Laughtatlife.com – My ambitious project
You may have noticed, in these past couple of weeks, I’ve been tweeting posts from a site called Laughtatlife.com, a Tumblr based-blog. You may have also noticed that all the tweets are humorous and entertaining. Keeping this in mind, I felt the need to explain myself to you, so you don’t think I’m some crazy recent graduate effected by the job market (which you still may after this).
You guys know me as the, “Twenty-something PR/communications techie that doesn’t stand for the status quo,” and that phrase “status quo” is something I stand firm on. But what you may not know, is that I’m a big goof ball, which means I do all I can to crack a joke just so I can make someone laugh. I believe laughter is a strong medicine both mentally and physically.
Therefore, these two principles laid a foundation for an ambitious project I recently launched.
Laughtatlife.com is my creation and an extension of my passions, as well as a change from the norm from other aggregate entertainment websites. The idea of Laughtatlife.com comes from popular websites like VeryDemotivational.com, Break.com, and Funny.com. After visiting these very successful sites and others which aggregate funny videos, quotes, pictures, and links from the Internet, I came to the realization that they had one thing in common: they’re cluttered with links and advertising.
So I thought, how could I change this and still make people laugh?
I thought about it for awhile, and reached a conclusion that I needed to get back to the basics; meaning I needed to make things simple, clean and easy on the eye. Psychologically and commercially speaking, when you make things simple for people to use, you’re more likely to have a higher success rate than your competitors (or so I hear!). Also, you may have noticed, from visiting the website, that I only have two image advertisements. These are the ONLY two locations on the site I designate for advertising, because, like I said, simplicity is what I’m trying to achieve.
At this point, I bet you’re thinking I’m crazy and there is no way my project will be successful on a grand stage, like the competitors I listed above. However, I want you to know that I fully understand that this project may lead to complete failure and inadequate profitability. But, I’m more interested in the development side as well as marketing/community base than anything else. One of my goals is to take the lessons and skills I learn from this and apply them to other projects I am also currently working on.
I hope you can join me on my first official project into entrepreneurship. Like I tweeted earlier, “If you don’t try something new, you never take a risk.” I want to personally thank you for all your support and help. I know it will not be a free or easy ride, but I can’t wait to see where this project may take me.
Also, I am interested in hearing your suggestions, criticisms, ways to drive traffic or anything you would like to share (be honest, I want to hear from you).
Many thanks in advance!
Helpful Links:
Twitter – @laughtatlife
Special thanks to Andrew Byrne for helping me with some design work. He’s putting together a new logo for the site, which should be launched very soon!
3DS – An entreprenurship lesson in 60 hours
A couple of weekends ago I had the honor in participating in one of the most eventful, intense, passionate, and valued experiences of my life. I was selected as one of forty participants for this year’s 3 Day Startup program. Here is a description of the event from their website:
“The idea of 3 Day Startup is simple: start a technology company over the course of three days. We rent work space for an entire weekend, invite 40 students with a wide range of backgrounds, cater food, drinks, snacks, and coffee, pick the best idea for a software startup during the Friday brainstorming session, and release a minimal prototype by Sunday night. The goal is to build enough momentum among a network of motivated people to sustain the company beyond the weekend.”
The experience, knowledge and network I was able to gain during this weekend by far surpasses anything I would have learned in a classroom. But, I do have to mention that those techniques and theories discussed in class were applied during this weekend and will be applied moving forward. Here is what 60 hours of passion and drive can teach you:
- Passion will not override business knowledge – Just because you are passionate about something you have to understand the business part of it to make it work. You have to understand the components necessary to add value to your customers and make money to attract the attention of investors and take a percentage of the market share.
- There are people out their to help you – Never think that you’re alone in your adventure into entrepreneurship. There are tons of networks and individuals out there that want to help your idea get launched. All you have to do is find those people, because most of the time they will not find you.
- Act quickly when you realize you have failed is the first step in changing things around and meeting a deadline – As I stated in an earlier post, understand that failure is part of success. Our team ended up hitting rock bottom Saturday night, but a couple of red bulls later we were up and running, putting together a presentation that got all the investors excited to learn more.
- Involving yourself in a tech-based startup requires you to build a relationship with your programmers – No matter how smart you are, you have to build a solid relationship with the people that are going to make your idea a reality. They share your passion, so never forget that.
- Passion never sleeps, it only takes naps – Being an entrepreneur means that you spend countless hours working on your passion. But, I came to realize this weekend that the passion and drive you have needs some time to nap. Getting some sleep allows you to refresh your mind and get back to what you love doing.
I highly recommend anyone wanting to get into entrepreneurship to check out the 3 Day Startup program. I can guarantee it will open doors to opportunities you may have not thought of before.
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