E398: The founder of Meetup.com, Scott Heiferman, sold Meetup.com a few years ago for $200 million. Then he went to work as an associate at an Amazon fulfillment center.
Two decades before that, he sold a different company for $15 million. Then he went to work the counter of a McDonald’s.
+ How Avi Schiffmann got 5,100 backlinks for a $2,000,000 gamble and will now be fundraising $100,000,000.
+ The new way social media platforms work during crises. Insights synced from TikTok and Instagram after over 1,200 videos.
Scott Heiferman’s story: https://web.archive.org/web/20040616091238/http://www.heiferman.com/mcd/
00:00 Episode Overview 01:45 Avi Schiffmann’s Viral Gamble 06:18 Lessons from the Founder of Meetup.com 15:38 Marketing A Meltdown 21:55 Edward Sturm’s Absurd Consistency 24:22 Sign-Off
#digitalmarketing #startups #ycombinator #entrepreneurship
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
Three things I'm going to be sharing on today's episode of the podcast. The first is an update from Avi Schiffman who purchased friend.com for $1.8 million, then spent $200,000 on an explainer video. I'm going to give an update on that. Something interesting that I read on his Twitter profile that he shared. Then I'm going to read a story. I want to share a story that Sam Parr shared. The story is from the founder of meetup.com who despite having a very successful background in the 90s went to go work for McDonald's. And he wrote about what he learned as a tech executive working at McDonald's. And actually he sold meetup.com a few years ago, I believe for $200 million. And then after that, he went to go work at an Amazon fulfillment center doing the manual labor, super interesting stuff, super cool, I think. Finally, I'm going to share a very interesting lesson I learned yesterday pertaining. I want to use the word pertaining pertaining to the financial crash, crash, quote unquote, crash. If you've been in crypto for as long as I have, that sort of volatility is nothing unusual. I have like, I think I commented to somebody, I have nerves of steel now because I've been in crypto for so long, but lots of other people are calling it a crash. So I'll just use that term, but related to that and something that I observed, which did not exist a year ago, actually. And if you were making content, a lot of content and you were also trying to capitalize on trending events, this will be particularly interesting to you. So that's what I got for you on this episode of the podcast. This is episode 398 of my daily digital marketing show. This one's going to be a bit all over the place. It's going to be some business, some marketing, some SEO. First one is SEO, Avi Schiffman, he tweeted this, he posted this on X. He said, friend.com, which he paid $1.8 million for and then $200,000 for. And he had only raised $2.5 million. So he spent $2 million of his $2.5 million fundraise. Apparently he had sold $100,000 in units as well. So let's say he had like $2.6 million to use. He spent $1.8 million on friend.com and then $200,000 on an explainer video from sandwich video. I don't think he shared that he spent 200 grand with sandwich video, but a friend of mine almost hired them. My friend raised $17 million, one seven and almost hired them and then decided they could do better things with that money. And now they are actually coming out with 10 TikToks a day across a bunch of different profiles paying 10 different creators $100 each a day. And that's how they're using their money. I think it's super interesting. The video is also released to Instagram, to YouTube, everywhere. They're using the guide that I wrote, the free guy that anybody can get on my website, EdwardSerm.com forward slash articles. And then it's called my exact social media posting strategy. You can just Google my exact social media posting strategy plus my name, Edward Sturm. You don't have to give your email to read it. You don't need a login to read it. You can just read this, it's an article, but it is what I have learned from posting over 1200 videos for, I think, maybe 650 days in a row now, many days in a row and they're doing that and they're doing 10 videos a day of it. But this guy, Avi, he took a different path. He wanted to gamble. This guy, this guy wanted this guy wanted to gamble on a viral stunt and lots of viral stunts don't pay off lots of people who who bet it all. They realize they shouldn't have bet it all. But Avi, this guy, this guy was smart and I shared his story on a previous episode last week on episode 392. And Avi is he is a historically smart person and this paid off. And so this paid off really big, actually, because he shared friend.com has 5.1,000 backlinks already. Yes, it was worth the 1.8 million has a domain authority of 34. But usually when you go viral, your domain authority doesn't pace with the huge velocity of backlinks that you receive. So his SEO domain authority, his authority is only going to rise. It's going to rise a lot more over the coming weeks and months. And if you're not familiar with search engine optimization, having a high domain authority lets you rank for more competitive