
- Lessons Learned & Secret Sauce from years of personally creating 50+ Viral Ventures, engaging 496+ Million people (ViralWhatever.com)