Seth W. Godin, who sometimes uses the alias "F.X. Nine," is an American author and a former
dot com business executive.[1][2][3]
Background
In 1977, Godin worked at a
bagel factory that produced
everything bagels.[4] After leaving
Spinnaker in 1986, he used $20,000 in savings to establish Seth Godin Productions, which primarily operated as a book packaging business. He operated this venture out of a studio apartment in New York City.[5] He then met Mark Hurst and founded Yoyodyne (named in jest after the fictional
Yoyodyne in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension[6]). After a few years, Godin sold the book packaging business to his employees and focused his efforts on Yoyodyne, where he promoted the concept of
permission marketing.[7]
Business ventures
Yoyodyne, launched in 1995, used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users. In August 1996,
Flatiron Partners invested $4 million in Yoyodyne in return for a 20% stake.[5][8] At Yoyodyne, Godin published Permission Marketing: Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. In 1998, he sold Yoyodyne to
Yahoo! for about $30 million[9][10] and became Yahoo's vice president of direct marketing.[11]
In March 2006, Godin launched
Squidoo.[12] By July 2008, Squidoo had become one of the 500 most visited sites in the world.[13] However, by 2014, it was no longer considered financially viable and was sold to
HubPages.[14]
Writing
Godin is the author of many books. Free Prize Inside was a Forbes Business Book of the Year in 2004,[15] while Purple Cow sold over 150,000 copies in more than 23 print runs in its first two years.[16]The Dip was a Business Week and New York Times bestseller;[17][18]Business Week also named Linchpin among its "20 of the best books by the most influential thinkers in business" on November 13, 2015.[19]
In June 2013, Godin raised more than $250,000 from readers with a
Kickstarter campaign, which in turn secured him a book contract with his publisher for his book "The Icarus Deception".[1]
Godin was inducted into the American Marketing Association's Marketing Hall of Fame in 2018.[20]
Blog
Seth Godin's blog was named by Time among its 25 best blogs of 2009.[21]
^Hogan, Ron (2005-05-16).
"How to Succeed in Business (Books)". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2014-01-20."...reports that the two-year-old title has more than 150,000 copies in print after 23 printings"