facebook have you even heard of it two
years ago today 13 million Canadians use
it and the company is worth 15 billion
dollars at least that’s how much
microsoft offered to buy it in fact
people are connecting on the web through
all kinds of websites it’s called social
networking and it’s exploding in
popularity so our interactive websites
so no wonder plenty of fortune hunters
want to be the next Facebook check out
our trend tracker the people who run
social networks and interactive sites
can make money from member fees or ads
we scoured the country looking for
Canadians with exciting ways to bring
people together in saint john new
brunswick we discovered Jason Richard
and crop to go that’s prop as in
property his website connects real
estate buyers and sellers in Edmonton
Alberta we met Ken Bautista and Jason
Soriano and their company hot rocket
they’re running an online community
where kids play together exploring
science and history and in Vancouver
we’re downloading the whole story of
Mike tan and his website team pages he
wants it to be you guessed it the
Facebook of amateur sports as always we
have to business brains here to talk
about our trend this time it’s Leila
Buchanan and Evan Carmichael so Layla
tell us what are your credentials in the
web world while Emma CEO and the
co-founder of EDA Inc we are software
company and we do for images what Google
does for text interesting okay so Evan
what about you I know you’re very busy
online I’m the founder of Evan
Carmichael calm and we’re the most
popular Canadian best based website for
entrepreneurs and everybody from Michael
Gerber to Donald Trump writes for the
website very good well I’ll be very
curious to hear what you think about
Mike’s plan and team pages is Mike in
good shape to make big bucks with a
website for sporty types or will he be
shut out let’s watch
mike tan isn’t a pro athlete other guys
but he’s planning to score big I just
promoting brand new website called team
pages com my name is mike i’m from a
local company called team pages big goal
of team pages to one day become big site
like facebook or myspace mike splitting
the grass back in grassroots marketing
watch your back boy pushing all-in-one
websites for amateur sports teams they
put up their schedules their photos or
videos or scores parents can range
carpool rides
just letting everyone know we have a
free barbecue down it to of Mike’s
buddies from school Adam palm Vlad and
Derek story are also working practices
games and the grill to bring people to
the site at the end of the day for most
Internet companies it’s all about the
number of users you have and right now
it’s really important that we try and
get as many users as we can before we
run out of money like Facebook team
pages is free and makes money from ads
problem is team pages isn’t making
enough to survive back at the office
money has Mike worried we’ve raised
about 650,000 dollars almost all of that
has been spent on development still need
to fix this annoying date bud and the
team is running on empty
tacky Adam looks after 1200 websites on
his own I’d love to i raise financing if
we had that we could hire some more
people take some of this pressure off me
I just want to say thanks for the
metrics after three years there’s only
enough money to last another three
months how are we doing with 10 pages
pro so the plan is to use free sites to
lure users in we’ll do some real testing
with their credit cards then step two is
to get them to pay up for an updated pro
version we can take subscriptions yeah
man we’re there sweet awesome huh sweet
the damage of the pro model is that it
gives us an additional revenue stream on
top of advertising at the end of day
that gives us additional profit and as
well that’s what our investors are
looking for the new version will cost
users 55 dollars per year while Adam
works on the design Derek works on
selling subscriptions when we you know
create games or change schedules yeah
the system will actually generate you
know an update email to every single
player who is affected by that change
that would be pretty cool absolutely
he’s trying to get entire leagues and
associations to sign up all their teams
at once by now alright soccer bc alone
has 120,000 members which equates to
about 8,000 teams scoring three thousand
paying teams would be a huge win if we
do that we break even if we don’t well
we’re going back to the well and trying
to raise some more money later at the
Home Office logo up here it looks good
sports websites made easy ok these
partners / roommates share some odd
rituals let me
there’s no time for joking the next day
Mike’s meeting with his board um in
terms of sales were currently behind our
sales targets at the moment the the
sales cycle is taking a little bit
longer Boris Wertz is one of Mike’s
biggest investors I think the real mark
is in the youth market mike has to prove
the company can make money on sales
certainly a continuous pressure on the
team there’s not a lot of margin for
error here the sales effort will
continue next Mike and Derek look for
some promotional help from a hot
Vancouver ad agency called rethink you
know you guys don’t have tons of money
right we’re not going to be doing TV ads
there’s not going to be any billboards
so using a partners such as boston pizza
but it could be anything we are going to
talk about the search for canada’s coach
of the year the agency wants to hook
team pages up with a sports friendly
restaurant to help cook up some sales
well thank you guys that’s great landing
