The Birth of myYearbook …
It all started during Spring Break 2005, flipping through a yearbook in my room and realizing it sucked. This is 2005 – why the hell is anyone buying yearbooks anymore?
We wanted more than the typical stuff – superlatives, autographs, will, pictures – although those had to be there too. What would make this site different – and loved – is it would be full of the people you know and meet in real life everyday. And it would go with you your whole life. It was real life on the Internet.
Then we realized it could be more.
It could reinvent real life. It could make real life better. Making it easier to meet the people you see every day. Making it easier to approach the cute girl in a different class. Making it easier to find out who else shares your likes, dislikes, favorite movies, music, Chinese food place, … Catherine wrote the name down on her notebook, put smiley faces in the “O’s.” myYearbook was born.
The Idea Grows
It wasn’t long before we realized this was bigger than just high school or just college. This would be the best social networking site in history, if we could figure out what we were doing.
Let’s face it, friendster gets boring, myspace is creepy, and classmates is a rip off. myYearbook would be the only community of people worth going to – full of people you meet or used to meet everyday, the people you might actually be friends with, bump into, date, knock their books down, or marry. It would have every high school, every college, every graduate school, every summer program, every employer, everyone.
And it would connect everyone to everyone like never before.
And it would have no ads.
This is about building a site you want to use the rest of your life. It’s about making myYearbook something that will be around billions of years from now.
And by the way, myYearbook will always be free. We’re never going to even consider charging. Why? Because it’s against everything we stand for. This only works if everyone loves the site as much as we do and wants to make this site the coolest way of hanging out online and the best way to find more about the people you see everyday in real life.
The Slogan
It really is not easy to pick a slogan. You get sick of the bad ones quick, that’s how you can tell them apart. A good one will grow on you, and you’ll eventually love it. A great one is poetic.
“You’ve Got Friends!” is the third slogan seriously kicked around before launch. We started off with “One Yearbook to Rule Them All!” before realizing it sucked – dorky, about 3 years ago, and now, really, quite embarrassing.
“Meet the people you thought you knew!” sounded good for a few minutes. And then out of the blue comes an email and a thought: You’ve Got Friends!
Catherine built a t-shirt on cafepress to see if it looked good – the ultimate test of any slogan – and it worked. I love it. It’s reassuring when your down and makes you happy when your up. Do you ever get sick of hearing: “You’ve Got Friends!” We don’t, but then again … that’s our slogan.
Building It
Ok, so how do you go from a post-it to a site? That’s the secret.
How Did Someone Fifteen and Sixteen Do This?
How does someone Thirty of Forty do anything? OK, fine, you win, we do have a secret weapon.
A giant “LASER”.
So who are you?
Dave – Founder
Sometimes known as “the Dave” and the founder of “the Dave pose,” Dave is a high school senior. Dave may not get “all A’s” or “go to class,” but he brushes his hair, and dreams of being a male model/evil doctor.
Catherine – Founder
Catherine, a junior, is your typical overachiever. Nerd camp, good grades, conscientious, wannabe CTY RA. What differentiates her from – say – Erkel, is that she is a girl.
Dusty – VP Marketing
Dusty, a Harvard-educated canine, is, at the young age of 5, already the VP of Marketing for myYearbook. It was young Dusty’s idea to come up with the free t-shirt and thong offer. Dusty’s favorties include long debates about existentialism and cleaning her own butt. She has outsmarted Dave multiple times and proves to be a key co-founder of the site.
Geoff – Older Brother
Geoff, 27, is our older brother / investor / alcohol buyer. You might call him: “smart money.” Geoff is a freak. He got every question right on the SATs. He went to Harvard, made a silly claim in a newspaper at age 20 about being a millionaire by age 24, and then did it. He started a multi-million dollar business at school, sold it to an evil multinational, and now bounces around, and throws money at us when we need it. Still, 27 is old. I’m glad I’m not 27. Geoff comes after the dog on this page, because the dog is smart too.
Ok, But What’s Your Story?
Are you serious? We just went through that.