Who're the stars now?

StarNow.com in Brief

• Started in a London flat in 2004 by three former Trade Me employees
• From genesis to get-go took just one month
• Lists the talents of more than 23,000 performers from around the world
• Casting directors worldwide advertise roles on the site
• Employs a dozen people
• Perfectly 'weightless' and 'user generated'

"Trade Me was where we learned pretty much everything we know about the web."

Cameron Mehlhopt, co-founder StarNow.com

When three Trade Me alumni went to London in 2004 it was almost inevitable that they would start their own web venture.

But, says Cameron Mehlhopt, one of the trio, the site they did end up launching wasn't the one they originally had in mind.? "In the beginning we thought we'd build a gambling website but as it happened we got a bit sidetracked."

Sidetracked into creating StarNow.com, an online talent listing that puts actors, dancers, models and musicians in contact with casting directors and agents.

"We came up with this idea and thought it would take us a month and then we would have something that would pay our rent. We'd then move on and do the gambling site...but we never actually got past the first one."

StarNow.com, created by Mehlhopt and friends Jamie Howell and Nigel Stanford - collectively called SMH Interactive and all in their early 30s - has all the hallmarks of a successful web-based service.

It is original, caters for a real need and has international reach. Its low cost of membership means it is not a hard sell to subscribers and its enormous potential user community assures StarNow.com with plenty of opportunity to grow.

The four-year-old site - which casting agents use to advertise roles in anything from vampire movies to swimwear photo shoots, and where those with talents for sale show themselves off - has 750,000 members.

About 3 per cent - or 23,000 - of those are paying subscribers, and most of them are in the UK.

"We figure that if we keep the cost cheap, and get enough members and enough casting calls, it will all grow from there."

Melhopt makes it sound easy, but that disguises a good deal of innovative thinking, much of it based on what the trio learned at Trade Me. Melhopt, a web developer, spent a couple of years at the country's leading internet business; Howell, also a web developer, was there about six months; and Stanford, an early employee, had several roles, including an 18-month stint as general manager.

"Trade Me was where we learned pretty much everything we know about the web," says Melhopt. Aside from teaching them the technicalities of web design, it was a case study in how the network effect can propel online businesses into the public consciousness.

When Mehlhopt started at Trade Me, he would have to explain to friends what it was. Two years on and he was having to listen as others raved at him about the online auction site.

"Near the end, random people would actually go, 'Oh, yeah, I love Trade Me', and start talking to me about it. So it was starting to pick up in people's eyes. But it wasn't anywhere near the monster that it is now."

That's "monster" in size terms, not behaviour, Melhopt adds.

"Working inside it we'd seen the rapid growth so we really knew what it was capable of."

One of Trade Me's key lessons was the importance of site usability. "It all had to be as simple as possible for the user, but as powerful as we could make it."

Adherence to that principle would give rise to hours-long arguments over the best way to implement new site features. The team's rule book for settling such debates was Steve Krug's manual of web usability "Don't Make Me Think".

Sitting in their London flat a few months after exiting Trade Me, the web beckoned the three friends again. Two things diverted them from their original gambling site idea.

Melhopt's actor sister-in-law (Erica Lowe, a Chapman Tripp theatre award-winner) had talked about the difficulty aspiring performers faced in getting recognised in London, a magnet for hundreds of wannabe stars. At the same time, the phenomenon of reality TV was making tabloid headlines.

"From the newspapers it just seemed like everyone wanted to be on TV, and they were getting famous, and some were getting rich. We were chatting about it, wondering, 'How on earth do these people get on TV, or how do the people trying to cast these shows find them?'."

They discovered that talent consumers, such as the BBC, would advertise casting calls on their websites. But there was no central site for actors or musicians to find jobs. "We thought, 'We've worked on Trade Me - we can build a site'."

They expected it to take a fortnight, but it was a month before the first version of StarNow.com went live. When it was ready, they hit the phones.

Realising that casting calls would be the site's lifeblood, they spent the first day contacting reality TV companies for lists of the talent they were seeking.

"Typically it was very easy because we'd say, 'We see you're casting for this, and we'd like to promote it for you for free, can we do that', and they'd go, 'Yeah, of course'."

Casting directors who used the site told others.

"We found that getting new casting calls grew organically, just through the network effect," Mehlhopt says.

They enrolled members by another piece of ingenuity - using Google AdWords. They would take out ads for models, musicians, actors and dancers which, when clicked on, delivered people to StarNow.com, where they would see the casting calls.

Again, the network effect took over as members told friends about the site, and the site itself began to be found by people doing web searches. But AdWords remain one of the ways they recruit new members, Mehlhopt says.

Non-paying members sign up to have details of relevant casting calls emailed to them. But they can only apply for roles if they're a subscribed member. Subscribed members can also have their profile published on the site's talent directory, which casting directors can peruse.

"We were very fast with what we were doing and we went to market with what was a very basic product. Immediately there was demand for it."

Mehlhopt says site development was then led by customer demand.

"We found that if you have a really rough, quick version in the market you can soon improve on it quickly by listening to your customers.

"Because we're not actors or models, often what we thought people wanted wasn't really what they wanted."

But again, they learned their lessons well, and today the business employs more than a dozen people.

"The thing that really gave us confidence was that we'd seen it work with Trade Me."

Conclusion - Key Business Insights

StarNow.com is founded on a simple idea - creating an online community for performers where casting directors can go to find the talent they need.

There's no cost for casting directors to advertise, and minimal cost - as little as 3 pounds 33 pence a month - for those with talents to tout.

A free membership option has been taken up by three-quarters of a million people, who can become paying subscribers when they come across a role they wish to apply for.

The site proves that there is no obstacle to running an international service from New Zealand.

Ease of use is the website's underlying design principle and Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" its founders' bible.

StarNow.com's developers believe in pushing out new features fast and refining them as they get user feedback.

A rule they stick to that should be applied by all businesses is to listen to their customers. In StarNow.com's case that's the talent - models, dancers, actors and photograpers - and the casting directors looking to hire.

The site works hard to protect its reputation by carefully vetting casting calls, and working with an organisation that advises models on how to avoid dodgy assignments.

Additional Resources

Web usability consultant Steve Krug will assess your site for user-friendliness and advise on design improvements. His website is:

www.sensible.com

Aspiring models can find advice on the pitfalls of the business here:

www.albamodel.info

starnow.com