It takes a village.
In the wee (ha!) hours of the morning today, we launched our first contest, inviting our users to win anything on our site by rating it “want.”
This might not otherwise warrant a blog post (though I’m certainly tweeting myself dizzy about it)—but there’s a good underlying story here about why it’s so important to have great people in your corner. I often refer to weeSpring as my second baby, and as they say… it takes a village to raise a child.
So Sunday night, our team exchanged a flurry of emails during the Superbowl about how we could spread the word about weeSpring and build our community… was there a contest we coud run?
There’s something about motherhood that brings on insomnia — but lying in bed thinking about a hundred different things I wanted to do (and how to do them) meant that when I got out of bed Monday morning, I was ready with an idea for the contest. By midday, I’d been in touch with a couple friends who work at advertising agencies, and by close of business, one had introduced me to a freelance art director who was willing to turn something around fast as a favor.
She and I spoke by phone after my toddler went to bed, I focus-grouped some copy on my Facebook feed, and when I woke up on Tuesday, we had our creative. We were able to get a call scheduled with the mentors we worked with when we participated in Ogilvy’s Startup University, and they connected us with a firm in Boston who could handle the frustratingly complicated legal hurdles involved in running a sweepstakes. Because of their relationship with Ogilvy, one of the partners there took my call at 7pm, and they delivered us the legal language we’d need by noon on Wednesday.
We spent the afternoon running around to meetings with prospective investors and partners, and went live with the contest a little after midnight.
It would have taken us a heck of a lot longer than 72 hours to get this thing up and running if we hadn’t been able to call on our networks for help — and because they eagerly jumped in to assist, we’ve got an awesome roadmap for the next time we want to do this.
So a huge thank you to our friends who not only tolerate our crazy ramblings about becoming the resource for new and expecting parents — but bend over backwards to help us make it happen.
