URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1104 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 20, 2007 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Recipe for Success: Take Mentos, Diet Coke. Mix.
BYLINE: By KEITH SCHNEIDER
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1094 words
DATELINE: BUCKFIELD, Me.
IT'S easy to find Fritz Grobe's house outside this wooded hamlet north of Portland. It's the one with rows of empty two-liter Diet Coke bottles on the front stoop. Inside, there are more pallets of full Diet Coke bottles, stacked waist-high alongside cases of Mentos mints, a drill press, plastic caps and a pile of plastic cuttings.

Mr. Grobe, a 39-year-old juggler, performance artist and Internet video celebrity, has turned his large 19th-century house into a studio for EepyBird.com, an entertainment site distinguished by ''Experiment 137,'' one of the Web's most-watched videos.

Mr. Grobe and Stephen Voltz, a 49-year-old lawyer and performer, turned the chemical reaction between Mentos mints (523, to be exact) and Diet Coke (101 bottles, to be precise) into a hilarious short film of geysers, which they posted on the Internet on June 3. The response, like mixing sugar with soda (doesn't have to be diet, as it happens), was an online eruption that has not subsided.

The two comedians, who perform in white coats and goggles, have appeared on the ''Late Show With David Letterman'' and the ''Today'' show, as well as at fairs and exhibitions on two continents. In addition, they have signed video production contracts with the Coca-Cola Company and Perfetti Van Melle USA, the American unit of the European-based makers of Mentos.

The two have also attracted 10 million to 20 million viewers on the Internet. Nobody is sure of the exact count.

Still, the creators of EepyBird, named after a character that a friend invented, know that their tale of entrepreneurial adventure on the Internet is just the first act of a larger media drama overtaking their lives, where little players are drawing the attention of big players. It is also making them important players in shaping the young business of selling entertainment on the Web.

The second act of the drama, turning EepyBird.com and other such sites into durable enterprises, is also happening, as video file-sharing Web sites, including YouTube and Revver.com, attract tens of millions of viewers and hundreds of millions of page views daily.

Advertisers spent $180 billion in the United States last year, $15 billion of it on click-through, display and classified advertising on the Internet, the fastest-growing sector in the industry, analysts say.

EepyBird.com is among the small but growing fraternity of entertainment sites -- like Askaninja.com, Rocketboom.com, Jibjab.com and Roosterteeth.com -- that are starting to reap a tiny part of that ad revenue, while benefiting from sponsorships, celebrity appearance fees and other sources.

''The Internet is a social space, a new town square,'' said Mr. Voltz, who was raised in San Francisco, where he performed as a juggler and fire eater on street corners. ''If you're an entertainer or an advertiser, you need to be there.''

Judson Laipply, a motivational speaker and comedian from Cleveland, is already there. His ''Evolution of Dance'' video on YouTube has attracted 41 million viewers. Last month, he was in Florida working on promotional projects with the Walt Disney World Resort.

OK Go, the power-pop band that earned a Grammy nomination, has relied on choreographed homemade videos to stir strong music sales, including one that has soared to the top of the YouTube most-viewed list.

Askaninja.com, a two-man production company in Los Angeles that has been showing short weekly comedy episodes for about a year, said that it had just signed a ''seven-figure'' deal allowing Federated Media Publishing to sell ads for the episodes.

Analysts aren't sure whether these business models represent more than a splash.

''Where there are eyeballs, there's money,'' said Jeremiah Owyang, the director of corporate media strategy for a media network in Palo Alto, Calif., PodTech.net. ''Producers are putting interesting content on the Web that they're getting paid for. It's just the start.''

Shelly Palmer, a managing director for Advanced Media Ventures Group in New York, was more skeptical. For now, the online entertainment business is producing ''digital snacks,'' he said.

''Anybody can become famous for 15 megabytes,'' Mr. Palmer added. ''But to be a real business, they have to be able to promote themselves without a viral success.''

So far, EepyBird.com is performing better than Mr. Grobe or Mr. Voltz had imagined, although neither would say how much they had earned. ''Online viral video is a form of word of mouth, which is the most powerful way to build an audience,'' Mr. Grobe said. ''There is a lot of room online for the guy with a great idea.''