a big partner would also impress
potential investors but with a partner
like Boston Pizza really brings a lot of
credibility and a national exposure that
we need to bring it to everyone at home
credibility is part of what Mike needs
to sell he’s looking for over a million
dollars from a venture capital firm in
the morning even after doing 15 of these
pitches I’m always still nervous the day
before or the night before he can buy
more time 14 pages to grow if he can win
over this investor it’s very much like
dating I guess you could say in that
every investors looking for something
different
the next day when you come to 200 teams
per week it doesn’t take long for Jim
Charlton to ask about paid memberships
how many of those teams will be paid
within a week we’ve had five signups it
also doesn’t take long for Mike to make
his ask in terms of financing we’re
looking for or we need 1.5 million
dollars to scale this business and to
grow this business and to make team
pages have success I’ll take that away
and do some work in down and we’ll get
back to you without better sales 1.5
million is a lot to ask for in an
economy like this they’ve got to really
step up to marketing to get that
acquisition of users for now it’s back
to the beach and bringing in users I
feel we’re heading in the right
direction there’s always a concern at
the back of my head that we’re going to
run out of money we’re going to run at a
time before we can make team pages a
success
we watch the story of Vancouver’s Mike
tan and his dream to turn his company
into the Facebook of amateur sports are
two very cyber savvy people who totally
understand the social networking
phenomenon Layla boozing and the CEO of
e de ink and Evan Carmichael the man
behind Canada’s most popular website for
entrepreneurs so both of you should know
before we start talking that Mike has
signed up 8,000 teams now it was 1200
when we were filming and about five
percent of those new teams are actually
the paying customers so Layla what do
you think is this a good idea team pages
is this something people really need
well I really like it I think that only
some people will actually need it it’s
highly highly specialized so maybe the
specialization is a bit of a curse but
also a blessing because you have a very
very targeted audience to go after yes
so you think it’s a good idea what about
you Evan what do you think of the way
he’s actually running the business
discharging the 55 bucks is that going
to work fifty dollars a year is not a
lot of money so to get a million dollars
in revenue you need to have 20,000 teams
to sign up for that what I would prefer
if I was a VC looking at these guys is
how do you make fifty dollars a month
how can they add more value to the
service so that somebody would sign up
and pay recurring revenue so it’s not
only fifty dollars a year what other
things do you think they could do Evan
to to get a little more money into the
company makes more revenue a big thing
is they have a lot of competition so how
do you stand out one of their biggest
competitors in terms of being the
facebook family sports is a company
called tackle big pardon was with Sports
Illustrated and so Sports Illustrated’s
actually a co-owner of the business and
they help promote the brand so my
recommendation would be to go out and
find the equivalent so have a partner
but now this was one of the surprises
when I started working on this episode
was that these very very popular
websites are not making money like
YouTube that popularity isn’t
profitability why is that what’s the
problem Lyla popularity does not equal
revenue generation if you look at
youtube for example they are monetizing
four percent of the total video content
that they have and they generate a few
hundred million dollars but they are not
profitable and it’s the same for
facebook but everyone always says
advertising is the way to make money
online what about that though Evan I
mean do advertisers really love to pour
loads of money into online there’s a
couple trends happening online the first
a lot of the big brands are moving
towards online the moving away from
traditional media TV print newspapers
are having a hard time everything is
moving online the the downside is social
networking the ad rates have really
plummeted the reason is the same people
come back to the websites over and over
and over again they know where the ads
are and so they don’t click on them
anymore so as an advertiser I’m not
going to spend my money advertising on
Facebook or whatever it is because
people aren’t clicking on my ads when
you look ahead at this trend of making
money with social networking or on the
web what’s the next thing coming up
what’s hot right now mobile really I
have seen a lot of projects in the
mobile space going from sharing images
on a mobile device from shopping from
finding directions and all of these
combined together for Consumer Solutions
the biggest thing i see is around
bargains people want to find bargains
don’t people to have as much as well as
men come as they used to so a great
Canadian example is a company called
redflagdeals.com where people post
different bargains you can have
different retail outlets or enter coupon
codes in on different websites and you
can find the best bargains out there on
the internet bargains during an economic
downturn that’s an excellent idea all
right well thank you both of you for all
those great comments now stay there I
just want to remind our viewers how they
can win a subscription to profit
magazine just like fortune hunters
