Well, a semester has come and gone, and it’s been an eventful one here at the Bean. It’s been super exciting being a part of the growth of the Bean (get it?), and seeing it start to develop a personality and reputation across the country. Here’s a quick semester-in-recap:

• We launched at 9 universities in the western U.S., starting September 1st. We roadtripped to each campus pulling the Lymabean trailer, and unleashed Doug Bean on the unexpecting student populations. See videos here on YouTube, and go through the blog archives to see reports on our trip.
• We saw growth in the site take off, with students signing up from 275 different universities – that means about 1/5 of the colleges in the country! We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, and we’re still small… but we’re growing!
• Lymabean was voted one of the top 3 Niche Social Networks of 2008 in the Open Web Awards – thanks again to everybody who voted! It’s quite the honor.
• We launched the Spread the Love contest, which turned Facebook into a walking Lymabean word-of-mouth machine and spurred a lot of nationwide Bean Love. The contest ends on Friday, so if you’re a student you’re not too late to win awesome prizes… like the Twilight movie poster signed by Edward and Bella. We’ll be contacting the winners over the break, so keep checking Lymabean to see if you scored.

And, with that, happy holidays from us at the Bean. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site’s success so far, which makes a list far too long to put here. The biggest thanks go to Dianne, Cherri, and Anne, for reasons which are also far, far too lengthy to put here.

Wow. We’ve made it to the final round in the voting for an Open Web Award! Thanks to everybody that’s been voting every day… we made it into the top 3, which qualified us for this final round. Now it’s time to buckle down. If you’ve been voting already, I’m calling on you to continue; if you haven’t been, now’s the time to start!

You can (and should!) vote once per day. Vote here:

Don’t forget that your vote doesn’t go through until you click in the confirmation email it sends you.

Lymabean is really starting to make its mark. Amazing.

It was announced today that Lymabean has been nominated for an Open Web Award! It’s one of the ten sites in contention in the Niche Social Networks category. Thanks to everyone that nominated us!

…And now we ask for your help again - we’ve made the first voting round (there’s two), so please take a second and vote for us in the widget below! It literally takes seconds. In this round you can vote everyday (it goes for two weeks), so make a point to come here daily and cast your vote for the sweetest legume-themed social network in the world. Thanks!

And while I’m mentioning cool things, it’s worth throwing in that Mashable (the top social media blog around) did a sweet writeup of us this week, called Lymabean: Bringing Sexy Back to College Networking. Whenever we get positive mentions like this it opens some major doors for us - this one’s definitely worth a read!

In our travels, I’ve gotten questions from students pretty frequently about what it’s like to work at the Bean. The short answer is that it’s amazing to work fulltime for an idea that you 100% believe in. The feeling that your own personal efforts will mean either the success or demise of your whole company is both paralyzing and absolutely, completely liberating.

So, for anyone who’s ever been curious, I present… A Day at the Bean.

I like to get started early, so I’m usually the first one to arrive at the office. The headquarters of the Lymabean madness is an office in Huntington Beach, California, right across the street from the Quiksilver headquarters building – but that makes it sound deceptively glamorous. It’s really just warehouse space, but it’s perfect for the operation we’re running.

In case anybody’s wondering, this is my car. At least you know I’m not in it for the money.

Jeff rolls in next. Here’s a shot of him at his desk, where he gets high on Excel spreadsheets and has crazy Friday nights doing pivot tables. The giant Bean wall is pretty sweet, though. When we’re on the cover of Fortune magazine someday, we should take the photo in front of that wall.

Dave is the last to roll in, and he always brings his breakfast with him. Today it appears to be Dr. Pepper and some chocolate Donettes. Sometimes he gets crazy and has something different for breakfast, like Zingers instead of Donettes. But the DP is pretty much a lock every day.

And just because I like picking on Dave, here’s a photo I took of his trash can. There are two Taco Bell cups and one In-N-Out cup visible, just from this angle - and they were probably all from late-night Dr. Pepper runs. The man is truly nocturnal.

We get a lot done because there aren’t any layers of bureaucracy to get through. A lot of our best brainstorming happens over lunch, and when we have a good (or even marginally good) idea we roll it out. I think there’s a lot to be said for not being afraid to make a mistake - some of our best ideas have started out as very weird ideas (the big example here is Doug Bean, the Lymabean mascot. Who would really think that a guy in a 7-foot Bean costume would be an asset instead of a liability? And if you still doubt me, check out all the videos of him here on YouTube. Then report back).

Today’s meeting was at Chronic Tacos, a sweet taco place in Huntington Beach.