keywords and the way to increase your domain authority is by getting backlinks, just like Avi is getting with friend.com. So here's the reality of Avi's $2 million gamble, gamble $2 million of his estimated $2.6 million. Here's the reality, remember, it doesn't always work out. But in this case is freaking crazy. Not only did Avi increase sales because he was already selling units. So not only did he increase sales with this stunt because he went super viral, his explainer video is up to 23 million views on X on Twitter. But it was also going viral all over Instagram reels and TikTok and YouTube. So not only did he sell a lot of units, he's going to be able to raise actually, he said he's going to try to raise, I think, $100 million. Now, so he's going to be able to raise a ton of money at a tremendous valuation, maybe even unicorn status by now. And with all of these backlinks, he can rank for tons of keywords because he's increasing in domain authority so much, he's going to be able to rank for tons of bottom of funnel keywords and drive purchase intent users directly to him. So what did he get for this $2 million stunt? I love, I actually love stunts like this. I don't like betting everything on one stunt. I think that is risky. I think think it is unnecessary. It worked in this case, but it easily could not have worked. But I still love stunts because when they work, it's phenomenal. And it's so cool. And it's so interesting. And there's so many low cost stunts people can do. I share them all the time on the show, but just to recap, Avi is going to be able to raise probably at a unicorn status, probably at a billion dollar valuation now, he got all these backlinks so he can target high purchase intent users who are looking for the things that his brand is selling. And just by going so viral, I'm sure he sold a ton of units as well. It was a phenomenal son. That's number one of the things that I wanted to share in this podcast. All right, Sam Parr, this is a cool story. Sam Parr said the guy who founded and sold meetup.com for $200 million before that he sold a company for $15 million after that. And right before meetup, he worked at McDonald's. Here's an old blog post on why he did that. And the top comment is, is this the founder who worked at an Amazon fulfillment center? And actually, if you look at his LinkedIn, it's amazing. So, okay, this is so crazy. If you looked at his LinkedIn, it says 2002 to 2018 co-founder and CEO of meetup.com 2018 to 2019 co-founder and chairman of meetup.com. May 2022 to January 2023, fulfillment center associate Amazon part time, Queens, New York. And he actually goes and does this stuff because he wants to learn. And so this is a story that he wrote. This is what got me actually about the story was that it was a way back machine link because he took this story. The guy who founded and sold meetup.com, he wrote this. He put it on his website, but he took it down and then Sam Parr shared the link, the old link using way back machine where you can read it, but it is not live. You cannot go to the link. I tried it myself to read it. That link does not work. You have to use way back machine and look in an archive of this story. And it's a cool little story. I learned a lot reading it. I enjoyed it. And so I think you'll enjoy it too. This is the story from Scott Heatherman, the founder of meetup.com. This was written in December of 2000. Crazy. All right. So Scott Heatherman writes, I was a 20 something dethron.com CEO that went to work the counter at McDonald's background. May 1994 graduated from the University of Iowa. May 1994 to April 1995 interactive marketing frontiersman at Sony April 1995 to October 1999, founder and CEO of iTraffic acquired by agency.com in October of 1999. October 1999 to October of 2001 chairman, iTraffic and agency.com company. And then October 2000 to October 2000. So I guess he did this for a month counter person McDonald's fourth and Broadway NYC. And here's the story. Why I got a job at McDonald's, I spent a lot of time with bankers, lawyers, internet freaks, corporate wants and other people living strange lives. As a good marketing guy, that's a bad thing. And as a practicing anti-consumerist, that's a bad thing. I got a job at McDonald's to help get back in touch with the real world. Also, after over six grueling years in the internet whirlwind, I wanted to experience a profitable, well-oiled, multi-billion dollar machine. And I deserved a break today. How I got the job, I walked in, filled out an application and was interviewed. I was truthful. In my interview, the manager, Ralph asked if I can handle a fast-paced, intense environment. I said, yes, he looked at my resume and asked about my current part-time job as chairman at iTraffic. I said, it's an internet thing. He said, OK, and then asked me for my waist size. A few observations. One, people like the dollar menu. The dollar menu consists of about a dozen items at McDonald's that sell for a dollar, not 99 cents, but one dollar. Most of these items had existed elsewhere on the menu for about a dollar. And so the lesson there is that McDonald's took all these items and put them together in one menu and branded it as a dollar menu. And people love that, even though the items were already there. If you put out a lot of content, if you have a bunch of different product lines out or a bunch of different products out, you can group them together and brand them in a certain way to give them more meaning. I really like that as somebody who's putting out videos and podcasts every day. I think that's super interesting. Scott continues writing, McDonald's has done a good job of keeping their menu relatively simple and short, but people clearly respond to the ultra simplicity of the dollar menu. Most people weren't primarily ordering from the dollar menu because they were overwhelmed by the wider menu, but because they perceived it to be the best value, even though actually the dollar menu isn't always the best value. Interestingly, dollar stores preceded McDonald's dollar menu. It's fun to see blue chip Kellogg trained marketers from McDonald's borrow strategy from sleaze level marketers. Number two, five dollars and 75 cents. Ain't much five dollars and 75 cents an hour times a 40 hours a week times 52 weeks in a year is eleven thousand nine hundred sixty dollars. That's before taxes are taken out. Some people said it was disrespectful for me to take a job at McDonald's. I didn't need the money and they thought that I was making fun of people that work there. The opposite is true. I gained a bucket of respect for people that bust their butt for such low pay. It's one thing to scan past stats about Americans that make twelve thousand dollars per year or read about them in the paper, but to actually work a tough fry heaving make nugget wielding six hour shift and get home smelling like those fries and McNuggets and realize you only made about thirty dollars that day. That's a serious eye opener. Interpret it as you see fit. Number three, I was never told to treat customers well. Correction, I was never told by management to treat customers well. Before I started the job, I had read on the McDonald's website that our crew members make each customer feel like a welcome guest. I had even noticed a few months before the McDonald's even went so far as to change their logo and tagline to feature the message we love to see you smile. I remember that. I remember that from the nineties. I expected to be specifically officially instructed to smile and make customers feel like a welcomed guest. Well, as any patron of a Manhattan McDonald's knows there ain't much feel good from the counter staff. My co-workers were downright rude to customers. I got funny looks from my co-workers when I was friendly with customers. They must not have seen the logo or tagline or website for frequent listeners of the podcast or people who watch my stuff. You might know I'm born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. And I remember McDonald's of the nineties in the early two thousands being like this, I don't really go to McDonald's anymore or not. Sometimes I go in Europe. They're great in Europe actually is anybody who has been to Eastern Europe. Like I have been to Eastern Europe. They are super good in Eastern Europe. I went to a McDonald's in Minsk in Belarus. People were friendly. It was amazing. I went in Ukraine. Actually, I used to get milkshakes in Ukraine and hot chocolate at the McDonald's and Kiev. Oh, that was great. But yeah, the nineties and the two thousands at McDonald's in New York City. Scott, he from in when he writes when he writes all that stuff, he is not exaggerating. Number four and the article is almost done now. Nobody thanked me. I worked hard. I got paid peanuts. I even ate McDonald's food during my break, deducted from my pay. It was intense. The cash register was complex. People want their food. Now the lines get deep. The McFlurry must be made just right. I was trying hard and I was doing an OK job. Now I've been a leader manager for most of my life. I've had plenty of crap jobs, but I've been the boss for the past few years. I faithfully read my fast company magazine and my Harvard Business Review. I've been taught countless times the value of a leader manager showing appreciation for people's effort. However, my instinct has often been that showing appreciation really isn't too necessary for good people. They just take pride in a job well done. And anyway, they can read my mind and see the appreciation. Well, from day one of McDonald's, I was yearning for someone there to say thank you. Even just you're doing OK would have sufficed, but no, neither management experience nor reading about management teaches this lesson as well as being an underappreciated employee. Say thank you to your employees. Number five, most of my McDonald's coworkers did their jobs much better than I ever could. They just seemed quicker. They had various talents and intuition that I do not have. Number six, the fry basket burns skin. I got burned and he shows an image of his forearm and there's a burn on it. And then the ending is cranes called me, which used to be a magazine. Cranes called me a couple days before I started at McDonald's. They