<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"By making the audacious claim that \"our blades are f**king great,\" startup Dollar Shave Club's video  has been a hit with consumers \u2014 pulling in more than 600,000 views in two days and netting 5,000 orders. But before that, it went viral with investors as well.\nMichael Dubin, the guy in the video and CEO of the fledgling company, says he shot the video in October and used it to woo VCs including Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp; Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, who collectively put $1 million behind the company. \"We develop great content,\" Dubin says, \"and [the video] said, 'This is the tone of voice we're going to come at it with.'\"\nDubin's description of Dollar Shave Club as a \"content producer\" may sound strange given the company's business. Dollar Shave Club came about when Dubin, a former digital marketing director at Sports Illustrated, met up with Mark Levine at a holiday party in December 2010. Levine knew how to get cheap razors online and suggested that he and Dubin sell them.\nIt was Dubin who came up with a subscription model \u2014 the company charges on a monthly basis, starting at $3 for a standard two-blade razor. Dubin argued that there was an audience for such an offering. \"We were able to show people that you can get cheap razors at Kmart, but people don't want to be seen at Kmart and don't want to deal with a parking lot,\" Dubin says. \nBut how to get consumers' attention? A company called Orabrush had launched its oral care brand in 2009 with funny, irreverent YouTube videos. That brand wasn't a conscious influence, but maybe it was a subliminal one. \"What they did was smart  was very successful for them,\" Dubin says. \"They showed you can use humor and be irreverent and have a great brand story. That ad was certainly in my subconscious.\" A more direct influence was Old Spice, whose \"The man your man could smell like\" campaign informed Dubin's mock bluster, not to mention the ad's series of tracking shots.\nNow that the ad has made its mark with consumers, Dollar Shave Club is dealing with \"typical startup stuff,\" Dubin says, including servers that are crashing from too much traffic. At the moment, the company is planning a sequel, probably around Father's Day. \nMeanwhile, Dubin says he's not afraid of a persistent fashion trend that could limit the scope of his new business: Beards. \"Look, we love beards,\" he says. \"I personally can't grow a beard. If I could, I would. But we're not beardphobic.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/03/07/dollar-shave-club-investors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable%2FSocialMedia+%28Mashable+%C2%BB+Social+Media%29>