At the Returner’s Homebrew earlier this month, junior Chris Manitius had a video camera trained on each of the artists. After each set, Manitius approached the artists as they left the stage to encourage them to post the videos he was making of their performance on the start-up website he works for, Performster.com.
Performster is described by one of it creators, CEO Reza Pourrabi, as an “international online video competition” that combines elements of YouTube and American Idol. The site will allow performers to upload videos to enter in talent competitions held on the website, which will be voted on by viewers. Additionally, users can create their own talent competitions which can be uploaded onto their websites.
Manitius, one of only five employees for the dot com start-up, heads the referral agent program. His ambition is to be a talent agent, and his division of the website, hire.performster.com, will function as a kind of talent agency for artists featured on the site. Once Performster is established, he envisions talent scouts and entertainment executives coming to the website"and therefore working through him"to hire artists whose videos they like.
The idea of using the site as a sort of talent agency had occurred to its founders, recent George Mason University graduates Brian Patterson and Reza Pourrabi. Creating the main website, which Pourrabi says will be launched in two or three weeks, left them too far extended to work on the talent agency aspect. That’s when Manitius, with his enthusiasm for that very part of the business, “fell into their hands.”
Manitius was referred to them by the dean of GMU’s IT school this summer, and things clicked immediately. They asked Manitius for a business proposal, which they approved, and customized their website to match his Referring Agent Plan.
Manitius, an employee of Cutco Cutlery who was referred to Performster by a client, borrowed heavily from Cutco’s word of mouth approach to business. Referring agents, recruited by him, would look for artists to refer to the page. If these artists are successful, the referring agent would make money off of them by booking gigs, getting them contracts and generating ad revenue for the site.
Additionally, Manitius and other recruiters would make money off the success of these referring agents.
On the viability of the website as a whole when competing against YouTube and MySpace, Pourrabi said that Performster's key to success is focus. "We think a specific scope on talent is a key differentiator," as opposed to YouTube and MySpace's broader approach combining networking and videos in a less organized way. "Performster is about holding the attention of the kind of people who are into American Idol and America's Got Talent...and the ratings certainly demonstrate that there is a massive audience for this type of content," said Pourrabi.
Performster’s main revenue stream will be advertising, and the site’s team is hoping to get sponsors for the talent competitions to fund them and provide prizes. Their first contest will be hosted by an Apple vendor, who will be providing Apple products as prizes for the top finishers.
Additional revenue will come from businesses paying to use Performster’s Contest Engine on their own website.
The real payoff for the company would come if it becomes large enough to turn around and sell to a larger company, as was the case with YouTube. In fact, this was exactly what founders Pourrabi and Patterson had in mind when they started up the company. Their hope is that in such a scenario they would be allowed to stay on board and continue to work for Performster. The backing of a larger company would then allow them to reach a wider audience.
Meanwhile, Manitius is working to find talented performers on campus to go on the site"be they musicians, comedians, amateur magicians or jugglers. “Performers are lottery tickets,” he says. “Look at [billionaire] Richard Branson"he made it big by signing the Rolling Stones.”