Ever wanted to compete for the title of ?orld? best haircut? Or see if you can swallow a whole Slurpee faster than anyone else?
In the old days, those kinds of challenges only happened among friends at a party, club or bar. But Abdul Khan has started a company that takes the fun online so he can offer it to thousands of people at a time.
IBY Inc., which stands for IBeatYou, is a social networking site with a twist: It allows its users to challenge other users to online competitions. Participants create contests on the company? Web site, IBeatYou.com, then enter them by posting videos, photos or text. Other users then log in to view the competitions and vote on the best entries.
Competitions range from the simple and straightforward ?cutest cartoon couple (say, Minnie and Mickey versus Donald and Daisy) or best haircut ?to the unpredictably offbeat. Some recently featured contests on the site included one challenge to see who could stomp flat the most soda cans in 10 seconds and one to see who could recite the alphabet backwards the fastest.
The games might sound ridiculous, but they have gotten IBY plenty of buzz. Among IBY? co-founders are basketball star Baron Davis and Cash Warren, a producer best known for his marriage to actress Jessica Alba. The two have used their connections to get celebrities to join or start competitions, allowing everyday users to go head to head with recognizable names such as actor Will Ferrell and National Basketball Association star Steve Nash.
Its star power has helped propel IBY to strong growth; in April when the Web site was barely a year old, it counted visits from 2.7 million users. Another company, Bix.com, does comparable online contests, and had less than 1,000 users in April, according to traffic measuring company Compete.com.
IBY has pulled in revenue from movie studios and entertainment companies, who use the site to promote upcoming record albums, TV shows and films. For the vampire flick ?wilight,?for instance, IBY was contracted by Summit Entertainment, the film? production company, to develop a competition for best vampire costume.
As a private company, IBY does not disclose revenue, but Khan, the chief executive, said it has grown month over month.
He said IBY? goal isn? to get market share from Facebook or MySpace as a social networking site. Instead, he wants IBY to carve out a niche in an area that almost no other companies have tapped: head-to-head competitions.
?t the end of the day, if we were trying to be another Facebook or just another generic social networking site, we would fail,?he said. ?ur goal is to become the online platform for competitions.
Social networking sites in general are a booming business. Emarketer Inc., a New York-based research firm, estimates advertisers will spend $2.8 billion on social networking sites this year and $4.1 billion in 2011.
Mark Suster, a partner at GRP Partners in Culver City who follows tech companies in Los Angeles, said IBY? success stems from the marriage of social networking and quirky competitions. Its challenge will be to turn a large user base into a profit ?something many Web companies have struggled to do.
Nevertheless, Suster thinks that IBY can find success with its current model. ?an it be a profitable business that? very relevant to film and music and how they?e marketed? I think so,?he said.
Contest concept
IBY was born from a brainstorming session two years ago between the five main founders: Khan, who was then a Silicon Valley venture capitalist; Davis; Warren; Steve Chang, who would become IBY chief technology officer; and Chad Gordon, who was working with Davis and Warren at Davis?movie production company. As they chatted, Davis tossed out an idea: What if there were a Web site where users could challenge their favorite celebrities to competitions? But then they reasoned: Why stop at celebrities? What if anyone could issue a dare?
?hings just kind of grew from there,?Khan said.
Armed with a PowerPoint presentation, Khan pitched the company to investors. With $1 million to $2 million in seed funding, Khan and his co-founders started IBY in a small house in Santa Monica. They quickly outgrew that location and moved into the penthouse suite of a Brentwood apartment building the color of peach sorbet.
Inside the bright, airy office, laptop cables are strewn across the floor and IBY? 10 employees wear jeans and T-shirts. Ideas for future online competitions are scrawled on a whiteboard. A portrait of Muhammad Ali, autographed in gold and addressed to Davis, hangs on a wall.
The penthouse was the scene of IBY? first competition, launched shortly after the Web site went live in March 2008. The IBY team challenged Web users to post their best video of a group lip-syncing a song. The IBY staff then posted a video of themselves ?with Alba participating ?lip-syncing the rock song ?ine in the Afternoon.?p>The video went viral and generated a slew of competing lip-sync performances posted on the site. KIIS-FM (102.7) disc jockeys talked up the competition on the air, and station workers posted their own video entry. They came in second. IBY? was voted first. (The site has security features that prevent people from voting multiple times for one entry, but the company? video probably won thanks to Alba? presence.)
The traffic that came to IBY? site was beyond what the staff expected, giving rise to a few nervous moments while their servers struggled.
?t was a bit shaky,?said Chang. ?he boat was rocking.?p>Since then, IBY has continued to grow. It recently added a feature that allows users to create online quizzes and ask their friends to take them. The company also continues to add servers as it braces for expanding traffic ?an expense Khan said he? glad to have.
?f all the problems I could think of, I would love to have the problem of too many people coming to our site,?he said.
IBY Inc.
HEADQUARTERS: Brentwood
FOUNDED: 2007
CORE BUSINESS: Platform for online contests that can be used to market entertainment
products
EMPLOYEES: 10 (up from 6 in 2008)
GOALS: Become the leader in online
competitions and quizzes
DRIVING FORCE: Entertainment companies?desire for increased Internet buzz on social networking sites
