The Name

Now that we had a concept for a website and a developer on our team, we were faced with the harder than you think task of choosing an appropriate name. And trust me...This turned out to be MUCH harder than you think. But we did have a few preconditions, rules if you will.

• It MUST be only two syllables. All cool sites have names that are two syllables - Goo*gle, You*Tube, My*Space, Face*book, etc.
• It MUST be a name that relates to ALL talent - Acting, Music, Sports, Dance, Comedy, Modeling, Art, and any other talent we weren't clever enough to think of.
• The name had to be cool enough to one day become used as a verb (sorta like when people say "MySpace me" or "Google it")
• It had to be a domain that wasn't already taken and being sold by someone for $10,000 (we are recent college grads after all)
• The name had describe exactly what the site was all about - helping talented people find the exposure they deserved

After days of deliberation, we went through every word in the dictionary that related to talent, checked them against our list of preconditions, then searched to see if the name was available.

Literally 90% of the names we came up with were already snatched up by domain brokers who were looking to make a quick buck. Time to get creative baby.

We went back to the faithful mirror in my room with our dry erase markers. Hours later, the words "Fame" and "Source" were drawn together, and our site had a name.

We would be known to the world as FAMESOURCE.com

Finding the team.

Although Allen and I consider ourselves experts in the field of 1998 web design and development, we began to search for a developer. We searched...umm, for a long time. For those of you who don't know us, we are...I wouldn't say hard to get along with, because we aren't. We...well we are passionate, yeah that's a good word. Passionate. We wanted someone to be as passionate about our project as we were. And that's not easy because we were REALLY passionate about Famesource.



I'm seriously laughing thinking about the different developers we met. We saw it ALL - one guy met with us in his living room in his shorts and socks...thats it haha. Another development team we met with invited us to a formal executive board room(superfancy) where they then proudly displayed a porn site they had built.

It wasn't until we found our developer, and now close friend Arthur that Famesource would truly begin to form. Look that that cute guy.

Getting it on paper.

So an idea's one thing. Writing it down is another. Unless you haven't noticed, we are two people, shocking as that is. We had different ideas and wanted those ideas to go in different directions.

But I can easily say that Allen and I in our 1st draft...okay mayybeee 4th or 5th, captured what we wanted in the look of the site. We've attached some professional artist renditions of the site (doodles if you will), after a long night of the eraser game on the mirror in Allen's room. That mirror has been through thick and thin with us. Even though the look of the site was done in a few days, the ideas behind it, and little details continued to pour out till the day we launched, and still continue to this day. Ask our development team (I'm pretty sure they don't like us very much). The mirror will be available for sale on ebay after the successful takeoff of famesource, and profits will be donated to charity.

You think I'm joking.

So it began...

Anthony and I had met at a local Starbucks to toss around a few business ideas that we had. Topics ranged from solar-powered air conditioners to built-in laptop projectors. We left this first "meeting" knowing that we would start something together(not sure what), but something.

I got home that night and turned on the tv while I reassembled my laptop...America's Got Talent was on. The proverbial lightbulb went off in my head as I lunged for the telephone to call Anthony. I told him that we needed to meet ASAP. The next day he was at my house ready to talk business, and it was that warm summer night (July 06) that it all began.

We were going to build a website for talent.

Who is Famesource?

Hi everyone I'm Allen Vartazarian (above right), and I'm his partner Anthony Zanontian (above left)...together, we are Famesource! We decided to start this blog to give people some history on how Famesource.com was founded, the start-up process, and the future of Famesource.

First lets begin with some background info. We both graduated from the University of California system (Berkeley and San Diego), yes, we are quite fond of UC's (please write articles about us Daily Cal, Guardian, and Daily Bruin, and other UC based papers...ummm, we need the exposure) After graduation, we both took those normal 9 to 5 jobs, but realized they weren't meant for us.

It was fate you might say that we began to talk, or the fact that our girlfriends were cousins. Yeah, that may have had something to do with it. It's pretty much history from there. After more than a few brainstorms, famesource was born. We still reminisce about other ideas we had, some too ridiculous to mention and some still highly secret(they are in a lockbox underneath Allen's bed). We really want to try and capture what we went through and whats about to come, so stay tuned for more.