In October, the company posted a second three-minute Diet Coke and Mentos video, ''Experiment 214,'' which was produced under sponsorship agreements, one with the Coca-Cola Company and the other with Perfetti Van Melle USA. Everybody seems satisfied. Mentos sales in the United States climbed nearly 20 percent last year, their highest such increase ever. ''It is safe to say the whole EepyBird Mentos geyser craze was a big part of the increase,'' said Pete Healy, the company's vice president for marketing.

Coca-Cola is so enthusiastic about EepyBird's use of its product that it ran ''Experiment 214'' for more than three months on its home page at coca-cola.com. It also promoted a competition this month to encourage people to submit their own videos.

Mr. Grobe and Mr. Voltz said they were talking to the Discovery Channel and the History Channel about making a television program on science.

Great adventures often begin small; with EepyBird, that occurred in November 2005, when Mr. Voltz and Mr. Grobe discovered the reaction made by mixing Mentos and Diet Coke. The next evening, they conducted their first experiment before a live audience. People went wild, Mr. Grobe said.

Six months later, after working to produce more interesting geysers, they finished ''Experiment 137,'' and submitted it to an E! Online competition. Hearing nothing, they created their Web site, and posted it there. Mr. Voltz e-mailed his brother in San Francisco to tell him about the video. His brother e-mailed a friend, who e-mailed another, who posted the link on Fark.com, an information and technology site. By day's end, 14,000 people had viewed the video.

The next day, Slashdot.org, another technology site, posted a link to the video. By the third day, a television producer who had seen the video on a German technology site called from the David Letterman show.

''We told one person, one person!'' Mr. Grobe said. ''The thing just took off.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (90%); ONLINE ADVERTISING (89%); CELEBRITIES (89%); SUGAR & CONFECTIONERY MFG (89%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (85%); SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY (77%); ONLINE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (76%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (76%); INTERNET VIDEO (76%); SPONSORSHIP (75%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (71%); LAWYERS (70%); MOVIE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (70%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (69%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (64%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING REVENUE (60%); FILM (90%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (90%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (76%) Terms not available from NYTimes
COMPANY: COCA-COLA CO (66%); VAN MELLE BV (54%)
TICKER: KO (NYSE) (66%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (66%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (66%)
PERSON: DAVID LETTERMAN (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: BACK AT THE LAB -- Stephen Voltz, foreground above, and Fritz Grobe manufacture the fittings that turn exploding bottles of soda into beautiful fountains. (Photo by Herb Swanson for The New York Times)

(Photo by EepyBird.com)

EUREKA! Soda geysers are tested in the lab, left. The wildly popular ''Experiment 137'' video, below, used 523 mints and 101 bottles of Diet Coke. That video and others appear on EepyBird.com. (Photo by Herb Swanson for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1105 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 20, 2007 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

How to Walk a Mile in Your Dream Career
BYLINE: By MATT VILLANO
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; JOB CAMP; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1424 words
AFTER 28 years at an electronics plant in her hometown, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Toni Cory found herself out of a job when the plant closed. Instead of looking for another manufacturing job, she vowed to start a dog day-care and kennel business.

Although she had dogs of her own, she had no clue where to start. To help, she called on VocationVacations, a company based in Portland, Ore., that enables the curious to spend time trying out potential new jobs. The company hooked up Ms. Cory with Dawn Walton, an owner of the Dog Zone, a dog day care business in nearby Cedar Rapids.

There, Ms. Cory had an experience she says she will never forget.

Over two and a half days, she walked dogs; she washed them; she groomed them and fed them. When she wasn't dealing with dogs directly, she cleaned kennels, calmed cranky customers and balanced budget sheets.

Ms. Cory returned home, she said, exhausted but fulfilled. Three months later, she opened Almost Home, a dog day care and boarding service in Mount Pleasant.

