CLECT

Judy and I are big fans of the series INSIDE MAN with Morgan Spurlock that airs on CNN. The show recently ran it's second season of episodes in which Spurlock investigates a given subject, profession, culture, etc. He's covered everything from NASA, to professional video game players to the toxins in our everyday environment to just what the heck is a bit coin anyway? Each episode is engaging, compelling, sometimes humorous and always interesting. Spurlock has a great on-camera presence and a relaxed (but far from sloppy) style of reporting. He comes across as a regular guy with an enormous sense of  curiosity. By the way, Spurlock first gained widespread attention through his award-winning documentary film SUPER SIZE ME  (2004) which recounts his quest to eat all three daily meals for an entire month only at McDonald's restaurants. The results almost killed him but it's one hell of an incredible story and a film that I highly recommend.

The other night, Judy and I were watching an episode of INSIDE MAN in which Spurlock journeyed to California's Silicon Valley to investigate the business of start ups. What makes a good start up company, why do some fail, while others succeed? Who are the gurus and angel investors behind the scenes that make all of this work? And most importantly, does Spurlock's own pitch for his start up website have what it takes to succeed?

Spurlock reveals himself in this episode to be an uber nerd, a collector of action figures, comic books, horror movie ephemera and other geek culture artifacts. His idea was to create a website in which collectors of all sorts of things could come together to share their various interests. It's like a virtual "show and tell" where you get to post images of the treasures in your collection for likes and comments from other collectors while you do the same. The site combines aspects of  eBay and Facebook with a buy, sell and trade function promised to go live in September.

Spurlock hones his pitch and delivers it to a variety of investors, one of which agrees to buy 10% of the company for $500,000. As Spurlock says on camera, "that just happened." The result is that Clect is now up and running and waiting for collectors to get involved and make the site grow and develop.

I registered as a Clect member the morning after I saw the show. The site is easy to navigate and user friendly. The idea is simple and cool. Each collector creates various "Cards" which are images of individual items in his or her collection. You identify what the item is and tell a little bit about it and then post it into a "Pack" that you also create. Your Pack contains Cards of a similar nature. For instance, I've created two Packs, one for my pulp magazines, the other for my men's adventure magazines. I have followers and likes already and I plan to continue to add to my Packs and create others as time goes by. Also, once the buy-sell-trade function goes live, I hope I can make some deals with fellow collectors.

Clect is a great idea that deserves support from all collectors of geek/nerd material in order to succeed. It doesn't cost you a dime to join and you have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something that may eventually turn out to be really big.

Go to Clect.com and check out my Packs. Sign up while you're there and join in the fun. Tell 'em I sent you!