December 4, 2006

New Rockstartup.com Puts Viewers Inside Real-Life Ups, Downs of Young Internet Startup

Camera Goes Behind the Scenes to Capture Life On the Road, Around the Conference Table And In the Cubicle as 12 Passionate Employees Build PayPerPost.com

ORLANDO, FL - (DECEMBER 4, 2006) - The Internet bubble may have burst five years ago, but for a new generation of savvier, more determined entrepreneurs, success through the end of a broadband connection still holds promise.

In fact, the days of seventy hour workweeks, dramatic business risks and a seat-of-the-pants pursuit of fame and fortune are still here for twelve young and very impassioned entrepreneurs. A new Web site, Rockstartup.com, chronicles the real-life story of Ted Murphy and his team at PayPerPost.com, a cutting-edge-and some would say, controversial-company that links advertisers with freelance bloggers who will hire themselves out to promote top-name products and services via online social networks.

Beginning today and continuing weekly, Rockstartup.com is posting seven- to eight-minute, documentary-style episodes about Murphy and his team. The episodes are professionally shot and produced, capturing the daily (and sometimes minute-by-minute) trials and triumphs that accompany individuals who put their careers on the line in order to make an Internet business work.

"As we began our launch of PayPerPost.com, we began realizing how many people were intrigued by this kind of undertaking. It's really the way many people in their 20's and 30's wish to pursue The American Dream," said Murphy, a serial entrepreneur whose creativity and skill for unconventional marketing has been honed before companies as diverse as Bombardier, General Motors, FOX and Tyco. "Each of our employees has a story to tell, and each unfolds within the context of this fast-changing 'thing' called PayPerPost.com. By putting our lives on film, we're sort of creating a product-within-a-product."

Rockstartup.com's new "rock-doc" features the many conventional and not-so-conventional ways that the fledgling executives at PayPerPost.com, based in Orlando, build their new company. A recent episode follows Murphy and Britt Gustafson, the company's communications specialist, to New York City as they awake from their hotel rooms to ambush the outdoor crowd at NBC's The Today Show using posters and t-shirts, hoping to score some free network publicity. Later they plug the company from the PayPerPost.com booth at an advertising trade show, to mixed results.

"In many ways PayPerPost.com is a typical startup, but in many ways we're unique. Our people are not unlike the blogging professionals they work with every day-very creative, yet also burdened with the pressures of meeting deadlines and balancing work with personal life," said Peter Wright, Director of Software Development and himself an author of more than a dozen best-selling books. "This is a company filled with characters, which makes for some pretty unique encounters."

Rockstartup.com's online series is recorded completely in high-definition video. It is shot and edited by Travis Andrews, formerly an associate producer of MTV's Fabulous Life Presents: My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding and season one of Tiara Girls. Andrews has also worked on MTV's True Life and seasons one and two of VH1's Hogan Knows Best.