''It was hard work, but that experience changed my life,'' Ms. Cory said. ''I had a good idea I was going to do doggie day care, but getting out there and doing it was the period at the end of the sentence that convinced me to make it real.''

This is the idea behind VocationVacations -- putting dream careers into practice. The company sells one- to three-day immersions in 110 vocations, ranging from alpaca farming to sports announcing. The experiences are part getaway, part professional development.

The company's president, Brian Kurth, was himself a frustrated marketing executive when he founded the enterprise in 2004. Since then, nearly 1,000 customers have paid $399 to $1,999 for a potentially life-changing experience.

''The whole idea was to create a place where people could try an entirely new career without having to quit their day jobs,'' said Mr. Kurth, who is 40. ''That kind of risk-free freedom and flexibility can be priceless if you're seriously considering making a change.''

Mr. Kurth's service is a commercial twist on an old idea -- mentoring. The small-business world is full of such programs, often free and offered by nonprofit groups, in which business owners provide knowledge and advice to would-be entrepreneurs. The Small Business Administration, for example, sponsors the Service Corps of Retired Executives, or Score, a free program to help young businesses.

VocationVacations differs in its immersive approach. The experience begins when a customer calls or logs on to the company's Web site, vocationvacations.com, and selects a job. The company then connects customers (whom Mr. Kurth calls ''vocationers'') with participating ''mentors'' -- small-business owners who get a percentage of the fee.

Next, the staff members (Mr. Kurth has eight part-time employees) arrange for independent career coaches to chat with customers about their expectations and long-term goals. These meetings are optional, but Mr. Kurth said that most customers have obliged. The coaches are available to meet after the experience, too.

The highlight of every vocation vacation, of course, is the experience. In some cases, customers follow along with their mentors as observers. In others, mentors toss customers right into a daily routine, commanding them to prepare hors d'oeuvres, crunch spreadsheets or clean bird cages.

Jessica Caulfield, 28, a former real estate agent, took a vocation vacation with the Global Purchasing Companies, a retail fashion buyer in New York, and spent two days following clothes buyers on their chores. A few months later, she opened a women's clothing boutique named Jesse James in Hoboken, N.J.

In Grand Forks, N.D., Paul Holje and George Kelley opened Dakota Harvest Bakery after two days of intensive study at Pearl Bakery in Portland, Ore. The men kneaded dough, helped customers and balanced books. Mr. Kelley, 44, a former air-traffic controller, said the experience enabled him and Mr. Holje to experiment with their new careers before jumping in.

''Pearl headed us off from making a bunch of pretty significant mistakes,'' Mr. Kelley said, referring, for example, to preparing for the lunch rush. ''It was more than just an immersion; it was a lesson in how to succeed.''

The VocationVacations model does not work for everyone, however. Chris Ronan, a systems architect with eMarket Solutions, an Internet company in Dallas, said his experience with Linda Lindsay, the owner of Stone Wolf Vineyards in McMinnville, Ore., was eye opening in a different way.

Mr. Ronan signed up in October 2004, convinced that winemaking was his next career. After spending two days working at the winery, however, Mr. Ronan, 38, said he decided the business wasn't for him.

''It was a lot more intensive than I thought it would be,'' said Mr. Ronan, who recounted pulling grapes off a truck, crushing them and working in the barrel room among his activities. ''I learned that if I were to go into wine, I would not want to have to make a living at it,'' but would do it for fun.

This kind of disillusionment is not always bad, particularly if it saves someone from going down the wrong career path. Mr. Kurth said that while he aimed to make every vocationer happy, he recognized that sometimes the best thing for a person is to affirm a negative.

''Just because you don't like something doesn't mean the experience hasn't been good for you,'' he said. ''Better that you try something and learn that you don't like it than make a life change and realize a few weeks in that you've made a total mistake.''

The VocationVacations immersion was entirely positive for Bill Sweat and Donna Morris. After 20 years as financial advisers for Fidelity Investments in Boston, the couple retired in 2005 to try something new.

Their something was also wine. Mr. Sweat and Ms. Morris were paired with Ms. Lindsay at Stone Wolf Vineyards as well, where they spent two days blending, bottling and making wine. They learned about bookkeeping and other aspects of running a wine business, too.

