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The Birth of myYearbook ...
It all started during Spring Break 2005, flipping through a yearbook in my room and realizing it sucked. This is 2005 - why the hell is anyone buying yearbooks anymore?
We wanted more than the typical stuff -- autographs, will, pictures -- although those had to be there too. What would make this site different -- and loved -- is it would be full of the people you know and meet in real life everyday. And it would go with you your whole life. It was real life on the Internet.
Then we realized it could be more.
It could reinvent real life. It could make real life better. Making it easier to approach the cute girl in a different class. Making it easier to find out who else shares your likes, dislikes, favorite movies, music, Chinese food place, ... Catherine wrote the name down on her notebook, put smiley faces in the "O's." myYearbook was born.
The Idea Grows
It wasn't long before we realized this was bigger than just high school or just college. This would be the best social networking site in history, if we could figure out what we were doing.
Let's face it, friendster gets boring, myspace is creepy, and classmates is a rip off. myYearbook would be the only community of people worth going to. It would have every high school, every college,  every graduate school, every summer program, every employer, everyone.
And it would connect everyone to everyone like never before.
This is about building a site you want to use the rest of your life. It's about making myYearbook something that will be around billions of years from now.
And by the way, myYearbook will always be free. We're never going to even consider charging. Why? Because it's against everything we stand for. This only works if everyone loves the site as much as we do and wants to make this site the coolest way of hanging out online and the best way to find more about the people you see everyday in real life.
The Slogan
It really is not easy to pick a slogan. You get sick of the bad ones quick, that's how you can tell them apart. A good one will grow on you, and you'll eventually love it. A great one is poetic.
"You've Got Friends!" is the third slogan seriously kicked around before launch. We started off with "One Yearbook to Rule Them All!" before realizing it sucked -- dorky, about 3 years ago, and now, really, quite embarrassing.
"Meet the people you thought you knew!" sounded good for a few minutes. And then out of the blue comes an email and a thought: You've Got Friends!
Catherine built a t-shirt on cafepress to see if it looked good -- the ultimate test of any slogan -- and it worked. I love it. It's reassuring when your down and makes you happy when your up. Do you ever get sick of hearing: "You've Got Friends!" We don't, but then again ... that's our slogan.
Building It
Ok, so how do you go from a post-it to a site? That's the secret.
How Did Someone Fifteen and Sixteen Do This?
How does someone Thirty of Forty do anything? OK, fine, you win, we do have a secret weapon.
A giant "LASER". |
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Recent Press Releases
Management & Board
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Catherine Cook
Founder, Product Guru. Public Relations.
Started myYearbook in Montgomery High School in NJ as a high school
sophomore.
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David Cook
Founder, Product Guru. Member Support.
Started myYearbook with Catherine. Responsible for expanding into
college.
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Geoff Cook
CEO. First Investor. Older Brother.
Past: Founded and sold EssayEdge.com and ResumeEdge.com to The Thomson
Corporation. Harvard '00.
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Don Eyer
VP Operations - Safety.
Past: Built Trust and Safety for eBay and Half.com. 23 years in law enforcement. BA from Colorado State in Criminal Justice and Education.
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Mike Amarosa
Safety Advisor.
Past: Deputy Commissioner for Technological Development for NYPD where he was directly responsible for 9-1-1 for the city of New York. JD, New York Law School.
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Greg Stuart
Advertising Advisor.
Past: CEO of IAB leading industry from $6B in 2001 to $17B today and grew IAB 500%.
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Richard Jalichandra
Strategic Advisor.
Present: CEO of Technorati. Past: SVP of Business Development for Fox Interactive Media. Instrumental in $650M IGN deal.
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Rick Lewis
Director. Venture Capitalist, USVP
Past: Walt Disney Imagineering. Sun. McKinsey. Autodesk. MBA, Harvard Business School.
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Chris Fralic
Board Observer. Venture Capitalist, First Round Capital
Past: VP Bus Dev at del.icio.us. Ebay. Early Half.com employee developing fund raising, content licensing, affiliate program, partnerships, advertising sales.
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Ron Conway
Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP
Past: Named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top "dealmakers" in 2006.
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Spencer Rhodes
Angel Investor. Strategic Advisor.
Present: Managing Director, Tradewinds Investment Management. Past: Vice President at BlackRock, Venture Capital at Merrill Lynch, Harvard Business School.
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Gavin Roy
Chief Technical Officer.
Past: Database & PHP Expert. Framewerk.org . PostgreSQL community member.
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William Alena
VP Advertising.
Past: Built Scholastic's advertising business. Doubleclick.
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Becki Heller
Editorial Director.
Past: Time Out New York, Rolling Stone, MTV, St. Martin's Press.
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Laura Sierra
Controller.
Past: Ernst & Young. MPA, McCombs School of Business. BA, Harvard.
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So who are you?
 Dave -- Founder
Sometimes known as "the Dave" and the founder of "the Dave pose," Dave is a high school senior. Dave may not get "all A's" or "go to class," but he brushes his hair, and dreams of being a male model/evil doctor.
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 Catherine -- Founder
Catherine, a junior, is your typical overachiever. Nerd camp, good grades, conscientious, wannabe CTY RA. What differentiates her from -- say -- Erkel, is that she is a girl.
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 Dusty -- VP Marketing
Dusty, a Harvard-educated canine, is, at the young age of 5, already the VP of Marketing for myYearbook. It was young Dusty's idea to come up with the free t-shirt and thong offer. Dusty's favorties include long debates about existentialism and cleaning her own butt. She has outsmarted Dave multiple times and proves to be a key co-founder of the site.
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 Geoff -- Older Brother
Geoff, 29, is our older brother and investor. You might call him: "smart money." Geoff is a freak. He got every question right on the SATs. He went to Harvard, started two Internet companies from a dorm, and helps us out with the business. Still, 29 is old. I'm glad I'm not 29. Geoff comes after the dog on this page, because the dog is smart too.
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