Klout's Surgery Origins
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A story about how Klout, a social media influence measurement platform, was created while its founder was recovering from jaw surgery.
"In 2007, the guy who started Klout, Joe Fernandez, had surgery on his jaw. Something was wrong with his jaw so it was wired shut for 3 months. He was laying around in his hospital bed and didn't have anything to do. He got obsessed with whether word-of-mouth could be measurable, so he created this program where you could pull from Twitter's API and give a score out of 100 based on how influential the person was.
He got obsessed with this and started going deeper and deeper on it. Eventually it turned into a company where by 2011 it was pretty popular. The company raised about $40 million and was acquired in 2014 for $200 million, but I don't think that was a very successful exit - they probably just sold for the amount of money they raised.
I DM'd Joe and asked if he thinks this could still exist today. He responded, 'This is something I'll never get over. In so many ways we were just way too early. The world still needs something like Klout more than ever, unfortunately I'm not sure if it's possible to pull it off and get all the data.'"
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.