We get our hands dirty with all the stuff we do, since it’s just us. On the same day I could be both managing backend database stuff and fixing the toilet in the office. That’s just the way it goes. Here’s an example - as one of the prizes in the Spread the Love contest we’re giving away some custom Lymabean hoodies. Where do they come from? We buy the hoodies from H&M, then silkscreen them ourselves.

It’s really exciting to see the site taking off, after all the work that has gone in (and knowing how much still will). Their have definitely been sacrifices - there’s a lot of late nights of working and some heavy-duty traveling - but we’ve been blessed with amazingly supportive wives and forgiving children. It’s so gratifying to get emails from students (or talk to them in person) and hear about how much they like the site, and then to see it in action as they get their friends involved. With one more round of funding, I think Lymabean will start to explode.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Edit: We’ve already been nominated - now go here to vote!

We’re pretty proud of what we’ve got going here at Lymabean, and it would be sweet to get some broad recognition. Mashable is having its 2nd annual Open Web Awards, and they let anybody send in a nomination. If we get nominated enough times then we can really have a shot, so do us a favor and nominate Lymabean! You do it right in this widget, and all you have to do is put in your email and hit the button (make sure it’s a legit email address, because they send a confirmation email). Thanks! Just think about all the good you’re doing in the world…

We’re pretty excited about this one. The Lymabean Spread the Love contest is a shameless campaign to get the word out about the Bean. We’re enlisting friends of the Bean to Spread the Love, and we’re giving out a bunch of sweet prizes for those who do.

The site for the contest is here: http://www.lymabean.com/spreadthelove/

If you’re a student, hit that link to see how to enter, and all the free crap you can win. We’d also love to have some more prize sponsors, so if you’d like to get involved shoot me an email at contest@lymabean.com.

We’re pretty stoked - the contest site has been up less than a week and we’ve had a bunch of people enter already. Join us… and let’s spread the Bean love.

We had a great time at Oregon State. We had a sweet spot for our Lymabean booth, and we ran into a bunch of cool people. All around, Oregon State just had a great vibe.

I’ll tell you one thing that stood out at OSU - I think this school has the most school pride of anywhere I’ve been. I think every single student was wearing at least one piece of orange-n-black, Beaver-themed clothing, and often more than one. Needless to say, our Bean shirts in OSU colors were a hit, and we got pretty much cleaned out of them. Here’s a few:

Nice looking shirts, ladies.

The second day on campus is always cooler than the first, for a couple reasons. One is that people come back and bring their friends… and another is that we see people cruising around in their Bean shirts they got the day before.

I mentioned we met some awesome people - I’ve got to give a shout out to James and Jessie. These two dudes met us at the booth, and within days became the new student reps for OSU. They’ve been rocking Corvallis with Bean Love ever since, so watch out for them. I wish we had a real picture of both of them, but we do have this picture of Jessie. While at first it appears to be a casual conversation between me and Doug Bean, we see Jessie sporting his Bean shirt in the background.

One of the best things about our time in Corvallis, though, was a lunchtime visit to Carl’s Jr. in the student union. Doug Bean was with us, and somehow in the course of ordering our food he ended up behind the counter. Not sure how he does that.

Probably against their better judgment, they let the guy wearing the giant Bean costume take orders from students for a while. What made it even funnier was that his spandex-covered hands didn’t work on the touchscreen to punch in the orders, so he actually had to grab the hand of the employee next to him and punch it in with his finger. It’s AMAZING what they’ll let you do if you’re wearing a costume. AMAZING.

Would you want this guy taking your order? Me either.

I’m pretty immune to Doug Bean now, since I see him all the time, but I’m constantly impressed how much students connect with a giant Bean. It’s different. It’s unusual. And now Doug Bean is a minor celebrity on college campuses in the western United States.

The rest of the photos are here:

Our traveling continued as we hit up University of Oregon. I haven’t been to Oregon since I was little, and it wasn’t this part of the state, so I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s a really pretty place, very green with plenty of trees.

Rockin' sunset.

It was homecoming weekend in Eugene, so the place was pretty happenin’. We did a booth on Wednesday, then wedged ourselves into the homecoming festivities as much as possible. Doug Bean ended up appearing in the homecoming parade, at a pep rally, then outside Autzen Stadium before the game - plus a little bit of time inside the stadium. Stay tuned for a super, super sweet video of that. I can’t wait to get the footage together - it promises to be the best video since Doug Bean got into the stadium before the Colorado-West Virginia game.

Here’s our booth at UO. We were by a booth trying to get people registered to vote, and another trying to sell big woven tapestries. Neither one stole any traffic from the awesome Lymabean booth, that’s for sure.

Gratuitous booth shot. I should make some sort of montage of these.

This picture is Doug Bean with the dude cheerleaders at the pep rally. There’s nothing really that remarkable about it, except that he thought they were the football team and he kept asking if they were pumped up for the game.

