Momnesia

MC Hammer's next act: Tech entrepreneur

Anyone who's read this site knows that I lurves me some MC Hammer. (See here and here) I don't know why. I think it's because it's too legit to quit.

Whatever the reason, it's Hammer Time once again.

Although he hasn't had a hit in more than 10 years, the former rap star is busting a move to a new career: co-founder and CSO of DanceJam.com.

The Web site, scheduled to debut in mid-January, will try to upstage YouTube and become the Internet's hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008, according to eMarketer.

If the business pans out, DanceJam could help Hammer compensate for losing his fortune when he went bankrupt in 1996 with nearly $14 million in debts.

The bankruptcy was a sobering comedown for Hammer, who parlayed the popularity of his once-ubiquitous song, "U Can't Touch This," to become a pop icon in the early 1990s. Besides becoming a fixture on MTV, Hammer appeared on kids' lunch boxes and even had his own action figure.

Hammer's entrepreneurial roots date back to the 1980s when he began recording songs with financial help from a few Oakland Athletics, where he once worked as a ball boy. His nickname came from his resemblance to the former home run king, Hammerin' Hank Aaron.

Without the support of a major music label, Hammer built a loyal fan base by hitting the streets and selling his early recordings out of a car.

His success in grass roots marketing prompted Salesforce.com Inc. to call on Hammer for advice in its early days. The company wanted to raise awareness about its online software service without paying a lot for traditional advertising, said Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's chief executive officer.

"We really learned a lot from Hammer. He is the most entrepreneurial individual I have ever met," said Benioff, whose San Francisco-based company is now worth $7 billion.

Hammer and his DanceJam partners — Geoffrey Arone, the chief executive, and Anthony Young, the chief technology officer — are wading into a market already saturated with dozens of Web sites that have built huge video libraries.

Arone became convinced the Web needed a site devoted exclusively to dance shortly after he left Web browsing startup Flock, which he had co-founded. Hammer had been feeling the same way about dance for years so they quickly hit it off when they first met and hammered out the concept for DanceJam.

Drawing upon the popularity of reality shows like "Dancing With The Stars," DanceJam will stage head-to-head competitions where contestants submit videos that will be judged by viewers. The site also will provide demonstrations and information about a wide variety of dances, ranging from the Boogaloo to the Krump. They say they have stockpiled about 100 gigabytes of video to help launch DanceJam.

The most watched video in YouTube's 2 1/2-year history happens to be about dancing. The 6-minute clip, a facetious tribute called "Evolution of Dance," includes about 25 seconds alluding to some of the moves that Hammer made famous back when he was still wearing colorful parachute pants as he sang "U Can't Touch This."



Hammer recognized YouTube's potential before most people he did. Besides putting some of his own clips on the site, Hammer visited YouTube's offices in February 2006 when there were still just a handful of people running the site above a pizza parlor. (A clip of that visit is at http://www.youtube.com/blog?month2&year2006.)