This week’s Elevator Pitch comes from MakeFive, a Vancouver, B-based startup that revolves around making top-five lists. The concept is simple: you make a list of anything you want—the worst typefaces of all time, the best tech sites, or things to do after the economy collapses—and vote up the items you think should make it to the top five.
The site is well-designed and fun. I am not sure how many times I would go back. It would depend on how good the lists become and who makes them. Of course, there is already a MakeFive Facebook app. But I liked this pitch from founder Eric Karjaluoto. It made me want to go check out the site, which is what an Elevator Pitch is supposed to do.
If you have a startup, submit your Elevator Pitch and we might cover it here on TechCrunch.
“…frking awesome…” — never feel good when a pitch ends with these adjectives.
Sorry about that–I was trying to keep it PG-13.
Top Five worst startup ideas…
1) This one
Agree entirely. This is a pointless idea with no business reasoning at all. A waste of the employees’ time, a waste of money (God I hope VCs have not dumped any cash in this…), and a waste of my time even writing this comment.
We’ve had a bit of interest on the VC side, but still not the right deal. It’s something that we struggle with. Funding would allow us to do more, faster (i.e. added marketing, improving features); however, we kind of like doing this with our own money. It allows us a lot of freedom to test things out and concentrate on our users, instead of dreaming about an exit.
Some of you will likely find this strange, but I suppose it comes from our background in running a small agency. We’re not as interested in a quick payout as we are in building great stuff. Plus, given the economic climate out there, I’d rather be building, than chasing funding.
Don’t make me laugh in the morning Aaron. Splashed coffee burns.
Why was this a good elevator pitch? I thought it was pretty bad with the lame sound effects… and it didn’t sound very exciting…
Unless they do something cool with time-series data, i.e. how any given “top 5″ changes with current events, then this is a one-trick pony.
Something like Google Trends (where they show how search traffic dips and rises with current events) meets MakeFive.
Even with that, a crowd-sourced “top 5″ isn’t something that is quickly dynamic. I’d rather just go to a poll site like SodaHead. MakeFive is essentially a poll site except limited to “what is your favorite / the best / superlative [fill in the blank] questions”?
The topics are pretty vast and can be “sliced-up” a number of ways (i.e. how new they are, popularity, group discussion or individual list). In fact, this is what we’ve struggled with. Some people want to create a list of their 100 top movies (which you can do–you aren’t limited to five) and share them with close friends, while others just want to create funny lists and have a laugh.
The top-five paradigm does bring with it some challenges. It initially seems a little limiting; however, an approach like this does force people to make a few selections, instead of having to up-vote/down-vote everything. I can’t say that it’s a better approach, but users continue to tell us that they find it fun. Additionally, it’s sometimes interesting to simply browse the site for ideas. (i.e. I’m often looking for animated movies to download for my son.)
I think the site is actually fairly adaptable. To date, most people use it for entertainment purposes, but it’s certainly not limited to that. In fact, we’ve been using it to crowdsource what people dislike about the site and help prioritize which issues matter to our users most.
Additionally, I feel that there’s a lot of potential here for reviews of local restaurants, bars, attractions, etc. This end of things is still is a little slow to start, but we are working on a local component to the site that will help push this along. (It’s coming along, but we’re a pretty small team, so some of these things do take a little while.)
Thanks for your thoughts.
Yeh, but Eric, have you ever bothered to stop running to even ask yourself whether you’re even going in the right direction? What on earth kind of business are you trying to build? Who will pay what for this? It’s a gag, a fun little pass-time that might attract a few bored teens to throw on some info set up their n’th profile. Bottom line, you will never manage to monetize this thing, there is no realistic business model, your volumes will be way too low to attract any advertiser of prominence, and unfortunately you won’t raise any cash (except for your friends and family, who in this economy have much better places to put that cash: SAVINGS). If any VC puts money in this idea, I think TechCrunch should run a major piece on idiot VCs out there. Good luck, but please do us all a favor and get real.
I see where you’re coming from, and where a lot of the TechCrunch readers are at. It’s a tough spot for guys like you. Cash seems to be drying up, and that goldrush mentality of “where’s the next Twitter?” is quickly becoming a fading memory.
First off, I’d like to note that the funny part with things like Google and Facebook is that you never really know if they’re going to work. I don’t think anyone really does. (Otherwise, VC success ratios would be much higher.) The fact is; it’s a gamble. We make ours safer by maintaining a low burn-rate (MakeFive was built by three people) and working hard. This allows us to iterate, improve, and react to what our users are asking for.
I don’t know if MakeFive will be a big thing; that being said, we’ve run the numbers, and it seems pretty reasonable for it to become a viable revenue source for us.
The general principle of MakeFive is really simple. It’s just a voting system with a broad number of potential uses. Some, like you I suspect, won’t enjoy it, but others really do. The beauty of the web, is that it’s big enough that we don’t have to appeal to everyone. So, while our users will make lists of things that interest them, you can continue to spend your day desperately looking for work on monster.com, while taking masturbation breaks with visits to fleshbot. We’ve all got our thing, even if this isn’t yours buddy.