were doing a story on post acquisition internet CEOs in New York. I told them that I was starting a job at McDonald's and didn't say much else. I let them take my picture after I got off work one day. They put a strange spin on the piece calling it dethroned CEOs. Most annoying were the people who thought that this was a publicity stunt. And so two and a half decades later, the guy does the same thing, sells meetup.com for $200 million and then works as an associate in an Amazon fulfillment center. And I just thought this was such a cool story, such a cool thing to do. I really respect it and I'm glad that I got to share it with you. Last thing on the docket for today's episode of the podcast yesterday was a financial scare and if you listen to my podcast yesterday, I'm reading a thread from Val Katiev about how to do marketing during a recession. It's a great thread. I read the entire thing on the podcast. I would encourage you to listen to yesterday's episode, episode 397 of the podcast. But after recording that, I also turned that thread and that podcast into a short. I wrote a new script, I recorded it. It was, let me tell you, it was so crazy. I want to share actually, it was so crazy. It was 9 p.m. I desperately wanted to go to sleep so I could wake up at 6 a.m. But I say, you know what, this quote unquote financial crash is trending. I need to make content on this and I want to make something thoughtful that's related to my niche. So I'm going to turn this amazing thread from Val Katiev about how to do marketing recession to double down on your marketing during bad financial times because it is the way to pull ahead of your competitors who are spending less money on marketing. Now it is the way to become a leader in your space. And I'm like, I want to turn this into a great video, give this the thought that it deserves and capitalize off the trending events. So I write a script, I record it, I record it pretty fast. I do a rough edit of it. I listen to it and I say, oh, the script isn't quite right. Now I think it's maybe 9 30 p.m. or something. So I write another script, a better script. I record it and that script is great. I feel that it's very good. I edit something together, takes me about another 30, 45 minutes and I post the video at 11 p.m. I'd spent like five or 10 minutes trying to figure out if I should use music or not. I said I'm not going to use music, but I'd spent some extra time just putting some thought into it. There's an expression I like. I think it's slow as fast because when you go slow, you make less mistakes. So I didn't want to make mistakes. I put up this video around 11 p.m. Say, this is great. I'm going to do my evening evening routine, go to bad, wake up at 6 a.m. Something's happening though. The video is not posting to TikTok and the video is getting suppressed on Instagram reels. And if you post a lot and you try to capitalize off trending events, this is why. So I wrote this and I posted this to LinkedIn. I posted this to threads and I posted this to X and this is what I said. And I think it's very interesting. I wrote, I actually think it's cool that platforms are doing this even though it caused me a lot of headache yesterday. I made this video about the financial crash. The topic was how to do marketing during recessions. The answer, by the way, is to double down on it as others withdraw. The video was not a stoked the flames of fear video on all platforms. It was either blocked entirely or suppressed in reach just given the general topic. Today, I tried posting the same video and it's no longer blocked or suppressed in reach conclusion after seeing so many crises exacerbated by runaway social media, FUD, fear, uncertainty, doubt platforms are throttling content at times of uncertainty to reduce disaster. I'm totally in favor of this, but it was annoying in the moment. But I do like the intention, so that's what I wrote. And actually, right after posting the video last night where when it didn't go up, I tried posting a video completely unrelated to the quote unquote financial crash. That video posted just fine and its numbers were not suppressed at all. It got the same amount of views to what I am used to. So it's clearly the topic. I think it's a super interesting lesson because this did not exist a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago, I made the most viewed video in the world on the Silicon Valley bank collapse and I do that because when the collapse started, it was such a trending topic in my niche. It was such a hot topic. I said, I'm just going to go hard making content about this and all of my videos got tons of views and I ended up making the most just because I was putting out three to four videos a day on the collapse. I ended up making the most viewed video in the world on it. But I don't think that could happen anymore. And that collapse was partially caused by so much fear, uncertainty and doubt. I think it's really cool that platforms are doing this, but it's also something to be aware of if you are a creator and you are capitalizing off trending events. I would say this is what I'm saying to myself, which