by 
Job hunting is such a degrading experience. Commuting to a remote office, only to be served shit coffee, and cornered by an aggressive interrogation. I’m really not sure where they come up with these interview questions. “Please translate this scientific article about red-dwarf stars. Which has nothing to do with our medical camera company. We’re also well aware you’re a history major.” Suffice to say the actual job was no less pleasant.
After my servitude as a coffee-fetching intern ended, I had a choice. A choice between selling half my soul to a major corporation or maintaining my humanity and joining a startup. I was already obsessively following a social media startup called “Outstanding.” So I took the leap.
What’s so Outstanding About “Outstanding”?
Reading the financial news is a great way to fall asleep. I’d really rather just curl up on my couch, grab a Harry Potter book, and pretend I’m a wizard. But, my conscience keeps reminding me I’m an adult. Reading Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin whitepaper is not my idea of a lazy Sunday. I miss the old days where cartoon characters taught us how the constitution works. Which is why when I came across “Outstanding’s” article about the current trend of Fintech startups I was hooked.
“Outstanding” reads like a comic book. They break down long paragraphs into short sentences. Utilize a pattern of bold text to retain your attention. And interlude the content with playful cartoon characters. In one sentence, Outstanding is an “atomized tech-news webcomic.” Which is not the most fanciest of explanations.
So here’s a short excerpt of the wonderful post I translated. You can also read the original post by learning another language in the next 5 minutes.
Want to Start Your Own Company?
Becoming an entrepreneur means being stressed all the time,
You constantly run the risk of failure,
All the while, facing the ever looming death of uncertainty.
Product-Market-Fit is no easier,
Figuring out what a customer really wants,
Is like trying to guess a baby’s favorite color while he’s crying.
“Unless you can see the future,
Read minds, or have a truth serum,
You’re pretty much out of luck”
“Even thinking about failure can be depressing…”
Not only will you lose your money,
But your carefully constructed reputation,
Can also be dismantled by the red bearing of a “Loser.”
Via Outstanding Translation
Giving Goldfish Smartphones
My brain can be an asshole when I try to concentrate. Reading a book used to be an hour of tranquility. Now it’s a sporadic circus of multi-tasking. Read one chapter, look at funny cat videos. Read one paragraph, check my email. Read one sentence, learn how black holes are created.
If you suddenly feel guilty, find solace in that there are other unfocused ducklings. A recent Microsoft study shows just how unfocused we are.
Attention Spans: Consumer Insights, Microsoft Canada [PDF]
Average attention span in 2000: 12 seconds
Average attention span in 2013: 8 seconds
Average attention span of a goldfish: 9 seconds
So congratulations on getting this far! With your dumber-than-a-goldfish-attention and all. Sadly, we only have our lovely smartphones to blame. As constant notifications have rewired our brain to crave instant-gratification, making it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time.
Digital Lifestyles have a Negative Impact on Prolonged Focus [PDF]
Long-term focus erodes with increased digital consumption, social media usage, and tech savviness… The thrill of finding something new often makes connected consumers jump off one experience into another. The ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter, dopamine, is released when consumers are doing something they find rewarding.
This is where Outstanding shines. A social media company made specifically for the “goldfish generation,” who are more familiar with messages, tweets, and listicles. Difficult concepts like stock-market volatility, startup valuations, and insurance rates are all explained in bite-sized paragraphs. You only need to concentrate for 1 minute, before you’re rewarded with a funny comic. It’s like poetry.
Via Instagram
Throwing Spaghetti Against a Wall
Outstanding didn’t actually have a public job openings. What I did find were other job applicants on their forum. “Do you have a job opening?” “Questions about hiring” “Have any open positions?” Despite numerous job applications, Outstanding still only had two members.
Most job applications are blatant outbound promotions. “Here’s my resume! You don’t know me, what value I can provide, but I’m going to shove my resume in your face.” Outbound marketing doesn’t work.
Outbound Marketing
Email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. I call these methods “outbound marketing” where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack.
If I send my resume like the rest of the drones, my resume would most likely be ignored. So I decided to utilize inbound marketing principles to make the Outstanding founders want to contact me instead.
Inbound Marketing
Rather than doing outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing inbound marketing where you help yourself “get found” by people already learning about and shopping in your industry… So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.
A Better Way to Sell Coffee
Like a drug addicted rat clicking his life away, “The 27 Most Important Things Cats Did On The Internet” is my guilty pleasure. After hours of a dopamine-fueled procrastination, you begin to wonder: “How does BuzzFeed make money? Why doesn’t BuzzFeed have banner ads?”
The secret to BuzzFeed’s invisible monetization lies in “sponsored” content. Instead of relying on randomly generated banner ads. BuzzFeed’s in-house Creative Team painstakingly works with advertisers to create native ads in the same format as their bubbly listicles.
A simple model of understanding BuzzFeed ads is through the “99:1 principle.” Provide (99%) of value to the customer and you could sell them (1%) of anything.
Content — A normal BuzzFeed post is (100%) listicle goodness (42 Of The Most Important Puppies Of All Time). “This corgi who has the cutest face in the universe. This golden retriever pup who has the cutest confused face ever.” And “This French bulldog pup who hasn’t grown into her ears yet” (100%).
Advertisement — A native BuzzFeed ad is (99%) listicle and (1%) ad (10 Summer Emojis That Should Definitely Exist). A Flip-flops emoji. A popsicle emoji. A dog sticking its head out of a car window emoji (99%). And a “Starbucks Frappuccino” emoji (1%).
BuzzFeed’s Future Depends On Convincing Us Ads Aren’t Ads
Starbucks gets to promote its Frappuccino product at the beginning and end of the post and gets a giant Facebook Page Like button and timeline on BuzzFeed. This format performs much better for advertisers than traditional ads.
