How GeniusRocket Uses Curated Crowdsourcing; An Interview with Peter LaMotte, GeniusRocket President

Frank Gruber January 15, 2011 Tweet

Crowdsourcing has been used in a number of ways on the Web over the past five or so years. From Wikipedia crowdsourcing its open encyclopedia project, to Threadless crowdsourcing designs for tee shirts, to Crowdspring and 99Designs crowdsourcing graphic design, crowdsourcing has been a staple to the Web 2.0 and social media era. Washington, D.C. based startup GeniusRocket has also been a part of the mix.

Launching in 2007 with a product that crowdsourced creative designs, websites and videos, the company has been honing its business model over time to create a hybrid crowdsourcing solution called “curated crowdsourcing”. Last year they launched a product called GRSelect as a first foray into testing the model, and even showcased it at one of our DC mixer events. The launch was a success and since then, the company has refocused all of its attention on the new model – specifically on video advertising content. This turns GeniusRocket into a full powered agency for anyone looking to create a video or advertisement.

We have been following GeniusRocket for quite some time as we’ve worked with Peter LaMotte and the team on videos like this one that we used at our 2010 Tech Cocktail SXSW event. I recently sat down with Peter, who is the president of GeniusRocket, to discuss his new business direction or “pivot” in the video interview (below).