''They were very eager to learn everything,'' Ms. Lindsay said. ''They walked away with enough information to make informed decisions regarding their own future in the business.''

The two days proved invaluable for Mr. Sweat, 48, and Ms. Morris, 47. Last year, the couple moved to Dundee, Ore., and bought the former Goldschmidt winery, which they renamed Winderlea. Mr. Sweat said they planned to release 600 cases of pinot noir, the winery's specialty, next year.

Technically, this will make Mr. Sweat and Ms. Morris competitors of Ms. Lindsay's -- a risk that she and most other mentors accept. A handful require vocationers to sign agreements stipulating that they won't open a business within a 50-mile radius.

Other risks exist, too. Marci Alboher, the author of ''One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success,'' said that for many VocationVacations customers, one or two days is hardly enough time to get a complete sense of what a new vocation may entail.

''To me, all you're doing on vocation vacations is flirting,'' said Ms. Alboher, who lives in New York. ''If you like what you see, it's up to you to take it to the next level and make it into a legitimate career transition exercise.''

Mr. Kurth acknowledged that the experiences his company offered were meant only as ''tastes,'' and that he encouraged customers to seek more training if they were still interested in switching after the immersion.

He said that some customers -- nearly 30 percent, according to interviews -- sign up out of curiosity, and never intend to change careers.

Although Mr. Kurth declined to reveal exactly how much his business earned last year, he said that VocationVacations was profitable and expanding. After starting with just a few immersion programs, the company's vocations now have 225 mentors in 35 states.

Most of these experiences, including cheese maker, clock restorer and voice-over artist, cost less than $1,000 for two days. At the other end of the spectrum, a three-day immersion with Mary Dann, a Southern California wedding coordinator whose clients include Hollywood and sports stars, costs $1,999.

Mr. Kurth said the company would add 30 more immersion experiences this spring, in marine biology, sports umpiring and landscape architecture, among other fields.

''As long as someone has dreamed about a second career, we've probably got an experience that will make that person happy,'' he said. ''It's never too late to give something a try.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PET CARE SERVICES (91%); PLANT CLOSINGS (90%); PETS (90%); SMALL BUSINESS (89%); COMPUTER & ELECTRONICS MFG (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE (76%); EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (75%); EMPLOYEE TRAINING (69%); SPONSORSHIP (69%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (67%); BUSINESS COACHING & MENTORING (64%); BUDGET (53%); LLAMA & ALPACA PRODUCTION (50%); DOGS (90%); EMPLOYMENT SEARCH (78%) Small Business; Vocational Training
ORGANIZATION: VocationVacations (Co)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%) Brian Kurth; Matt Villano
GEOGRAPHIC: PORTLAND, OR, USA (72%) IOWA, USA (91%); OREGON, USA (88%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: BREAD AND WINE -- Donna Morris and Bill Sweat, far left, were in finance. Now they make wine. George Kelley, above left, and Paul Holje became bakers. (Photo by Julie Keefe for The New York Times)

(Photo by Dan Koeck for The New York Times)

PAWPRINTS ALL OVER -- Toni Cory did some investigating -- and a lot of dog washing and grooming -- through VocationVacations. ''It was hard work,'' she said, ''but that experience changed my life.'' Now she runs a day-care center and boarding service for dogs. (Photo by Brian Ray for The New York Times)

A STORE OF HER OWN -- Jessica Caulfield worked in real estate. Then she spent two days working with clothing buyers, and later opened Jesse James, a clothing boutique. (Photo by Michael Nagle for The New York Times)

NONSTARTER -- Chris Ronan thought he wanted to make wine until he tried it. (Photo by Mark Graham for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1106 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 20, 2007 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

With Money in Their Pockets
BYLINE: By ROY FURCHGOTT
SECTION: Section H; Column 1; Small Business; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 883 words
KDMA doesn't look like the kind of company that attracts venture investors. It's not in Silicon Valley, nor is it involved in biotechnology. It doesn't even have a fully working Web site.

