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Scott Kurnit’s AdKeeper Pivots to Keep.com, Where Users ‘Follow Brands’ [UPDATED] | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.

I don’t curse much, but are you fucking kidding me?

The original idea — to “keep” a folder full of your favorite online ads — raised $43M at an alleged $100M valuation? How are people completely unable to understand that to build something valuable you need to start with the customer and work backwards?

In case it’s not obvious, the new idea is awful too. This just reeks of an MBA looking at a spreadsheet and saying “Man, if we can get people to do this, look at all the money we’ll make!” without having a good answer to “What kind of problem can we solve for people?”

When they launched I had a discussion with a colleague saying nearly the same thing: if they wanted to create a product to get quick revenue from agencies and marketers, they succeeded. Run through the mental image of this getting pitched in a meeting at Publicis or Ogilvy or any of the others and you can just see the client’s brand manager grinning ear to ear at the idea of people loving their ads so much that they save them for later?!

Find me one user anywhere who has ever said “man, I would love to click on this ad right now, but I am running late for my afternoon visit to Fark.com. If only there were a way for me to save it for later”.

I love his quote at the end:

“Not a new direction. An extension. Very happy with AdKeeping. AdKeeper is working well.

wtf. Who is using this? Show them to me, I would like to revoke their internet license.

I used to work with a guy who is over at AdKeeper and he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, so I have to assume that there is something here I’m just not getting. But $100 mil valuation? Dear god.

Source: caterpillarcowboy