Bolt. The brainchild of 35-year-old Dan Pelson. The teenagers
love it. "Oh, sure," you're probably thinking,
nodding your head. "Bolt. Drink it all the time. Has that
extra kick of caffeine."
Um, no. That would be the soft drink, Jolt, which has something
of a cult following of its own. This is Bolt, as in Bolt Inc., or,
as the teens know it, Bolt.com. And they do know it. Bolt.com is
more than a Web site; it's a platform where young adults
discuss and dis popular culture, from cars and clothes to
Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. There's a Bolt shopping
section, with over 450 items, and Bolt provides free e-mail, voice
mail, message boards, instant messaging and wireless services. Bolt
has more than 3.5 million registered users, with as many as 15,000
young adults signing up every day. And although Bolt withdrew its
proposed IPO in November following the dotcom bust, the company
still has big-name advertising partners such as AT&T, Procter
& Gamble and America Online.
Pelson probably realized he had a cult following when he heard a
report come in from the trenches one day. A Bolt sales rep had been
strolling through the streets of New York with a bigwig client,
and, as they passed a crowd of teens gathered in front of MTV
Studios, the bigwig said, "Well, this is your client
base—let's see if they've heard of Bolt."
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The sales rep looked squeamish, but he waded into the throng
anyway and asked the crowd. "Bolt!" the girls exclaimed,
adding: "Tag me, tag me!" It's a reference you'd
understand if you were a Bolt.com regular. But never mind that.
You're likely more interested in how you can achieve the same
results with your customers.
If your company doesn't exist yet, identifying a
cult-potential product or service is a good first step. "Some
products will probably never have a cult following—floor wax
[for instance] is not very romantic or exciting," says John
Burnett, a professor of marketing at the University of Denver.
"So it's important to look for products that have those
kinds of components. Food. Beverages. Technology. Sports."
But choosing "food" is pretty broad. "You have to
locate a good niche that's not being served in the
market," says Burnett.
And that's just what Pelson did by deciding to focus on
teens. "The Internet is a tremendous medium for empowering
disenfranchised communities," says Pelson. And who feels more
disenfranchised than a teenager? With 1 billion of 'em on the
earth, Pelson knew he was onto something.
Originally published in the March 2001 issue of Entrepreneurs Start-Ups magazine
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