They were nice to him about it.

This was just a great sign. I love that she looks just the slightest bit afraid of Doug Bean.

And, of course, Doug Bean with some newly minted Lymabean fans. University of Oregon was a great place to be getting Lymabean kicked off.

We made some great business friends in Eugene, too, including Qdoba (my new favorite Mexican grill place). I see some good things in the future coming from Lymabean and Qdoba. We’re hoping to make another trip up here before the semester’s over… though I won’t be crossing my fingers that the weather will be this awesome again.

As always, here’s the rest of the pictures (they all store at http://lymabean.slide.com):

When the going gets tough, the tough get in to paper products?

Recently I have received a number of inquiries from various members of our Bean family asking me about how the current economic situation will impact Lymabean. Just for the record, I do not claim to be an economist or financial fortuneteller. However, I have been known to occasionally possess nuggets of wisdom and thought I’d go ahead and post my thoughts on the subject and hope you find a nug or two in there.

Before getting into its effects on the Bean, I want to note a few general things that I believe result from periods of recession.

• Return to sound principles. There’s been plenty of talk going around about how we got in to this problem in the first place, but most of it revolves around carelessness and irresponsibility. During times like these, both businesses and consumers find themselves reviewing and evaluating their spending practices. This evaluation process will lead back to the idea of maximizing the value received from each dollar spent.

• Emphasis on accountability. During a recession, businesses are forced to make more responsible decisions about how and where they spend their marketing budgets. From a marketing standpoint, businesses will migrate to performance-based advertising outlets that can justify their spending. Their focus has to be on ROI.

• New levels of creativity. It’s amazing how industrious and creative we can be when the cupboards are bare. When money gets tight, markets tend to get even more competitive and businesses start incorporating more unconventional and experiential methods to connect with their audience.  I believe this is why venture capitalists love to see companies bootstrap it for a while – to see how creative and resilient they can be as they stretch that last dollar.

So what does all of this mean to Lymabean?  As businesses get creative and focus on ROI, online advertising spending will continue to climb. It’s been well documented that advertising dollars are and have been shifting online from other types of media. Online activities are easier to track and relatively cheaper than other advertising options, and seem to work better. We’ve positioned Lymabean to be a creative alternative to the status quo and reap the benefits of this online increase at both the local and national level. While we love to talk about the local advertising model we’ve put together (because it’s sweet), we’re equally excited about the new type of outlet we’re creating for national brands – but I’ll save that topic for another post.

Additionally, local businesses know that they can’t abandon their marketing efforts during an economic downturn, and instead will likely look to increase their efforts to find new and creative ways to connect with their target audience. Local Internet advertising is expected to increase 50% in 2008 to $13.1 billion and another 40% to $18.2 billion in 2009.  As small businesses face a faltering economy, they will turn towards less expensive, yet more effective, options to reach their audience.

I completely expect that as Lymabean provides local and national businesses high ROI opportunities for their marketing efforts, as well as gives the student community a unique environment to discover, engage and interact with other students, local businesses and national brands, we will flourish and thrive.

Finally, I wanted to share a few investment thoughts, as I know we have quite a few groups looking at getting involved with us.  It’s no secret that there has been a definite skittishness in the air lately, and rightfully so, as banks are dropping like flies and markets are crashing. I recently read that it is going to take 5 -10 years for some investors to make back the value that they’ve recently lost and to then reach a reasonable rate of return.

While I hate to see the struggles in our economy, I take comfort in the fact that the mortgage crisis and increases in gas prices will have little, if any, impact on our business model. As noted above, we expect the Bean to thrive under the current conditions. I believe we are on the verge of making a significant impact on both the social networking and online advertising worlds.  Users continue to grow indifferent towards Facebook and Myspace. The banner advertising model is terrible and ineffective and should be taken out behind the woodshed. And nobody seems to be able to quite figure out the formula for local online advertising.

Obviously I’m biased, but I believe we have a tremendous opportunity right now to create new advertising models for both local and national advertisers, as well as evolve the expectations of what users should receive from their social networking experience. Google was created during a period where online ads were dead, and they had to figure out a model that worked ahead of its time. It pays, as many investors can attest, to be counter-cyclical, as tomorrow’s winners are made during down cycles.

So if you’re already “down with the Bean,” good for you. Be patient and you will be rewarded. And if you’re not? Call or email me.

I just got an email from alert reader Neha Giridharan with this great photo. This one says way more than a thousand words. Six, seven thousand, easy. It’s from U of A, and it’s our buddy Omar and his crew!

Omar is on the right - the rest are the members of his posse.

I was also alerted that I had the comments turned off on the blog… that’s fixed now. So you can comment if that’s your thing.