I Beat You

by @lauriepercival 1 Year, 146 days ago #

I attend quite a few mixers and events that take place in the tech community. Most of the time I spend my evening talking to people that I am already acquainted with, and occasional share a conversation with someone across the bar. I’ll be the first one to admit that I do not take the networking part of a mixer seriously. I don’t have a start-up or a company that I am launching and trying to pitch, so I usually don’t make a significant amount of connections in a single evening. The few people that I do have the pleasure of meeting always tend to give me endless amount of lalawag material, and meeting Abdul Khan was no exception.

I was very happy to connect recently with Abdul, one of the founders of ibeatyou.com. Nicole Jordan, the connectrix of LA tech, introduced us recently at a DealMaker mixer. Abdul told me fascinating stories of celebrity visits and shenanigans that would occur regularly at his company office. Intrigued, I asked if he would be willing to let me bring the lalawag camera in for a visit. Abdul graciously obliged and invited us over for a day of contests and baby carrot stuffing.

Immediately after this video Cash decided the best competition for us to take on would be their most recent world record idea. How many baby carrots can you fit in your mouth without chewing? Unfortunately for me, since I hate losing, I was picked to go first, and did pitifully. A few minutes in, and the baby carrots were sliding down my throat choking me, not pretty.

A.V. did a much better job of keeping her composure but didn’t even come close to the reigning champion.

The concept behind ibeatyou.com is to engage their users in contests with celebrities and other users. Think of it like a game where you are the avatar but you can compete in whatever you are good at. You can make any competition that interests you. Since the company launched in March of 2008, there have been over 100,000 different competitions created. Thanks to integrated campaigns with brands, ibeatyou.com is able to make money off of micro-sites within the site that help users connect with the brand. They have worked with several companies and created competition campaigns for Twillight, Lady GaGa, Extra entertainment and others.

Now that I have an account and the first competition under my belt, I expect you will see some lalalwag competitions coming up in the future. Maybe a best impersonation of Sean Percival’s hair competition?