I’ve been fascinated by Freezecrowd ever since I saw their 2010 viral video promoting the company (see below). It features the founder and CEO Eric Leebow in full pitch mode, talking about his original dream of an “interactive yearbook” and ends with the infamous line “I am free enterprise”.
This is his startup story.
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Eric earned a degree from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 2000. In 1999 he had an idea for a social network. “It involved a high tech device. I could see or draw it clearly but I couldn’t build it.”
Eric talked to friends and family about the idea but eventually moved onto founding a book publishing company from 2001-2005. In 2005 he started to get excited about everything he was seeing in the social networking space and starting looking for developers to work on his project.
“It all stemmed from people taking photos together – they’ll be able to take pictures and tag people anywhere. I thought the photo was the way to connect," he said. “Crowds are the perfect way to connect people. Team photo, group pictures, you are almost freezing time.”
Timeline
2004: Eric makes an incredible business decision and puts his life savings into Google’s IPO. This would fund his startup dreams over the next 5 years.
2006: Eric started pulling IPO money out to fund a 2-3 person team who worked for a year building a Rails app all on contract development. Eric eventually shut the team down unsatisfied with the product and outcome.
2007: Eric moved to New York. He hired capable but expensive Bear Sterns developers who worked at night on the project. They threw the old code base out and started over from scratch now in Java. While they were close to launching a product, it wasn’t to Eric’s vision. The expensive consultants drained the startup’s resources.
2009: While attending a Web 2.0 conference Eric met a team of developers and began the project again (now in PHP). They launched a version in 2009 which again lacked the qualities of the product vision so it was shut down.
2010: FreezeCrowd took friends and family money as well as an additional Angel investment. Development pushes forward. A new development team starts again, throwing out the old code base.
2011: FreezeCrowd launches a live beta in August. Users can join using a valid .edu email address and are able to tag photos, and add personal interests among other features. The site boasts a catalog of more than 2MM tags.
2012: Team continues to support FreezeCrowd and is building a new product to release later this year.
The Viral Video
As one can imagine, there was a lot of feedback after the video was released. Eric made the video from beginning to end in less than 10-hours. It was created in conjunction with a contest sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce where participants were asked to make a video talking about their business. They had to end the video by saying ‘I am free enterprise.’
Despite having the most views of any video (now at about 40k), he did not win the contest or the $25k prize. The video opens with Eric talking about 1999 when he came up with the idea for social networking. “I never intended to say ‘I invented social networking.’ I am not like the (Winklevoss) twins. I had an idea that was not being innovated as I envisioned and I wanted to prove to my family and friends that my social network idea had merit.”
Quieting internet roomers, no CG was involved in helping Eric make those basketball shots. “We were on the court for 20-minutes and we used the best stuff we were able to capture. The whole thing was created in less than a day.”
Lessons Learned
“If I could go back I would build less features and be more focused. I would also hire slower – taking more care to get the right people. But ultimately if I didn’t go through a lot of these challenges then I wouldn’t be ready to do what I’m doing now. I’m still plugging along. Struggled through a lot, but maintained my tenacity.” Eric Leebow, founder @ FreezeCrowd
Expert's Observation
There is something extremely likeable about Eric. He’s managed to find a way to persevere and push on despite significant trials. This cannot be downplayed. He is still hungry after 6+ years of grinding. That above everything else is a trait I admire most in founders and he has it in spades.
His development team issues seem standard for a non-technical person managing an outsourced team, although he’s seemed to have had an unusually long run of bad luck with teams.
If he wants to be successful in technology he needs to find a technical co-founder that he can work with. He should stop additional development and find someone first before moving on. He needs equity partners to fight with him and stop the bleeding of outsourcing and it’s inherent problems.
If he can slow down and find some great people to partner with, I think his drive alone is enough to push him to success.
Jason Simmons, Partner @ Vital Investment Partners