I think we are about as “real” in what we’re doing as anyone could be. We’re using our own money to build, not that of friends, family or angels, but in fact our own cash. We have a small, but very keen membership, and we aren’t desperate for funding. smashLAB (our agency) already pulls in enough to keep us working on projects like this (and our new little experiment: http://www.undrln.com).
If we never get a penny of funding, we’ll still be in business. It’s fun, and we’re getting some pretty impressive feedback from users.
I’ll be honest. The tone of your post made me feel like not even responding. You seem sort of bitter, and I can’t really understand why. Nevertheless, we’re running a solid little business. It seemed a shame to not at least counter your thin remarks with some real feedback.
Wow. Tell us what Top 5 is. Focus on what a user can do in the first 30 seconds after landing on your site.
Within 30 seconds:
- Laugh: http://www.make...s-new-movie-yes
- Find a place to eat: http://www.make...es-in-vancouver
- Debate: http://www.make...-remembered-for
Within 30 seconds:
- Laugh: “Requests Mysteriously Absent From Jim Carrey’s New Movie Yes Man”
- Find food: “Best breakfast places in Vancouver”
- Debate: “Things President Bush Will Actually Be Remembered For”
Sorry I didn’t add links for these; however, the comment thread doesn’t seem to like me doing so. Just run a search for these topics at MakeFive and see if they lead you clicking around. (Hopefully for even more than 30 seconds.)
interesting concept. However, I do not understand what would the users gain out of this? I mean..what is the point for me to post my top 5?
It’s a bit of a mix. In general, I think visitors seem to just find the lists compelling to read over. Those who sign-up for accounts do make a bigger commitment and seem to have quite different reasons for it.
Some like the interaction between users, and discussing different topics. Others like the contest aspect, where they gain points for activity. I personally like finding things that I hadn’t thought of checking out (for example: new bands.)
It does seem to appeal to a certain kind of user; specifically, those who want to voice their opinions. I’m always surprised when we get an email from someone saying that they are kind of “hooked” on it. As strange as this may seem from the outside, it’s actually pretty fun when you get into it.
This is a fail… its not like this has been made before.
Guys,
Hate to say it but this idea is terrible. No, not talking about MakeFive, silly! I’m talking about Elevator Pitch Friday. The whole thing stinks!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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what’s the point?
The magic question for this and all of these pitches:
How does it make money?
Immediately we’re concentrating on building a service that users enjoy. Once that is refined, we’ll start to concentrate on revenue. We already run an interactive agency (www.smashlab.com) and this largely covers the development costs of MakeFive.
Our first step is to sell standard ads while we build traction. Later we’ll concentrate more on higher-value brand placement opportunities & sponsored activities. The example that I like best is that of building contests around certain companies that would allow a level of engagement between users and brands.
Other options we’re exploring include allowing companies to buy expanded listings for their services. Additionally, we’re looking at integrating the sale of products through affiliates, on relevant pages.
Frankly, the site is still young and we want to remain open to how people actually use it. With a start-up like this, things often turn out differently from your initial plan. Those mentioned are some of the ideas we’re tinkering with, but I suspect the end path may be different from what we first envisioned.
Thanks for the candid reply, Eric. I’ve actually been following SmashLab for a while… and I think you’re in a good spot with seemingly little pressure on MakeFive to generate *real* revenue right now. I would suggest integrating with Facebook to expedite usage: the user feedback can/will dictate where you take this, I’m sure…
I actually was working on something like this a few years back, but was side tracked because of my cagefighting aspirations.
the best way to make money is to create a search database for reviews of top 5 of everything and use google adsense or commission based model to complement searches on its site.
Top5 is basically a consumer review site where people vote on what is the best of everything.
People can search for things like break up songs, best beer, spring break, xbox 360, sextoys, etc. And will get lists showing the top 5 choices that consumers liked. (Top 5 shooters for xbox 360, top 5 beers for october, etc). It will be Top5’s job to match the items on the lists with advertisements or a link to where to buy such an item.
Like a list of best break up songs. FU Dana for breaking up with me. Anyways people can search for this and get this
http://www.make...-break-up-songs
top5 needs google ads for these songs or create a platform similar to adsense for their database that will allow business to match up their advertisements with items on their top 5 lists and top 5 gets % of all sales made by users clicking through advertisments and purchasing.
It will be top 5’s job first to get as much traffic on the site as possible so more content can be created on its database and then market value of the search capabilities on the site.
This is a bootstrapped startup. Its a small group of people with an idea and the sand to go for it in a real way.
It wont appeal to everyone, nothing will – but this small team and their app just got mentioned to TC – so I would say they are off to a good start.
Congrats and best of luck to the MakeFive team!
Thanks Dave!
I’ve been using this site for awhile, and I have to say “don’t knock it til you try it” applies here.
For me, the site is a great way to spawn some debate, a lot of the topics are entertainment/light, but there’s opportunity for deeper topics at the same time. Such as during the election, there were a great number of topics about who should be elected, issues they should address when in office, etc etc.
The best part of the site is it’s potential. The team is absolutely amazing about being transparent in everything they are doing, opening up their to-do list to requests from the community. That’s just amazing. They are actively engaged with the users, making adjustments and changes based on user feedback and comments, more so than any site I’ve come across. Its almost an open-source social network.
It’s only a one-trick pony if you let it be. I’ve been finding tons of fun, interesting things within the site. I’d say give it a try first.
wheres the money?
Not every startup will be a Google or a Facebook. But by the same token, they don’t have to be in order to be viable. They simply have to have a path to profitability.
While it strikes me as something that would be clearly at home during the dot-com boom, makefive seems like a neat little niche site that could appeal to enough users to be a viable side business.
Good luck.
Weak idea with no sustainability presented by a dork with no presentation skills.
Deadpool for sure.
Normally you would be right. In a general public type setting the attractiveness of the person selling the product can enhance the value of the service. It is nothing new to say people value products more sold by pretty people. However the people who visit TC are not the usual market. These are tech nerds, people who might relate to someone who is better with a computer than making fancy pretty presentations.
The website is funded essentially by another website so it does not need to generate revenue initially. Unlike a lot of start ups they have the freedom to find their way without the pressure of needing instant revenue. They can grow slowly. Build around a small niche of users, make those users really happy. Continue to evolve the service, build apps that enhance it into Facebook, myspace, igoogle. Before they know it, they have maybe a 100 000 daily loyal visitors.
They should drop sears flowers and do floraqueen.com which is super easy to use to send flowers anywhere in the world…and fast..
You might even getting lucky using it…bob…well maybe that is pushing it…
I had a similar idea called 99million.com, the inspiration behind the site was to list all the excuses for why my wife wouldn’t have sex with me.
It’s to hot, It’s the morning, It’s to late, I want to relax, you haven’t showered. Then get all the other people to add their own, vote, the whole community bullshit.
Everyone would create there own list:
99 million songs i love
99 million …
It would have been great
You did get me to click on your link if that was the goal.
Keep on working on your site … Techcrunchers are not your niche users .
I like the 99 millions reasons my wife wouldnt have sex
Good luck with ur startup. Starting a startup is no joke. So we should refrain being rude.
Ya the concept looks quite spineless. But u never know it may be a huge success. More naive ideas have become successful, like Twitter.
Just keep working to evolve ur idea guys.
twitter ain’t successful until it finds out how to make money, which i know how they can.
I dig the site heavy. Great design and cool idea.
If you dont like the site dont visit. Why leave so many negative comments?
It’s amazing how negative the readers are on this site.
Eric I wish you guys the best of luck and I will be using the service.
Thanks–glad to hear!
A similar platform “Woobby.de” was launched in October 2007 in Germany. Woobby is a social ranking website where users rank different lists.
What the fuck…I had to spell it out…This is the shittiest startup (if it is called a startup) I ever heard of…I can’t believe it
One of the worst starup ideas that I have seen. No use and no relevance to anyone. Will top my own worst ideas list but even for that I won’t use makefive. Freaking awesome huh!!!
If this is trying to be a business, it’s not a good idea.
if it’s trying to be a fun, casual website, it might gain traction.
Either way, I can’t say I hate the idea. It just won’t be huge, that’s all. It seems like the founder already owns another money-making business. If he’s just trying to have fun with another site, it’s harmless, I guess.
The passion is very obvious. These guys love MakeFive, and that is very clearly obvious.
Most of the negative comments are actually saying something, it’s just that they are being rude pricks. This is a neat little idea, but I sincerely hope they do not plan on making an abundance of money from it. Sure, they might get a little ad revenue stream in here and there—hell, they might even have a few months that exceed their expectations—but, the idea is not strong. It doesn’t matter how much passion, belief, and love they put into it—it’s not nearly strong enough to become a business. AND: that is why it is being pitched, is it not? I know the owners go to bed at night wondering if they are doing the right thing—if the “right thing” is planning some sort of success off it—lads, place your bets elsewhere. It won’t be the “runaway” success that about 9 people are hoping for, laying awake in bed at night, dreaming about.
The site owner should refrain from defending every last negative comment. We all understand where his head is at with this, but come on – you can reply to every single bash on a public forum with such instant knee-jerk reaction. You “pitched” on TC, you have to accept some of the nastiness dished.
In summary, MakeFive is not the best “business” concept with regards to a web application. It just is not. It is much, much, much to niche an application to be commercially viable. It will stay, plateaued at some level, as the months pass by, the economy will continue to sag, and the owners will inevitably move on to something else.
Truth.
This is not good: http://www.goog...earch&meta=
Great idea Eric! Have been following your progress with it for some time. Although I do not love the idea, I feel there is a lot of people who will and who do.
Leave the naysayers behind as they look for the next big thing. When you focus so much on the negative aspects of anything it becomes difficult to see the positives. I believe the future of a business like this is a strong appeal to niche market.
Go MakeFive!