profit is full of good information for
entrepreneurs and we’ve got five
subscriptions to give away on every show
if you can answer a question about the
team pages story go to our website and
enter the profit contest and now it’s
time to play hit or miss
alright this is your chance to test your
instincts I’m going to tell you about a
business concept web-related from
somewhere else in the world and you say
whether you think it’s a hit or a miss
and we have just two minutes to see how
many we can scroll through so ready to
go yes all right number one get off my
case a new British website called the
neg com is getting on your case helping
people leave better lifestyles by
sending them a monthly nagging email
users get a monthly reminder to eat
better recycle more or donate to charity
and can either act on their neg or just
click delete Layla that sounds like a
hit or a mess that’s a miss nobody needs
another you know nagging device that’s a
mess for you Layla this is a site vinay
tom has nagged yahoo into naming it one
of their top 10 finds of 2007
celebrities are using it who knew all
right number two love to meet people new
people but hate the cover charge and
expensive drinks on the bar scene then
check out a new California website
called mingle now the site makes it easy
for wallflowers to log on and migil in
there in virtual nightclub the best part
no techno music Evan dot-com clubs hit
or miss I’d say it’s a miss the alcohol
is not real you are correct despite
early success the parent company was
bought by yahoo and they shut this
virtual clubs doors in 2007 all right
number three you look like me think
we’re related my heritage is an Israeli
genealogy website that’s taking family
trees to the next level with face
recognition technology plug in a picture
of yourself and the site trolls their
database for users with similar features
and can even be used with other photo
sites like flickr facebook and picasa
family photos hit or miss inside that’s
a hit why finding you know your
relatives online and finding who you
look like or who you resemble is a
pretty big absolutely right huge hit
it’s available in 25 languages has over
25 million worldwide users all right
number four from New York City comes a
site that would have the Sex in the City
girls to step
they’re Manolo Blahniks shoe tube is a
video sharing website for you guessed at
shoe addicts users can upload blah blah
blah hit or miss and go with Miss I’m
not into shoes it wouldn’t be my target
market it is one heel of a hit Evan the
site launched its a few months ago it’s
already schooled scored a major
partnership deal with nine west so there
you go you’re each one for two there
well done lots of fun thank you for
being here thank you for having us
years ago today 13 million Canadians use
it and the company is worth 15 billion
dollars at least that’s how much
microsoft offered to buy it in fact
people are connecting on the web through
all kinds of websites it’s called social
networking and it’s exploding in
popularity so our interactive websites
so no wonder plenty of fortune hunters
want to be the next Facebook check out
our trend tracker the people who run
social networks and interactive sites
can make money from member fees or ads
we scoured the country looking for
Canadians with exciting ways to bring
people together in saint john new
brunswick we discovered Jason Richard
and crop to go that’s prop as in
property his website connects real
estate buyers and sellers in Edmonton
Alberta we met Ken Bautista and Jason
Soriano and their company hot rocket
they’re running an online community
where kids play together exploring
science and history and in Vancouver
we’re downloading the whole story of
Mike tan and his website team pages he
wants it to be you guessed it the
Facebook of amateur sports as always we
have to business brains here to talk
about our trend this time it’s Leila
Buchanan and Evan Carmichael so Layla
tell us what are your credentials in the
web world while Emma CEO and the
co-founder of EDA Inc we are software
company and we do for images what Google
does for text interesting okay so Evan
what about you I know you’re very busy
online I’m the founder of Evan
Carmichael calm and we’re the most
popular Canadian best based website for
entrepreneurs and everybody from Michael
Gerber to Donald Trump writes for the
website very good well I’ll be very
curious to hear what you think about
Mike’s plan and team pages is Mike in
good shape to make big bucks with a
website for sporty types or will he be
shut out let’s watch
mike tan isn’t a pro athlete other guys
but he’s planning to score big I just
promoting brand new website called team
pages com my name is mike i’m from a
local company called team pages big goal
of team pages to one day become big site
like facebook or myspace mike splitting
the grass back in grassroots marketing
watch your back boy pushing all-in-one
websites for amateur sports teams they
put up their schedules their photos or
videos or scores parents can range
carpool rides
just letting everyone know we have a
free barbecue down it to of Mike’s
buddies from school Adam palm Vlad and
Derek story are also working practices
games and the grill to bring people to
the site at the end of the day for most
Internet companies it’s all about the
number of users you have and right now
it’s really important that we try and
get as many users as we can before we
run out of money like Facebook team
pages is free and makes money from ads
problem is team pages isn’t making
