Early in their high school careers, siblings Catherine and David Cook talked about the challenges of meeting friends in high school.
One evening they were flipping through their high school yearbook looking at students who might some day be their friends. Then someone threw out an innocent comment, “Wouldn’t the yearbook be a more useful tool if it were Internet based?”
Their older brother Geoff, who already had two successful entrepreneurial opportunities to his credit, was quickly brought on board and the three were off and running with their idea.
Initial marketing for the site featured Catherine and David wearing t-shirts to school to promote the site. Within their first week, they had more than 400 users. Established in 2005, myYearbook.com now has more than 25 million users.
With the recent focus on mobile technology, Geoff and Catherine have transitioned the company from a pure web-based community to one that embraces mobile users.
Since the launch of the mobile project, about one-third of the site’s traffic comes from mobile users.
What started in the family kitchen has grown into a multi-million dollar company with more than 100 employees.
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