Once enough value is provided (99%) we overlook the commercial aspect and willingly share ad embedded content. Which is crazy. Despite its small presence. The (1%) ad is why after hours of procrastination, I’m drinking “Starbucks” coffee. Touche.
Via Starbucks
How to Get Away with Marketing
Social marketing is like buying drugs in a foreign country. There are hundreds invisible rules you’re just supposed to know. After getting downvoted, blocked, banned, and shadow-banned. I decided to adopt the “99:1 principle” for marketing.
Reddit — Post your entire 3,000 word content on Reddit. Provide picture evidence of the content’s popularity via Imgur (99%). Then leave a short link back to the original content (1%). Don’t be a narcissist and submit links to your own content.
Instagram — Consistently upload high-resolution puppy photos (99%). Then link to your photo-studio on your profile bio (1%). Don’t be a marketer who uploads old watermarked images.
Medium — Write quality long-form content that educates, inspires, and promotes conversation (99%). Then leave a short CTA at the end of each post (1%). Don’t be a robotic brand that posts content about their own brand.
Outstanding — Buy a similar domain, clone their website, solve several technical issues, translate an article, and provide marketing strategies (99%). Then attach my resume (1%). Don’t just send a resume and ask for a job.
Confessions of a Domainaholic
Some people collect Pokemon cards. Others collect retro games. I collect domains. You can see that I was the coolest kid in school. My collection has a few prized trophies (99Bible.com) and a few plastic paper-weights (myblogfeedback.com). I have to keep reminding myself “not” to buy things online after a few drinks. It never turns out well.
To show my commitment towards joining Outstanding, I decided to buy a similar domain and build a clone website. But, there was a slight dilemma before buying the domain. On one hand, I would show my commitment to applying to the job. On the other, I might seem like an obsessed maniac on the verge of trademark infringement and tip toeing in the realm of blackmail.
Original Domain — Outstanding.kr
Outstanding uses the domain “outstanding.kr”. As Outstanding primarily focuses on a Korean audience, a (.kr) domain works fine. Acceptable domain extensions in Korea are (.com) (.net) (.org) (.co.kr) and (.kr). As most of the (.com) and (.co.kr) domains have already been taken, new startups are beginning to use the (.kr) domain extension. The More You Know~★
Contender Domain — Outstanding.com
It would be easy to get the founder’s attention if I bought “outstanding.com”. However, I would also have to sell my kidney. A simple way of bypassing claimed (.com) domains is by adding an additional word: Circa (circa‘news’.com), Fold (‘read’fold.com), and Pocket (‘get’pocket.com). Sadly, “outstandingnews.com” is being sold for $5,000. When I can’t even keep my plants from dying. I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment. Sorry Leon.
Clone Domain — Outstandingnews.co
Following the trend of alternative domain extensions: Angel List (angel.co), About Me (about.me), and Twitch (twitch.tv). The domain I eventually settled on was “outstandingnews.co”. With plans to upgrade to a (.com) domain with enough traction.
Via Imgur
Wanksy Will Save the World
I quite admire artists who can’t paint. Chefs who can’t cook. And journalists who can’t build media websites. So I highlighted the glaring technical potholes.
Jetpack Photon — Outstanding was uploading images directly onto the hosting server, which is fine in the beginning, but when images pile up it can put a strain on the network. Therefore, I recommended using Wordpress’s innate Photon CDN to save bandwidth. And Cloudflare’s free CDN for additional speed and security.
Navigation — The navigation arrows were strangely positioned above the post rather than below. So each time you wanted to read an article. You had to read the previous post’s title first. Which is simply bad UI. I recommended moving the navigation arrows to the bottom of the post.
Shareable URL — Outstanding was categorizing their posts based on numbers (website.com/7). Using numbers to categorize a post makes it easier to share, but sacrifices SEO. So I suggested using both “numbers” and the “title” for the URL. Which creates three versions of the same link. A short shareable number-based link (website.com/7), a title-based SEO link (website.com/hello-world), and a mixed link (website.com/7/hello-world).
Lightbox Images — Each time you click on an image, it moves you to an entirely new page with just the image (image-attachment-page). Which is terrible UX. Outstanding was using about 18 images per post making it a minefield. So much for user-retention. By using a Lightbox plugin you can show a larger preview of the image without having your users blasted off to some random page.
I’m not going to post a giant picture of “Wanksy.” You can find out why here.
How to Build a Clone Army
Original — Outstanding.kr
Reading through their forums, I found that creating the website was quite the journey. At first, the founders hired a freelance developer and threw all their money away. Then they hired a Wordpress agency to build their website. But it was obvious that the agency barely took care of the website. There were blaring optimization potholes that could be fixed in 30 minutes, but were left alone for over a year.
Via Outstanding
Clone — Outstandingnew.co
I suspected the website was based on Wordpress, but didn’t know which theme they were using. So a quick Wordpress theme search using “What Wordpress Theme is That,” showed Outstanding was using “Pluto Clean Personal WordPress Masonry Blog Theme.” I set up the clone website in about 1 hour and included all the proposed fixes. With 99% value completed. I finally added my 1% resume.
Via Krown
The Most Amazing Resume in the World
At this point, does it really matter what my resume says?
You’ve Got Mail
My inbound trap was finally set. So I sent a cold email with the clone site, technical fixes, translation and marketing strategies. I got a reply in about 3 hours and was terrified of opening the email. Either there would be court order threatening me to shut the website down, a short thank-you note, or praise of my genius. What was their reply? Did I get accepted?
Two great questions and two good reasons to subscribe to my newsletter. As it will take some time to write the follow-up post.
The next few posts are going to be long-form startup reviews. Send me an email at “support@krown.io” if you want me to review your startup.
