Stung by the experience, he spent the next 24 hours solid practicing.Ībove: Cat # 5765: the bestest friend cat The final rehearsal was a disaster - it was nerve-wracking and, in Gadlin’s own words, he choked. Gadlin’s pitch to get on the show was “a two-sentence email consisting of ‘I draw stick-figure pictures of cats and sell them for ten bucks apiece … let me at ’em.'” The typically Gadlin-esque low pressure, almost lackadaisical approach worked: a few months later he was invited out to LA to present his business to the panel of sharks on camera. “I was almost on ‘Deal or No Deal,’ almost on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire.’ But this was the one I never expected to get on.” “I was familiar with the show … I’m kind of a serial game show applier,” Gadlin told VentureBeat. They cut out most of the nasty stuff.” But in late 2011 Gadlin decided to apply. VentureBeat asked Mark Cuban if the sharks are really as harsh as they sound on camera. On the show, the sharks typically pummel the hopeful contestants with tough questions, and it’s not unknown for entrepreneurs to leave in tears. He then went on to buy the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Sharks include real estate exec Barbara Corcoran, tech entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, fashion magnate Daymond John, and of course Mark Cuban, who sold to Yahoo just before the dot-com crash. The ABC show Shark Tank, now in its fourth season, consists of a panel of executives and investors (the sharks) who review rapid-fire business proposals from aspiring entrepreneurs. That dream led him to the “Shark Tank.” The leap from online to network TV As he tells it, “the margins were terrible, because we had discounted it so heavily for Groupon,” but that was the point at which he began to build all the tools that an actual business would need, such as a fulfillment system.Īdmittedly, Gadlin’s initial business systems were still “kinda lemonade-stand scale,” but thanks mainly to the fact that hundreds who purchased the deal didn’t actually order a drawing, Gadlin was able to survive the onslaught. The original ceiling on the Groupon deal was 500 drawings, but the uptake was so good Gadlin increased the cap to 1000. In other words, Groupon released it in a small market, did not email it out to daily deal subscribers, and hid it away on the sidebar as an “also available” deal. It took two months for that one lonely believer to convince enough Groupon staffers that the wacky deal fit the irreverent, unconventional Groupon brand.Īnd when Groupon finally did decide to offer a cat-drawing deal in mid-2011, it launched only in Santa Cruz, California, as a side-deal. But, I got a reply a few days later, maybe because they have a big cat mascot.” Gadlin got one Groupon staffer intrigued with the concept: one custom cat picture drawn to order for $3, a steal of a deal compared to his regular $10 fee. “I approached Groupon, kind of as a joke. While the video now has over 155,000 views, initially it didn’t get much traction. Quirky, funny, offbeat, with a deceptively catchy jingle, Gadlin’s video has the perfect recipe for going viral. How did this happen? It all started with a video. Not to mention a $25,000 investment from billionaire dot-com entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Just about the very definition of small-time.įast forward to today, however, and he’s sold over 7,000 drawings and has a 4 to 6 week order backlog. Then Gadlin drew it on paper and snail-mailed it to each customer. Clients watched the video, ordered a cat drawing, and paid $1o. Initially, in early 2011, the site consisted of exactly two things: an embedded YouTube video, and a PayPal button. “I wanted to create an experiment where I could do all the things people who create businesses do, and do it with just a widget,” Gadlin told VentureBeat. The result was the site I Want to Draw a Cat For You.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |