Anecdotl: Checking “Startup” off the Bucket List
“Anecdotl is where stories belong.” That was the tagline of my joint side project/startup, conceived when I realized that I was forgetting some of the funny things that my son said and did because I hadn’t recorded them. “If this is a problem for me,” I thought, “then it’s a problem for lots of parents.” After convincing two former co-workers of the basic premise, we started work on “Anecdotl” and eventually launched a website of the same name (the proper spelling of the word was taken by then). Here’s the pitch:
Everyone has stories to tell because life is full of them. We tell them at the right time and in the right context because they entertain and add life to conversations. When viewed together, they also paint a picture of our personalities. But for most of us, our personal stories exist only in our memories. Abbreviated versions may exist in old Facebook posts or Tweets, and some others may live in the sent folder of one of our four email accounts. As a whole, though, they are inconvenient to access or forgotten over time.
Anecdotl is a central place for stories. It is dedicated solely to personal anecdotes, helping us share and enjoy the kinds of stories that happened when the camera was off.
From the “about” page of the Anecdotl website
We though there might be some demand for a site whose sole purpose was to record personal stories, so the three of us spent about a year in our free time building the website, collecting content, applying for (and being rejected by) startup incubators, and finally launching the website. Jonathan handled web development, Tim designed the look and feel, and I was the CEO/product manager/marketer.
The website is long gone, but pieces of it still exist, like this movie that we had made for about $800 or so.
Objective
Our main objective was to get first-hand experience of what it takes to launch and then market a website. Ultimately, we wanted it to make money, but the three of us had just left a soon-to-fail big data startup, so broadening our skillset as we pondered future career moves was our primary concern.
Anecdotes
As the name suggests, the website’s main feature was personal stories that we hoped would be entertaining enough for people to read and enjoy even if they didn’t know the author. Places like Reddit have a ton of stories which come up either with a prompt, e.g., “At what moment did you first realize your parents didn’t know everything?” or organically in an unrelated topic. So, our MVP featured a home page with recent stories, story pages, category pages, a simple sign-up process, and a basic content creation function in which a user could write up a story, add images, and share their stories.
Anecdoodles
To add original imagery to the website – and to motivate people to write stories – we created cartoons about stories that we thought were particularly entertaining. The first one we did was about my son and his first “crush,” Katie. As a 4 year old, he felt that feats of great strength was the way to a lady’s heart.
Subsequent cartoons were single pane to fit the style of our cartoonist and for cost-efficiency’s sake. Each cost us only $15 and were free to users for producing entertaining tales. Authors were surprised and delighted when I sent them an anecdoodle of their story. Here are a bunch:
Examples of Anecdotes
Several of the anecdotes still make me laugh, particularly the ones which did not focus on sappy parenting stories. I’ve lost many of the ones submitted by users, but here are a few others.
Example 1: LARPing by David M.
Like quidditch, LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing) involves engaging other players, but the rules are so vague that play devolves into incoherent random actions. They also dress up, but with cosplay, costumes are the focus and a surprising amount of effort and money goes into their creation. With LARP, most players just wear a floppy hat or fringed vest. Actually given their tendency for rotundness, capes seem to be the apparel of choice.
The kids and I were at a Woodland Park last week where about 15 or so LARPers were doing their thing. Most were in their late teens/early twenties (community college types) but a few were simply too old to be involved in this type of activity. They were dressed in a minimalist steampunk/medieval style and carrying a combination of Nerf guns and foam swords. We stayed about an hour, playing in the stream, exploring the trees, hanging from a rope swing, etc. During that entire time, the LARPers stood around in small groups quietly discussing something or another; they didn’t actually LARP at all. Admittedly they may have just finished a massive battle royale before we arrived but no one looked flushed or winded and some of these people would have gotten winded going up a couple flights of stairs. All I thought was “If you’re going to look stupid in public, at least get some exercise out of it.”
There was one girl, though, who appeared to be having a life moment. She was probably about 20 and exquisitely balanced between nerdliness and hotness, which I have never considered to be incompatible or opposing qualities. She wasn’t in costume and was carrying one Nerf gun, probably as a favor to a friend. She didn’t seem to be into the proceedings at all and probably was quietly re-evaluating her entire allegiance to this group. I like to think that she reached a crossroads that day and left LARP behind to start down the path to a better future. I also caught her eyeing me a few times, maybe signaling her need to be rescued.
Example 2: What’s Up With Boobs? by Jocelyn K.
Last night, my son approached me in a bit of a huff:
“Mom, all my friends know about boobs but me!”
“What? I doubt any of your friends know anything about boobs.”
“You know, like bras and the sizes. What are they? Is A bigger or is D bigger.”
“D is bigger,” I answered quickly.
“That makes no sense. A+ is the best grade and D is the worst!”
“Yes, but think more like batteries. Double A versus Double D”
“But what size are those? Is an A like a bottle cap and a D more like a vase?”
I’d had enough. “I’m not going to teach you any more about boobs. Don’t you think you should ask your father about this?”
Incredulous, he asked “Why would DAD know anything about boobs?”
Example 3: Iron Man vs. Bumblebee by Tom K.
Trent: I had a dream last night [he’s excited to tell me about it]
Me: Really? What was it?
Trent: I was Iron Man and there was Bumblebee [a transformer] and he was bad and we was fighting and I used my powers to kill him.
Me: Wow, that sounds exciting.
Trent: Then I went home and ate boogers.
Which is exactly what Iron Man would have done.
What Happened to Anecdotl?
We launched the website in April, 2014, and by June, it was obvious that we had an authoring problem. We could drive traffic to the site at relatively low cost via Facebook, but it was really difficult to get people to write stories. What was worse, out of the handful of the stories that people did write, only a few were interesting. I think to get it going, we would have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and we weren’t willing to do that. In fact, total out of pocket expenses were less than $3,000.
I considered “borrowing” content from Reddit – some websites do this type of thing today, like this post that uses an entry in Reddit’s Life Pro Tips forum – or posting celebrity content, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, after rejections from startup incubators, inability to find early signs of traction, each of us already securing full time jobs, and the perceived struggles of competitors, we pulled the plug. It seemed like Anecdotl was one of those ideas that many people thought they would use if it existed, but didn’t actually once it did.
Tom Kehl 