enough to survive back at the office
money has Mike worried we’ve raised
about 650,000 dollars almost all of that
has been spent on development still need
to fix this annoying date bud and the
team is running on empty
tacky Adam looks after 1200 websites on
his own I’d love to i raise financing if
we had that we could hire some more
people take some of this pressure off me
I just want to say thanks for the
metrics after three years there’s only
enough money to last another three
months how are we doing with 10 pages
pro so the plan is to use free sites to
lure users in we’ll do some real testing
with their credit cards then step two is
to get them to pay up for an updated pro
version we can take subscriptions yeah
man we’re there sweet awesome huh sweet
the damage of the pro model is that it
gives us an additional revenue stream on
top of advertising at the end of day
that gives us additional profit and as
well that’s what our investors are
looking for the new version will cost
users 55 dollars per year while Adam
works on the design Derek works on
selling subscriptions when we you know
create games or change schedules yeah
the system will actually generate you
know an update email to every single
player who is affected by that change
that would be pretty cool absolutely
he’s trying to get entire leagues and
associations to sign up all their teams
at once by now alright soccer bc alone
has 120,000 members which equates to
about 8,000 teams scoring three thousand
paying teams would be a huge win if we
do that we break even if we don’t well
we’re going back to the well and trying
to raise some more money later at the
Home Office logo up here it looks good
sports websites made easy ok these
partners / roommates share some odd
rituals let me
there’s no time for joking the next day
Mike’s meeting with his board um in
terms of sales were currently behind our
sales targets at the moment the the
sales cycle is taking a little bit
longer Boris Wertz is one of Mike’s
biggest investors I think the real mark
is in the youth market mike has to prove
the company can make money on sales
certainly a continuous pressure on the
team there’s not a lot of margin for
error here the sales effort will
continue next Mike and Derek look for
some promotional help from a hot
Vancouver ad agency called rethink you
know you guys don’t have tons of money
right we’re not going to be doing TV ads
there’s not going to be any billboards
so using a partners such as boston pizza
but it could be anything we are going to
talk about the search for canada’s coach
of the year the agency wants to hook
team pages up with a sports friendly
restaurant to help cook up some sales
well thank you guys that’s great landing
a big partner would also impress
potential investors but with a partner
like Boston Pizza really brings a lot of
credibility and a national exposure that
we need to bring it to everyone at home
credibility is part of what Mike needs
to sell he’s looking for over a million
dollars from a venture capital firm in
the morning even after doing 15 of these
pitches I’m always still nervous the day
before or the night before he can buy
more time 14 pages to grow if he can win
over this investor it’s very much like
dating I guess you could say in that
every investors looking for something
different
the next day when you come to 200 teams
per week it doesn’t take long for Jim
Charlton to ask about paid memberships
how many of those teams will be paid
within a week we’ve had five signups it
also doesn’t take long for Mike to make
his ask in terms of financing we’re
looking for or we need 1.5 million
dollars to scale this business and to
grow this business and to make team
pages have success I’ll take that away
and do some work in down and we’ll get
back to you without better sales 1.5
million is a lot to ask for in an
economy like this they’ve got to really
step up to marketing to get that
acquisition of users for now it’s back
to the beach and bringing in users I
feel we’re heading in the right
direction there’s always a concern at
the back of my head that we’re going to
run out of money we’re going to run at a
time before we can make team pages a
success
we watch the story of Vancouver’s Mike
tan and his dream to turn his company
into the Facebook of amateur sports are
two very cyber savvy people who totally
understand the social networking
phenomenon Layla boozing and the CEO of
e de ink and Evan Carmichael the man
behind Canada’s most popular website for
entrepreneurs so both of you should know
before we start talking that Mike has
signed up 8,000 teams now it was 1200
when we were filming and about five
percent of those new teams are actually
the paying customers so Layla what do
you think is this a good idea team pages
is this something people really need
well I really like it I think that only
some people will actually need it it’s
highly highly specialized so maybe the
specialization is a bit of a curse but
also a blessing because you have a very
very targeted audience to go after yes
so you think it’s a good idea what about
you Evan what do you think of the way
he’s actually running the business
discharging the 55 bucks is that going
to work fifty dollars a year is not a
lot of money so to get a million dollars
in revenue you need to have 20,000 teams
to sign up for that what I would prefer
if I was a VC looking at these guys is
how do you make fifty dollars a month
how can they add more value to the
service so that somebody would sign up
and pay recurring revenue so it’s not