The company, which has its headquarters near Grand Rapids, Minn. (population 7,764), makes fishing tackle. It has two owners, three employees and annual revenue well under a million dollars.

But that didn't stop the North Star Fund in Grand Rapids from putting money into the company. In fact, KDMA was exactly what North Star was looking for -- a start-up it could nurture in its own backyard.

North Star, an angel investment group, has two bankers, a real estate broker and two grocery-store owners among its 14 members. They all live in Grand Rapids, and their fund is dedicated to financing new businesses in or near town.

''That's a higher priority than actually making money on the deal,'' said Keith Anderson, a lawyer and a member of the group.

Angel investors, historically a private lot, usually work quietly by themselves or with a few other individuals, investing their own money in early-stage or start-up businesses.

When angel investors band together, they share their research, money and expertise, and they increase their clout. This allows them to spread their investment more efficiently to local businesses.

Individual angels tend to focus more on profits, not community growth. And since most angels are in their 50s and 60s and retired, they are not necessarily suited to overseeing long-term investment projects.

Banding together, angel groups ''create an entity that is longer lived than any single angel can be,'' said Ian Sobieski, a founder of the $50 million Band of Angels Fund in Menlo Park, Calif.

So far, it may sound a little like ''It's a Wonderful Life,'' but as in the movie, the story takes an unexpected twist. Some of these groups -- North Star included -- cannot find enough worthwhile local businesses to put their money into.

To stay afloat, they have had to invest in companies farther afield. ''As much as we want to help the small entrepreneur out, we don't want to lose our shirts, either,'' said Mr. Anderson of North Star.

With no road map, these angel groups are striking out in many directions, looking for a formula that will work.

Some try to preserve each angel's independence. One group, the Investors Circle of York in York, Pa., was formed to ''fund local companies, or companies that might move to our area, or that support a business in our area,'' said Michael March, a co-chairman of the Investors Circle. It holds regular dinners where entrepreneurs present ideas; each member independently decides whether to invest.

But groups of individuals are hard to corral. Working around members' schedules makes meeting difficult and limits the number of deals. As a result, like many angel groups, the York circle is considering a central fund that a committee would invest. It would mean a steadier flow of cash to community businesses, as well as benefiting the group, Mr. March said, because more investments ''level out risk.''

Some angel groups find a greater economy of scale through a larger network. A Pennsylvania Department of Economic Development grant created the Pennsylvania Angels Network, which advises 18 angel groups, helping them to network and share deals, some too large for the groups to handle individually.

Similarly, a regional angel network founded by a grant from the state of Minnesota became RAIN Source Capital, which advises 20 groups in five states, and has a $16 million central fund that it can invest alongside its angel groups.

When the economic development agency in Orange County, N.Y., hired Robert Hannon, a self-described ''recovering banker,'' to draw in new business, he created an angel fund that invests only in companies that agree to move to the county, about 50 miles north of New York City. ''There was the perception that one of the things keeping companies from locating in Orange County was a lack of capital,'' he said.

The fund, started in January 2005, now has $500,000 in county money to extend the investors' coffers. So far, it has put money into just one company, which makes a motorcycle lock.

It's easy to see why communities like this brand of investing -- it could help the economy. But because angel investing is involved in early-stage companies, it is risky and takes longer to cash out than later-stage investing. But smaller investors have little competition for off-the-beaten-track companies. ''You can invent some pretty important things in a pole barn in Minnesota,'' said John Reid, the chairman and a founder of Abbey Moor Medical, which developed a urinary tract stent from just such a barn in Parkers Prairie, Minn., 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

With initial venture financing from RAIN Source Angels, the company has 30 employees, government approval of its device and about $13 million to take its stent to market. ''We would never had have serious venture capitalists look at us,'' Mr. Reid said. ''The venture cap guys won't even come to Minneapolis -- it's a flyover.''

Another attraction for angels is personal satisfaction. ''They get a type of psychic income,'' said Dr. Sohl. ''They don't want to be the ones doing payroll checks,'' he added.

Download 4.36 Mb.

Share with your friends: