FAW #28: James Currier of Tickle
The genesis of the idea
Tickle was a site that allowed the user to learn more about him/herself by taking various personality assessments online. Founder James Currier got the idea for Tickle after completing a Meyers-Briggs corporate personality test in his MBA class at Harvard. He noticed that the test generated more conversation than any movie or book ever had amongst the MBA students. He was looking at the web as a delivery medium and thought that he could administer these assessments online. Banking on the fact that “we are our own favorite subject” and people would tell their friends when they learned something interesting about themselves, he set out to build the site. He figured the data he collected would likely be very accurate and everyone would naturally answer the test honestly because if they’re taking the time to complete it, they want to find out truthful results about themselves.
Puppies and babies
Currier had built out a web site with a handful of useful assessments but was seeing no traffic. He says, “I remembered that advertising agencies say if you want people to remember an ad, include babies and puppies. So I thought, ‘We should make a fun test. Let’s do a test for what kind of dog are you.’ So they came up with a 15-question test that wasn’t scientific at all. We put it online and 8 days later we had a million people trying to enter our site. Our server was going down every 10 minutes.” The fun assessment with no scientific basis got them noticed and on their way. Once they had traffic courting VC’s for funding became significantly easier.
He ended up meeting with a total of forty-three VC’s before raising his money. “You have to get to these levels to attract more people, and then you hit these spark points, and in my process the spark point was getting the term sheets from the VC. People suddenly want to work with you, loan you money; PR firms want to spend your money, investment bankers want to meet you.” Currier goes on to say, “To move to step two, people have to believe that you’re already at step two so there’s no risk for them. Because they don’t want to take on your risk- you have to take it all on. And then you have to take on the risk of fibbing.”
Keeping the startup vibe
Tickle was acquired by Monster.com in 2004 for $100MM. Just like Amazon did with Alexa, Monster recognized that assimilating the Tickle employees would kill the company’s magic and so they allowed Tickle to run independently. Currier says, “If Yahoo had acquired us, they would have made us move to Mountain View , and would have made us a widget on a feature on a division of a department, and everyone would have left, and the whole thing would have died. And Wall Street would have applauded roundly.” They managed to preserve the startup feel and keep doing their thing. Tickle is alive and well today providing matchmaking data to jobseekers and employers.