Back in ancient times, 1998 to be exact, two brothers bore witness to an animated dancing doodie streaming over a 56K modem and it changed their lives forever. What Evan and Gregg Spiridellis saw in their browser was more than a dancing piece of dung; it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be pioneers in a brave new world of entertainment.
At the time, Gregg was an MBA student at the Wharton School of Business, recovering from four years of investment banking, and Evan was an accomplished independent animator creating festival-winning short films. The idea that production costs were dropping and distribution was opening up led the brothers to believe (naively) that they could create a giant, new entertainment brand. In 1999, the brothers started JibJab in a Brooklyn garage (despite the fact that starting an Internet company in a garage is really a cliché thing to do).
Evan assembled a team of painters, photographers, illustrators and sculptors. Most of them had little or no experience with technology, but Evan challenged them to think about the computer as just another tool, like a paintbrush or a sculpting knife. Gregg hit the phone cold calling people in search of business and, on the side, took to writing comedy, because the art team needed concepts to produce.
At the beginning, the brothers supported their business producing high quality eCards for other companies. Then, in February 2000, the brothers created their first viral video hit with an interactive video of the Founding Fathers rapping about the Declaration of Independence. They quickly followed it with an even bigger hit featuring George Bush and Al Gore in a rap battle for the 2000 presidential election. The video was one of the web’s first broad based hits and landed on Fox’s MadTV, ABC News, CNN and a host of other national media outlets. The brothers were on the verge of success. Then came the dot-com crash…
Within six months, all of JibJab’s clients went out of business. The brothers scrambled to find creative ways to make enough money to keep their new business afloat. They created a line of gag gifts based on their popular online series “Nasty Santa” and sold it nationwide through Spencer Gifts and Urban Outfitters. They also created animations for companies like Disney, Noggin and Kraft. They even published a children’s book with rap super star LL Cool J!
By the end of 2001, it was clear that online entertainment was not coming back anytime soon. The brothers realized that in order for JibJab to survive, they would need to close down their Brooklyn shop, say goodbye to family and friends, and set out in search of greener pastures. In January 2002, they committed their second start-up cliché, packing all of their earthly possessions into a 24-foot U-Haul truck and hitting the road for sunny Los Angeles.
For two years, the brothers toiled in obscurity. Long gone were the dreams of a media revolution; now all they wanted was to figure out a way to earn a living making people laugh. Despite the anonymity, it was a productive two years. They published a best-selling holiday book for Disney called “Are You Grumpy Santa”. They produced a series of viral animations for Sony. They created the Bananagrabber character for the hit TV series “Arrested Development”. Most importantly, they continued to pour everything back into original short programming for JibJab.com because they believed that building an audience by serving great content would ultimately lead to big opportunities.
In 2003, the storm clouds of the dot com bust started to part. In August, they created a political parody called “Ahnold for Governor” that quickly spread across the web and landed them a coveted spot at the Sundance Online Film Festival. Then, in 2004, given their past success with Presidential politics, the brothers turned their attention to the Bush/Kerry battle taking over the news cycle. Nothing in their four and half year history of making videos for the web could have prepared them for what happened next…
On July 9, 2004, Evan and Gregg Spiridellis released “THIS LAND” and the media revolution they first dreamed of back in Brooklyn was at their doorstep overnight. The video, written by Gregg and animated by Evan, rocketed around the world from inbox to inbox after the brothers emailed a link to the 130,000 people on their fan newsletter. Within days, millions of requests poured in from around the world for their satirical video. As they told Brian Wilson in their first national interview on FOX News, their tiny little web server “spontaneously combusted”.
The string of media attention that followed was unprecedented for an Internet video. The Today Show, ABC News, Jay Leno, CNN, FOX, CNBC, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Variety, Los Angeles Times and hundreds of other media outlets from around the world covered the story.
By the end of the election, JibJab’s election videos were more than 80 million times online on every continent, including Antarctica. American soldiers had emailed the brothers to tell them they were watching the video from within Saddam Hussein’s old palace. NASA had even contacted the brothers for permission to send a copy of the animation to the International Space Station. Then, on December 31, 2004, Peter Jennings named the Spiridellis brothers “People of the Year” on ABC’s World News.
While most LA-based creators would have leveraged the opportunity to run into the arms of big media, Evan ad Gregg shunned the television and film offers pouring in and doubled-down on new media. They went to work leveraging the phenomenal success from the election to start rebuilding their business.
They kicked off 2005 creating a series of movie trailers that played before every film at the Sundance Film Festival. They did deals with Yahoo!, AtomFilms, MSN Video, and Anheuser Busch. During the course of the year, they released three more videos on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno including Second Term, Matzah and 2-0-5.
By 2006, things were moving faster in the online video business than ever before. The brothers had powered JibJab with six and a half years of sweat equity but they knew that if they wanted to realize their vision to build JibJab into a great company, they needed financing that would enable them to hire great people and build for the future. In March, they met Jon Flint from Polaris Venture Partners and a great partnership was born.
After six and a half years of living on the edge of bankruptcy, the brothers cautiously set about deploying their new capital to expand their efforts. They launched a community joke-sharing website called JokeBox. They produced a series of sketch comedy shorts with legendary comedy director John Landis (Blues Brothers, Animal House, Trading Places and more). They partnered with Weird Al Yankovic on a video release in November and, in December, ended the year with a Tonight Show premiere for Nuckin’ Futs.
The year 2007 kicked off with a bang when Brian Wilson, the first national news anchor to cover This Land, invited the brothers to premiere a video for the President of the United States at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC. Rather than roasting the President, however, the brothers set their sites on the media itself with a satire called “What We Call the News”.
With another successful JibJab Original behind them, Evan and Gregg once again set about charting a new and exciting course for the company. They recognized that the nature of the web was changing, with more people were connecting and communicating using technology than ever before, and saw an opportunity to innovate. While their past work involved making videos that made people laugh, they wanted to create content that people could use as form of personal expression. JibJab Sendables was born.
In late 2007, the brothers declared war on eCards with the launch of JibJab Sendables. Their vision was to keep producing the high quality, fun content that made JibJab famous, but to couple it with personalization tools that empower people to express themselves in fun ways. Rather than trying to write, animate and produce everything themselves, the brothers started building “Team JibJab”, a far-reaching talent network comprised of the best artists in the world. Team JibJab’s mission is to create the biggest library of the highest quality, most innovative, fun social programming in the universe. As of June 30, 2008, over 170 comedians, writers, artists, musicians and performers had created over 1,200 titles in the JibJab Sendables library and they are just getting started.
Since their days in a Brooklyn garage, Evan and Gregg Spiridellis have grown JibJab into a nationally recognized brand by maintaining their obsession on only serving the highest quality laughs to their audience. Thanks to that obsession, and the support of JibJab fans everywhere, the company has grown from 2 brothers to a 35-person company comprised today of the best and the brightest artists, technologists and business people working hard (really hard) to change the way entertainment is created, produced and distributed.
Evan and Gregg believe that what is happening right now is nothing short of the media revolution they first dreamed about in their Brooklyn garage, and no matter how big JibJab becomes, they will never forget that it all started with a dancing doodie.
36 Comments
dumbasses!
Nice. All that work, and you call ‘em dumbasses….
We want to send a care package of 7″ finger flick McCain and Obama punching bags to some of your staff. Where can we send them?
I love your site.
Kudos to JibJab team,
We love your site, love what you guys done, in particular the “Starring You” section. We really have a blast and hopefully you guys would add more video stuff there. Amazing.
Keep up the good work,
Nel Sea your newly member.
I’m sending a small donation to your Santa Monica address.It
certainly won’t let you two retire,but will show in a small way
how much I appreciate your site.Whenever I feel down I go to
Jib Jab to get a new lease on life.Thank you,Evan and Gregg and
the rest of the gang.
Best regards—-Sig Orstad
where can I purchase your new poster?
Wow. Dancing doodie. Awesome.
Awesome to hear you were an illustration major! I too majored in that field out here in New York. You guys are great, I absolutely love what you to here. Flawless animation with some great wit. Keep it up!
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We need money, lots of money to make us look good
We’re very good listeners, selective listeners.
We listen only to what we want to hear from you.
So, you’ll learn quickly to keep it buttoned up
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Step to the end of the line!
The worse thing you can do
is think of us as hypocrites.
That’s not our goal! We love you!
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Hard money, soft money, any kind of money,
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And when we are elected to a position of trust,
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I’m Very Upset that all the oringal videos know are gone! What the heck. I always showed my friends that all these videos were funny as heck, like the farting 12 elves. I want the orginal videos back or be able to buy all them one a dvd. Please do something because I know im not the only one! I probably will stop coming on this site, same with my friends because they all like the old stuff.
Fantastic SITE, great animations, keep them coming!
EVERYONE IS VERY DISAPPOINTED THAT JOKEBOX HAS SHUT DOWN…WE’VE COMMUNICATED WITH EACH OTHER AND LOTS OF US HAVE ASKED EACH OTHER WHY YOU DIDN’T ASK US IF A MONTHLY OR ANNUAL FEE WOULD HAVE KEPT IT OPEN… AND I ALSO KNOW THAT THE SUBJECT OF COPYRIGHT IS IN THERE SOME WHERES ….. AT THIS POINT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU PLAN TO DO… AND YOU PROBABLY DON’T JUST YET EITHER. D.MERRY (TNSILVERLADY)
I am disappointed in the shut down of jokebox and the loss of the internet friends I have made. I hope that you will one day be able to bring back some version of it. I guess copyright law as much manpower to keep up with it as well as bandwith had a lot to do with it ending. As I recall we were to be limited to 1,000 entries and of course we were way over that. I wish Jib Jab well. Having the joke sharing when I joined helped me through some rough times personally though laughter.
Peace: Vic Satter (vsatter1)
I really miss the jokebox. it is a terrible shame that it left over night. I wish the best for jib jab and maybe i’ll see jokebox in the furture. good bye to all and to all a good night
Yes, the internet may be location agnostic, but Calif* is where businesses have to physically be to gain popularity.
Why did we lose all the videos? I haven’t been keeping up with the news. Did something happen? I miss them!
The closure of jokebox is a real shame. A lot of people created a lot of ORIGINAL jokes that were incredibly popular. Their talent was never acknowledged and I am sure that JIBJAB management made money from advertising (if not then something was intrinsically wrong). Creativity is not limited to making photo images that move to mediocre satirical music.
It can be as simple as a stick figure talking or as matching a series of images with amusing/contrasting music that gives the content a new comical life. I fear that JibJab may realise this a bit too late.
Still a great site, but please, bring back the Jokebox!
HI i want you to know i really enjoy the site keep up the good work i oder for a year and i am having fun with this hope to see up dates
You guys had a great thing going! I was a huge fan, and even purchased a couple of your DVD’s a few years back. Then, you changed your format about a year ago, and everything has gone down hill! No sooner had you cashed my $10 check for “credits”, than you went to a “subscription” arrangement, nixed the JokeBox, made the original Staring You videos unavailable, and LOST all my heads that I had painstakenly produced over many months! I had recommended you to friends and family who have the same complaints as I, and who no longer visit your site. My emails are answered with letters saying, basically, “Sorry we lost your heads. Just make new ones”. Easier said than done. I no longer have the photos I created the heads from. Your site does not even give a simple link to “Creating Heads”. Spiridelli Brothers, you need to put down the bong for a minute and concentrate again on the CUSTOMER SERVICE aspect of your business, Dudes!
Hi Pat,
Since you took the time to explain your issues to us, we wanted to take the time to address each of your points:
SUBSCRIPTIONS – The move to subscriptions was based upon feedback we received from customers, and was done to add value for you. The subscription model gives you unlimited sends for one price as opposed to only being able to send, for example, 3 videos for $10. All people who had purchased credits were given a free subscription, including you; it looks like your subscription is good until January of 2010. It sounds like we didn’t communicate this well to you, and we’re sorry for that.