is think twice. If there is some big disaster and putting out content on it could make it worse. Think twice about putting out that content, not just because it would make the disaster worse or it would scare people more, but because during the times of hype, the hype cycle, there's a good chance that if you spend all this time on a piece of content, it might not even get through and that's what happened to me. The video didn't get through. I reposted it this morning and then it was posted. In fact, last night when I ran a health test using TikTok's Creator Studio, TikTok has this Creator Studio tool that can tell you if your videos are allowed and if your account is healthy. I ran that and it said this particular video went against the community guidelines and only eight hours later when I reposted it, it said it was totally fine. I ran the same check and then it was it had this green checkmark and it's performed normally now. It's very clear evidence for what happened. This was this happened on Instagram and this happened on TikTok and I'm in favor of this. I think it's super cool, but I also wanted to share it with you. So here's what I ended up doing because as you know, I make a video every day. I do not miss videos every day since I started November 1st, 2022. I have not missed a day, even when I was sick with the neuro virus, visiting my ex girlfriend in Barcelona, I told that story a million times. I do not miss a day. So the video successfully went out on Instagram, but I had no video to put up on TikTok and it was I think 1145 now or maybe even midnight. I just said I can't miss a day of posting a video, even though I tried. Trying is a good enough. I'm actually going to post and so I figured out something to make. I made it, I put it out and I ended up going to sleep at 2 a.m. And I'm just like, it's so important for me to be consistent. I will do anything to stay consistent. And so that's what I did. And I still have maintained my streak of putting up videos every day. I'll share one more story, actually, just like the level to which I go hard is kind of stupid. This was a few months before November 1st, 2022. Before I started making these daily videos that come out on TikTok and Instagram and everywhere else, I was living in Bucharest in Romania. And I had this amazing apartment in Bucharest in Romania. I had this terrace that jutted out onto the street, big terrace. It was enclosed in glass, beautiful with the table in the center. I would have all of my meals on that terrace with the sun pouring in. I would buy flowers and put the flowers on the terrace. Amazing, just amazing, amazing apartment that I had in Bucharest in Romania. And one day it was before a meeting that I had a pretty important meeting that I had prepared for. And I did not want to miss this meeting. I was about to take a shower and I had my flip flops. And my flip flops were on the terrace. My slippers, they were on the terrace. I needed to get my slippers because after the shower, I didn't want to walk through my home with wet feet. So I went to go get my my slippers and the glass doors of this terrace were immaculate. And I had closed the glass doors to the terrace. The slippers were behind them and I didn't realize that the doors were closed. And this is the only time that I ever blacked out in my life. I walked into the glass doors. My head thumped into the glass doors and I woke up on the floor. I don't even remember falling to the ground. I just remember hitting my head, waking up on the floor with blood running down onto my arm and my head had fell onto my arm. I got lucky as so lucky. I got so lucky and I get up. I'm a bit woozy, but I get up. I get my slippers, open the door. I get my slippers, I go into the bathroom. I see my face is all bloody in my face off. I take a cold shower and ice cold shower as cold as it will go to wake myself up. And I go and I do this meeting. I go and I do this meeting with a small band-aid that's totally unequipped for the gash in my face. And then after the meeting, I go and I get proper medical treatment. I didn't need stitches or anything, but I did black out like that. And that was the only time in my life that I can remember that I blacked out. And I still made the meeting. And why am I sharing that? It's because if I have something to do, I freaking do it. Just like last night, when all I wanted to do was go to sleep, but I had to make a video because I'm going to keep up this streak. And that's all I've got for you on this episode of the podcast. This is episode three hundred ninety eight of the Edward show. And my daily digital marketing podcast. Sometimes I talk about more than just digital marketing like today. I had so much that I wanted to talk to you about. And this one went on for longer than is normal. I hope you liked it because I liked it. I liked sharing it with you. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much. If you're listening, if you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcast or whatever it is, thank you so much for listening. If you're watching on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
