is a social media site for comics/sci-fi/anime nerds — specifically, women. Collectively, we are known as fangirls. This niche audience spends 25-60 hours a week online, mostly creating and sharing content within the fandom category. We plan to be the ultimate content aggregator, microblogging, and inclusive community for fangirls worldwide.
We aren’t just solving a problem, we are innovators, creating the only place for serious fangirls to have fun. We consolidate all of their content into one convenient place and have finally created our long-awaited community!
Quick – to the NerdNest!
Fangirls are one of the most passionate audiences in existence. We can spend anywhere between 25-60 hours a week consuming and creating fandom content. Currently, there is no one place for us to do this and we are thus spread out all over the internet. This leads to a lot of frustration.
With these problems, however, comes tremendous market opportunity. Fangirls represent an enormous and expanding target market that haven’t been capitalized upon yet.
In short, fangirls do not have a place of their own. There is no social media site or app that caters specifically to our millions of fangirls!
No other service similar to NerdNest exists within the fandom world. NerdNest offers the world’s most comprehensive and satisfying fandom experience while providing a community home to the millions of young women who currently have no definitive place on the internet.
NerdNest allows fangirls to do all this. In the way they can publicly consume, share, and create content, we are essentially Pinterest for nerds.
We also have a bi-weekly podcast. Right now, it’s just a nerd chatting with her friends, nerding out about nerdy stuff. We’ll look to make this more formal moving forward by hosting respected guests — all while maintaining our core nerdiness, of course.
As any fangirl will you tell you, a good story revolves around an epic battle. In the NerdNest universe, content curation will win out at first, mainly because users will be migrating all their old content to our site. The initial breakdown will probably be around 70% curation, 30% creation.
However, we will be facilitating creation’s comeback and eventually see a breakdown more along the lines of 90% creation and 10% curation.
Within a year of our beta launch, we expect to have 175,000 users. We’re on track to do just that.
Our beta launched in January 2015 and received high praise from around fandom. We generated 380 organic users during the beta. In April 2015, we hosted focus groups and panels at major conventions across North America, such as Comic Con.
Incorporating all we learned from the beta and our focus groups, we will relaunch the full version of NerdNest in November 2015 with the iOS and Android apps launching shortly thereafter. By January 2016, we will have 175,000 users, well over half a million by May 2016, and by the end of our first year with the full website: 1 million users.
To do that, we will build upon the many connections we’ve already established:
We have an ongoing discussion with the Chairman of Machinima, a video entertainment network for fandom and gamer culture. They leverage video content on multiple platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook via iOS and Android.
We have also been speaking with the CEO of Vubiquity, the leading global provider of premium content services. They offer a full scope of managed services globally for linear and on demand viewing that support rental, electronic sell-through, etc. Vubiquity has also introduced us to Ross Levinsohn, former interim CEO of Yahoo. Our conversations with each are exploratory, but both have embraced the NerdNest concept and strategy, while considering possible funding options.
Key to our discussions are their interest in introducing NerdNest to major fandom brands, franchises and influencers such as Disney/Marvel, WB/DC, Nerdist, Geek & Sundry, etc.
In terms of press and publishers, we’ve also had preliminary discussions with Penguin – Random House regarding cooperative marketing to literary franchises. We have press connections through the University of Denver, Daniels College of Business, and have spoken with Janet Stilson of AdWeek who is interested in our target market and a possible story on NerdNest.
We’ve already been featured in Denver Westword — “Raine Giorgio’s Nerdnest Gives Fangirls A Safe Place To Go Wild” — and USA Today:
Up next: World Domination (please see the Business Plan tab of this profile for details of World Domination). We also need to create a native app for iOS and Android devices, market the product, acquire celebrity influencers, and scale the site to 1 million users in our first year. To do that, we need your help!
Raine is responsible for the company’s vision, strategic direction, and overall product development. As a member of the fangirl community, she is incredibly passionate about the fate of her fangirl sisters. When she saw the way that her community had been marginalized to the fringes of the internet, she knew that something had to change. NerdNest was created to be the first safe and inclusive place for fangirls to gather and exert their collective, creative force. Raine is soon graduating from Daniels College of Business with a BSBA from the University of Denver.
Bill is responsible for all facets of business development. He spent over 20 years in executive management in the media, entertainment and cable/Satellite TV industry, at both Showtime Networks and Starz Entertainment.
As COO for an international multicultural agency, Ricky has done it all. His biggest asset is his experience in dealing with the complex aspects of today’s communications world and managing growing organizations. Ricky’s impressive results for major brands include Electrolux/ Frigidaire/White Westinghouse, Cox, Napa, Jaguar, Mass Mutual, Anheuser Busch, and Unilever. His began career in his native Puerto Rico, where he started as a copywriter at Lopito, Ileana & Howie, and later as Account Director at Badillo Saatchi & Saatchi.
Sarah oversees the social media campaigns in addition to being a subject matter expert in the arena of fangirls. Sarah is a lifelong fangirl and knows the space extremely well. She plans on studying social media marketing at UGA in the spring.