JOKEBOX – No one was sadder to see JokeBox go then us. We poured a lot of time, energy and money into it but it became clear we couldn’t financially support it and we had to make the tough decision to let it go. We sent several emails to users to let them know about the change, but maybe we didn’t do that good a job; our apologies.
LOSS OF STARRING YOU VIDEOS & HEADS – Yes, we screwed up BIG TIME! We are not looking to make excuses but rather explain where we are at: Our technology team is made up of only about a dozen really talented and really hard-working people. They are trying to do the work of what 50-100 people would be doing at a larger company. Building and managing the Starring You database of videos and heads is really complicated business. We have tens of millions of videos and heads cut and stored by our audience and as hard as we try to get it right we definitely still make mistakes. I’m really sorry about your lost videos and heads and if there was a way to get them back, believe me, we would. Regardless of what you may think, we still realize we are nothing without our audience and we strive to keep people happy, but we are far from perfect (as you unfortunately now know).
CREATING HEADS – All that you need to do to create a head is first choose a Starring you video or picture to personalize. However, we know that this confuses people a little, so we already have it on our roadmap to give folks the ability to create heads directly. Thanks for the suggestion.
In summary, we’re really sorry you’ve been disappointed with our service. We really do value our audience and especially people who have been supportive for as long as you have. We’re *always* working hard to *always* improve the site, so we hope that you we can win you back as a big fan sometime soon.
Thanks again for taking the time to give us some feedback,
The JibJab Team
A big THANK YOU!! for FINALLY taking the time to personally email me a “letter of apology” for my above issues with your site and for admitting that you did, in fact, “screw up BIG TIME” when you changed your format and lost all your customer’s heads and videos. That’s all I wanted. Acknowlegement of my frustrations, admission of “screwing up” and a sincere apology. So, although it took a year of my complaints and replies like, “Sorry we lost all your heads. We are working on getting them back”, you can now consider yourselves back in my good graces. My only complaint now is that I’ve been waiting almost a year to “get my heads back”. Now I know that they are lost forever in head-heaven, and I must create new ones, but during that year, I was unable to use my subscription to send Starring You videos because I had no heads. (I think it would be nice if you extended my subscription to December 2010). Thank you again for your personal and sincere reply to my complaints.
where have you put “geezers”???? I miss those two guys a lot!! Please put them back. Mark
So glad to hear you liked Geezers, Mark. While we have no immediate plans to place them back on the site right now, there’s really no way to contain ornery folks like them forever, so perhaps you will see them again one day.
hi jib jab team can u mack a wedding e card with staring you for me
Is JC and the Gang going to have a card for Mothers Day?
Hi Kathy. We will be launching some more content for Mother’s Day within the next couple of weeks here: http://sendables.jibjab.com/category/mothers_day. However, we apologize, JC & the Gang will not be a part of it.
OK I am wondering if you ever got a way for us to SAVE our “STARRING YOU” sendables?????
I lost the ones I made so long ago- I want to know what I have to do to make a “STARRING YOU” and save it to my PC.
Thank you soooooooo MUCH!
Verry NICE site !!!….
Congratulations and … please, continue !!!…..
I love you guys and your site is fabulous! I will be a member until I die hopfully from laughing! Two things I would like to touch on….possible head shapes for dogs! (and cats too I suppose if you like that sort of thing). I know there is a lot of people who think that their pets are way more funny than most people. My dog was perfect for “Math Camp”.
Second thing is the “Fredmiester”…….Yum!!! He is OMG adorable and I was wondering if he was single? Hey it doesn’t hurt to ask right?
Dear;
….. Realy strange…Hum Hum ! Cooking ????
Kindy Kindy;
Jean Pierre*
Aix-en-provence
i need a e card fore a wedding what e card shod i use????????????
All ‘Wedding’ eCards can be found at http://sendables.jibjab.com/category/wedding
I am the guy who does the Bill Clinton, John Mccain, Ronald Reagan, and many other voices on MSNBC.
Jkhimelstein@cox.net
Gang, I’m trying to pay my membership and can NO WAY to get accounts dept. hooked up. Please fill me in on proper way to get hooked back up. I tried regular email but obviously didn’t get the right e-addresses. Thanks, love your work,
Karl Sadler