A Computer Science Class, a Moviegal, and an Irishman

Company co-founders Eddie Lim and Jared Morgenstern met at Harvard University in 2000 while assistant teaching the school's advanced introduction to computer science class. In fact, Jared was Eddie's student the year before but only remembers that Eddie was the only teaching assitant who wore designer clothes.

Eddie's senior year, the two launched an on demand internet DVD college delivery service with a friend (inactive but breathing here - Moviegal.com - named after Harvard's very popular Shuttergirl.com service).

The duo met Irishman Eoin Matthews in late 2003 while working for a software start-up in the eclectic Central Square in Cambridge, MA. The famous 1369 coffee shop was host to a series of casual brainstorming sessions that ultimately gave birth to the patent-pending concepts behind Yub. Believing online marketing to be ineffective and biased against consumers, Jared, Eddie, and Eoin brainstormed for a method that rewarded individuals for honestly expressing their style and tastes without corrupting dialog with the bias inherent in main-stream marketing.

The result allowed individuals to express their styles in an online identity, creating an Avatar, while advertising the things (movies, books, music, fashion) that they liked to existing or potential friends. They coined this method of online word-of-mouth: Avatarsing.

In November 2003, Jared and Eddie, with the help of Eoin, filed a provisional patent concerning word-of-mouth advertising on the web.

A Rose by Any Other Name

The team soon learned that the name "Avatarsing" was not as popular as they had imagined. Potential investors and advisors they spoke to stumbled over the differences between Avatarsing and Advertising. Soon it was clear a new name was necessary.

Jared wanted to call it Nixclix, explaining to Eddie and Eoin that their software would help get rid of cliques because it would be so social... After that was rejected, the next potential name, Namgam, a play on the "Name Game" was quickly abandoned. So was "DropYourName.com."

Finally, the name Trikkle.com was conceived based on Eddie's nickname for one of his old crushes. Trikkle.com, the grandfather of Yub.com, quickly evolved into the idea of adding content slowly but surely to your online profile.

Having settled on a name, Eoin, Eddie, and Jared started working diligently on programming the software and web interface in December 2003, only to learn that a popular community website had changed its name to and trademarked Tickle days before they launched a private beta of Trikkle.com.

Going back to the drawing board, the trio wanted to come up with a name similar to Google, eBay, or Yahoo--one that was meaningless except for the brand it was to become. On the drive home from a meeting in New York, Jared and Eddie cycled through the names of popular magazines. After Jared mentioned Details, Eddie replaced the "D" with an "M" to come up with Metails.com, the father of Yub.com. Excited with this name, it is said that Jared bought every .com, .org, and .net that could be created by taking a pronoun prefix and adding a "tails" suffix: (Me/She/He/Him/Her/We/Wee)(tails).(com/org/net)".

Upon hearing this, Eoin quickly purchased Orangetails.com. We still don't know why.

Metailing, Shetailing, and Hetailing

By late December, Eddie, Eoin, and Jared had all left their previous employer and founded Metails Incorporated.

The team of three launched and operated Metails.com in February, 2003 from their apartments in Boston, Kendall, and Harvard Square - with the full support of their roommates, who started to see less and less of them. Jared lived on 7-11, which he still raves about; Eoin had a richer diet of McDonald's; Eddie chowed on Harvard Square's Hong Kong.

By Summer 2003, Metails was ready to announce its innovative rewards program to the world.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

At this time, Jared, Eddie, and Eoin decided to take the program and the company to the next level by raising money for the company, which had previously been funded entirely with their own capital.

At the same time, the trio were approached by one of their partner merchants, Buy.com, about a closer partnership that would enable Metails to offer an even more compelling rewards program to its members. Instead of rewarding only the person who recommended the product, the partnership with Buy.com would enable Metails to reward both the buyer and the recommender when a sale occurred. Buy.com's founder, Scott Blum, had long had a vision of learning about trends and products from your friends and saw the potential in the melding of the growing social networks and e-commerce.

The Metails team was interested in the partnership, but worried that a close alliance with Buy.com might prevent realizing the goal of offering an unbiased approach to shopping and word-of-mouth that did not limit a person's style to a particular retailer. Jared, Eddie, and Eoin prepared a series of arguments for sharing this insight with the Buy.com team.

However, when the two teams met in California in September, the Buy.com guys echoed the same vision--one that would not play favorites to retailers. Within a month, Metails was merged with Buy.com and had access to a whole new set of resources to transform Metails.com into a household brand.

Yubber Ducky

To strenthen and invigorate the new features that were possible after Buy.com acquired Metails.com, a new brand was conceived - Yub.com. This brand was chosen to reflect the new shopping paradigm it represented, one where consumers buy backwards, by starting with each other and then choosing retailers, instead of the other way around.

And this, is where history meets the present...