Hi Everybody:
Great to be here, posting this first entry on our new Yepic blog. We set this up to keep you informed on our progress and give you more information about Yepic and our company vision.
So What Is Yepic, Anyway?
Wow. That's a fun story, and I bet Corey's version will differ substantially from mine. Here's how I came to where we are now:
Last year I heard Tim O'Reilly speak about Web 2.0 and related concepts at a conference I'd attended. In particular, he focused on wikis and how they were transforming the way information is created and shared on the Internet. I'd discovered Wikipedia (also click here for a great description of the site) shortly before that presentation, and although I'd already developed a serious appreciation for the quality of the information found there, I had no idea how it was being created. The revelation of the user-contribution system sort of hit me like a punch in the face. I was stunned momentarily: was it possible that an ungoverned, self-organized group of people could create such amazing material, without any of the normal incentives that typically drive us to produce stuff?
O'Reilly spoke at length about how users--lots and lots of users--add value, quality, authenticity, breadth, depth, accuracy . . . thereby creating a product that often exceeds professional standards. I took the concept back to work with me and started a wiki for my department. Within 8 months it had replaced all other forms of documentation we typically used and was getting adopted by several other departments. We found the collaborative platform of the wiki so much more easy to work with, and so much more optimized towards getting us to the PRECISE piece of information we were looking for in a given scenario.
One day I was chatting with a friend and I said, "I wonder if the wiki platform could be used for sellable information? You know, like the kind of stuff people will pay money for."
My first idea was to create a wiki environment for reviews, the main idea being that people would prefer to read one review informed by 100 people as opposed to 100 different reviews. But Amazon beat me to the punch on that one. While I was working on the concept, Corey approached me and proposed a terrific business idea: "What if," he said, "we allowed people to upload and sell their digital wares on the Internet, just like people do on eBay?" Corey then told me his idea occured to him when he a close family friend made $5,000 selling a simple how-to doc she'd written (4-pages) on eBay for $5 per copy. I then told Corey about my idea to create a collaborative platform for the development of high-value content. After a month or two we were convinced we needed to start Yepic to provide the world with a place to create, buy, and sell high-value content. We were particularly convinced there was a huge market for this in long tail, or niche markets.
We started running the idea by friends and family as we pulled together our first round of funding. One buddy told me he was eager to start writing articles on how to care for extremely rare tools he loved to collect. He talked about how it was very difficult to find anything good on the Internet about them. Another friend said he'd write an article with several friends--using our wiki-platform--on how to score more than 700 on the GMAT (he scored 740). Another friend said she'd pull together several moms and write an article on how to handle 3 toddlers. Another friend talked about ways Yepic could be used to incent his tech support staff to actually write good self-support articles for customers. Another friend talked about pulling together an article informed by 10 families that had recently moved to and bought a home in the Bay area, their tips and tricks, mistakes, etc. And the list goes on and on. The sheer excitement we felt from each of these people we interviewed convinced us that we needed to get this community built, and fast.
Now we're a few months away from launching the full-blown service. We hope you'll love it. More posts to come soon.
Best,
Richard
