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Grab a copy of the lastest issue of Forbes, go to page 50 and you’ll see a multi-page story about Dogster and other companies making big things happen on very small budgets. (The article can also be found on their site.) The article leads and closes with Dogster and there’s a big picture of Steven, John and I. Author Victoria Murphy Barret did an excellent job, though she implies it’s all me, when really going from popular idea to profitable and growing business was achieved only through the partership with John and Steven. My favorite quote is me saying “I wanted to cover my rent. That was the business plan,” as that was true just 24 short months ago when Dogster got its first advertisers The fact that we’ve grown it into a stand-out business already profiled in Forbes magazine is about as rewarding as it gets. But the future is when the really exciting things will happen!
You can read the article online (registration required) or pick up a April 10, 2006 copy at the magazine rack!
Here are some quicking snaps I took of the article.
Page 50:
Page 51:
Contents Page:
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Dogster, Inc. is a seriously fun place to work. We are financially stable thanks to 9 months of profitability. Now we are looking to dogpile on 3 more full-time positions. More than just salary, benefits and equity, team members will get deep respect and have a superb opportunity to grow in a firm meritocracy. We love our jobs but also love our lives and never forget the importance of both.
We are currently seeking to fill 3 great positions.
Dogster is an equal opportunity employer. Expereinces and qualifications are important but a desire to learn, share and grow with us is paramount. We are located in sunny Potrero Hill, San Francisco and these positions will require working out of our office on a daily basis.
Open positions are always posted on our jobs page. Come bark and meow with us!
(Photo credit: Petey!)
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We recruited Tim Barkow of ThinkCorps to make a new design for our company and community blogs. We think they’re excellent. They are seriously fun infact. If you’re reading this in your aggregator click thru and check out look. Otherwise, take a look around, you’re soaking it in.
Tim’s a talented colleague who designed our World’s Coolest Dog & Cat Show site, as well as the super-sweet Dogster and Caster fun buttons. (Seen below.)
My favorite touches in the new blog are the server-side image creator for the entry date and the barking dog used to indicate comments. The color pallete, title backdrops and header are all to drool … in our book.
Next up … The Caster Community Blog of course and then my dream pet project … Doglebrity! Just bought the domain 30 seconds ago.
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Quielty this month we launched the Dogster Dog Blog! It’s a dog-focused dog-fun daily blog written by dogthority, Joy Ward.
Woof along as she covers the world of dogs and tells you all about in her daily dog walks … I mean blog entires. Get your daily dog fix, without even having to go to the vet.
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We’ve just secured an office space that is triple the size of our current office and it’s just 100 feet down the hall. It’s over 2,000 sq feet, will have two conference rooms custom built for us and a lot more windows. And we didn’t even have to sign a 5 year lease or add partner’s personal liability to secure it. Wooooooof!
The space is going to be a redesign of a much larger space. Here are pictures of the tear-down and framing.
The two confernce room will be behind where the gang is standing:
Our office will be on the other side of the framed wall:
Here’s the space in the demolition period:
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Jason Calacanis, who still hasn’t added his bulldog Toro to Dogster, had an interesting post yesterday about how advertising on social networks is not that effective. He writes that when users go to social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or Friendster they have two choices: flirt and socialize or click advertisements. They are in the ‘hook up’ mindset so clicking on ads that are not of that mindset are not very effective. He then compares that to a vertical content site like Autoblog where users are in the ‘consume auto info’ mindset. The vertical content site is much more interesting for advertisers because it is not conflicting with the users’ mindset. An automobile advertisement on an auto site is almost as interesting and relevant as the actual content if one is in the ‘consume auto info’ mindset.
I see what he means for the above examples, but on Dogster and Catster, I think it is a bit different. Our sites involve both social networking and vertical content and our advertising campaigns have proven to be very successful. Our users’ mindset is “show and share my love of dogs and/or cats”. We proactively bring our advertiser’s message into this mindset. We call this an integrated brand campaign approach. It layers in the advertiser’s message at many different layers within the vast Dogster and Catster framework. In addition, we encourage our advertisers to provide a community benefit along with their message. Many advertisers have ‘got this’ and have had very successful campaigns. My favorite is the Disney campaign we are currently running. Disney’s Lady and the Tramp characters are members of Dogster and Catster. Members can become their friends, email them and Disney can message them back. The members love it and so does Disney. An approach like this allows us to bring in advertisers that aren’t necessarily selling pet products. As long as the message is integrated into the fun and trustworthiness of the Dogster/Catster communities and matches the user’s mindset, it will be a success. Our follow up research on similar campaigns has shown these campaigns to be 25-50 times more effective than banner ads giving our advertisers and sponsors (Dad’s, Target, Animal Planet, Nintendo, ASPCA, Petsmart Charities, etc.) a nice ROI on their campaign.
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Dogster, Inc. has two open positions for LAMP-oriented Software Engineers who love to build web applications. We make very popular websites used by very passionate members. We’ve been profitable since July of last year and are growing really well!
Chosen candiates will also get equity and benefits not to mention respect and a great opportunity to carve out your own future. We want passionate people not pretty resumes, so show us your heart for coding and we’ll show you ours.
Dogster, Inc., based in sunny Potrero Hill, San Francisco, is a seriously fun place to work, and our websites Dogster.com and Catster.com are seriously fun to work on.
Full details can be found on our JOBS page.
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Dogster, Inc., we are told, is going to be featured in Forbes magazine. Who knows how these things go, but they sent photographers over today, so it’s looking good. Woof woof!
(Expected release: 3/27)
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We just spent a few days in Austin, Texas (one of my favorite cities in the US) at the SXSW Interactive Conference. We met a lot of great people doing exciting things and had A LOT of fun.
One of the highlights was our own Top Dog Ted’s panel on DIY. The panel took place in the one of the bigger auditoriums and more than 500 people attended. Ted recruited some excellent panelists including Gina Trapani from Lifehacker, Lynda Keeler from Delight, Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress and Mike Hudack from blip.tv.
The panel covered many of the aspects early stage projects and start-ups need to deal with. Topics covered the full spectrum from how to decide what projects to take on to when and how to compensate employees to how to deal with success. One really interesting discussion was how to deal with internet success that hasn’t yet translated to financial success. All the panelists had great, practical advice for the audience and were also very inspiring. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next internet phenomena was being planned and inspired from someone sitting right there in the audience.
One final note and that is hats off to Ted. I saw a lot of panels over the four days and Ted was the best moderator of all of them. In fact, I heard people buzzing about that panel for the next two days. Lots of praises, lots of great feedback. Nice job Ted!
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Dogster got a couple of nice paragraphs in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Check it out.