only fifty dollars a year what other
things do you think they could do Evan
to to get a little more money into the
company makes more revenue a big thing
is they have a lot of competition so how
do you stand out one of their biggest
competitors in terms of being the
facebook family sports is a company
called tackle big pardon was with Sports
Illustrated and so Sports Illustrated’s
actually a co-owner of the business and
they help promote the brand so my
recommendation would be to go out and
find the equivalent so have a partner
but now this was one of the surprises
when I started working on this episode
was that these very very popular
websites are not making money like
YouTube that popularity isn’t
profitability why is that what’s the
problem Lyla popularity does not equal
revenue generation if you look at
youtube for example they are monetizing
four percent of the total video content
that they have and they generate a few
hundred million dollars but they are not
profitable and it’s the same for
facebook but everyone always says
advertising is the way to make money
online what about that though Evan I
mean do advertisers really love to pour
loads of money into online there’s a
couple trends happening online the first
a lot of the big brands are moving
towards online the moving away from
traditional media TV print newspapers
are having a hard time everything is
moving online the the downside is social
networking the ad rates have really
plummeted the reason is the same people
come back to the websites over and over
and over again they know where the ads
are and so they don’t click on them
anymore so as an advertiser I’m not
going to spend my money advertising on
Facebook or whatever it is because
people aren’t clicking on my ads when
you look ahead at this trend of making
money with social networking or on the
web what’s the next thing coming up
what’s hot right now mobile really I
have seen a lot of projects in the
mobile space going from sharing images
on a mobile device from shopping from
finding directions and all of these
combined together for Consumer Solutions
the biggest thing i see is around
bargains people want to find bargains
don’t people to have as much as well as
men come as they used to so a great
Canadian example is a company called
redflagdeals.com where people post
different bargains you can have
different retail outlets or enter coupon
codes in on different websites and you
can find the best bargains out there on
the internet bargains during an economic
downturn that’s an excellent idea all
right well thank you both of you for all
those great comments now stay there I
just want to remind our viewers how they
can win a subscription to profit
magazine just like fortune hunters
profit is full of good information for
entrepreneurs and we’ve got five
subscriptions to give away on every show
if you can answer a question about the
team pages story go to our website and
enter the profit contest and now it’s
time to play hit or miss
alright this is your chance to test your
instincts I’m going to tell you about a
business concept web-related from
somewhere else in the world and you say
whether you think it’s a hit or a miss
and we have just two minutes to see how
many we can scroll through so ready to
go yes all right number one get off my
case a new British website called the
neg com is getting on your case helping
people leave better lifestyles by
sending them a monthly nagging email
users get a monthly reminder to eat
better recycle more or donate to charity
and can either act on their neg or just
click delete Layla that sounds like a
hit or a mess that’s a miss nobody needs
another you know nagging device that’s a
mess for you Layla this is a site vinay
tom has nagged yahoo into naming it one
of their top 10 finds of 2007
celebrities are using it who knew all
right number two love to meet people new
people but hate the cover charge and
expensive drinks on the bar scene then
check out a new California website
called mingle now the site makes it easy
for wallflowers to log on and migil in
there in virtual nightclub the best part
no techno music Evan dot-com clubs hit
or miss I’d say it’s a miss the alcohol
is not real you are correct despite
early success the parent company was
bought by yahoo and they shut this
virtual clubs doors in 2007 all right
number three you look like me think
we’re related my heritage is an Israeli
genealogy website that’s taking family
trees to the next level with face
recognition technology plug in a picture
of yourself and the site trolls their
database for users with similar features
and can even be used with other photo
sites like flickr facebook and picasa
family photos hit or miss inside that’s
a hit why finding you know your
relatives online and finding who you
look like or who you resemble is a
pretty big absolutely right huge hit
it’s available in 25 languages has over
25 million worldwide users all right
number four from New York City comes a
site that would have the Sex in the City
girls to step
they’re Manolo Blahniks shoe tube is a
video sharing website for you guessed at
shoe addicts users can upload blah blah
blah hit or miss and go with Miss I’m
not into shoes it wouldn’t be my target
market it is one heel of a hit Evan the
site launched its a few months ago it’s
already schooled scored a major
partnership deal with nine west so there
you go you’re each one for two there
well done lots of fun thank you for
being here thank you for having us
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