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W. Marc Bernsau
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Pitch
Startup AuthorsGlobe trades author expertise for exposure
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AuthorsGlobe Inc.
Headquarters: Lexington
Email: support@authorsglobe.com
Founded: 2009
Employees: 4
The Pitch: AuthorsGlobe is interested in raising $500,000 to grow its business through marketing initiatives.
Startup AuthorsGlobe is trying to fix a structural problem in the publishing industry — authors often struggle to market their expertise. AuthorsGlobe is trying to address that by operating at the intersection of online education, publishing and digital media, according to its founder, Antonio Faillace.
Since authors often are unable to market themselves effectively and can’t always afford pricey public relations firms, AuthorsGlobe has developed a way to make access to the marketplace more efficient. Its goals are to align the supply of author knowledge with the demands of their audience. The company, a runner-up in last year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, offers live classes taught by authors with expertise in a certain field. The authors can run the class from their home or office.
AuthorsGlobe offers a platform to allow authors to run classes for targeted audiences, sponsored by industry organizations, social networks and magazines partnered with the startup. Next month, for example, the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge is sponsoring a $25 online class with Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs LLC president and “Trust Agents” author. The forum, with 2,000 members, plans to sponsor one author per month, Faillace said. “For the authors, this is like a virtual book tour,” Faillace said.
The company is specializing in the tech/innovaton space and its stable of featured authors includes Harvard University and MIT’s Andrew McCaffery, author of “Enterprise 2.0”; Hubspot Inc.’s Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, co-authors of “Inbound Marketing”; Harvard’s David Weinberger, author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”; and Harvard’s John Palfrey, author of “Born Digital.”
Having that kind of brainpower nearby is a competitive advantage for AuthorsGlobe, Faillace said. “There are more thought leaders per square foot in Boston than anyplace on the globe,” he said.
AuthorsGlobe’s platform combines a VoIP conference call with a webcam feed, chat, live polling and slide presentations. The classes can help the authors sell books and promote themselves for speaking or consulting roles, Faillace said. They can also solicit useful information from the targeted audience.
Faillace said the four-person company is open to taking, but is not actively seeking, about $500,000 in funding, either from angels or venture firms. With funding, the company would focus on growth, increasing sales marketing efforts to expand its revenue.
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