Two of my friends have taken the plunge into the startup/self-employment world (both in online advertising). They’re both brilliant, of course, and have worked incredibly hard. It’s inspiring to witness as I learn about entrepreneurial concepts in school… while they are out doing it!
Project Wonderful
First shout-out: Ryan North, CEO of Project Wonderful. Ryan is stupendously funny and started out by publishing a popular online daily dinosaur comic. Then he had a revolutionary idea for online advertising - an auction-based model where everybody wins. Advertisers bid for display time on popular sites, as opposed to paying clickthrough rates. Customers are loving the alternative, if Project Wonderful’s skyrocketing growth is any indication.
r/evolution
Second shout-out: Mark Northcott, CTO of Paymail. Paymail recently launched r/evolution, a Facebook video advertising application that coordinates a donation to charity each time a user watches a r/evolution video of their choice. The idea is to give something back to the user (and to charity) through advertising - a great conceptual mashup.
Mark has been living the “startup life” for the last eight months, working hard towards this launch. I’m crossing my fingers for r/evolution’s success in the upcoming months.
