Shane Coburn Interview + Mindgames videos
Friday, April 11th, 2008
We were all sad to see Mindgame close last year. Was that something you had been thinking about for a while?
Mindgame was always meant to be a company that challenged the conventions of the industry.
I’ve always sought to make “core” companies and products that didn’t have to answer to the mainstream, and I saw Mindgame as the greatest manifestation of that intention. But Mindgame became really popular, really quick. We turned a profit in our first year, and tripled in size our second. It was kind of a fortunate/unfortunate position to be put in.
We had the money to do the things we wanted, but somewhere, the message was getting lost. Soon, I started to see posts on the messageboards like “Why do they call themselves Trendkiller if all they do is make trends?” Well, the truth is, we never ever intended to make anything in to a trend — we just liked putting ideas out there and seeing how people responded to them and made them their own. But people have a way of institutionalizing things. […]
What have you been up to since then?
I moved to LA last year and took a job as Marketing Director at an auto enthusiast site called WebRidesTV. It was a good move for me — I learned a lot about the power of the web, and was also able to get some talented rollerbladers paying gigs, including Connor O’Brien, Brandon Negrete, Cuauhtzin Guiterrez, Drew Bachrach, and Billy Kostka.
I left WebRides last October to take a position at quarterlife.com as their Director of Project Development. quarterlife is a web show and a social networking site for creative people. I really love what I do, but we’ve had our ups and downs.
We made history by being the first internet series to be picked up by network TV, and then we made history by being one of the fastest cancellations in NBC history. After that, we had to make some cuts, and unfortunately, I had to layoff some of my friends — friends I had actually brought on to the project. […]
Read the full Shane Coburn Interview
You can check Shane Coburn work at quarterlife.com/shane. Here are some links to videos:
