"Why have a contest at all"?

Well our hopes for a March 12 Beta launch are completely dashed. There was no way to put out a useful prototype in time, so it looks like we may have to wait until Sept. Unfortunate but not world ending.

On the plus side, the experienced business person, Bram Lebo, that I referred to in the last post has agreed to help advise us and join our "virtual team". That's a fancy way of saying "He'll come on full-time when we can afford him". This arrangement suits me just fine because Bram has so much to offer us even simply as an advisor. I believe that we have a tremendous opportunity to offer and that when he really begins to see what bodbook can be he will be more inclined to contribute more.

Onto a lesson learned about entrepreneurship, part of starting something from scratch is having to enlist help. In order to get people to help you need to persuade them that what you are doing is worth contributing to. This has been a huge part of my role as leader of the project, a job I've undertaken with mixed success. For example, when I describe the service as "Facebook meets The Apprentice" and describe the contest I often get back confused looks and advice to jettison the contest because it complicates things. While I have been instinctually certain that this advice isn't in the best interests of bodbook it has been difficult to articulate why. Finally the other day the answer came to me in a flash of insight "The contest is the core of bodbook". Of course this is obvious to me, but I realized that the well-meaning advice givers didn't have this same understanding of what the service really was. They thought that the idea should just be stripped down to the core of getting users discounts on social entertainment. What they don't realize is that the contest is in fact the real service that we provide to users. When we facilitate the contest properly the discounts automatically fall into place. An analogy that I think really hits the nail on the head is "The contest is to the social network what sparkplugs are to a car. Without the contest the service is as likely to take-off as a car without plugs is to start when you turn the key".

Why do I say that? The contest gives the most connected users in the network a vested interest in growing the user base so that they can tap more people for their events. Without the contest there are no inherent champions to promote the service to peers. The average student may tell some friends about the network based on the discount that they could receive if they all sign-up, an approach that may work with the very cost conscious, but not likely to be one that will turn registering into a epidemic. On the other hand, with the contest the user has a very clear need to grow their personal network so that they can become contestants. They will ask all of their friends to essentially lodge a vote for them by joining the bodbook network. Do you see the difference in the propositions? In the network without the contest the only incentive to tell others is to receive the discount, however, if the network already has enough mass to gain the discount then the only incentive left is philanthropic. However, with the contest the incentive continues to grow until one has exhausted all the possibilities for getting other students to sign up.

Clearly the contest offers a distinct advantage for gaining critical mass, and that is why the contest is core to what we do. The contest also brings out an additional social dimension that is not inherent in the model without the contest...but I'll save that discussion for another day : )