David Vicente, Welcome to Arizona, on Ten Years to 1.3 Million Followers
David Vicente, co-founder, Welcome to Arizona. Beat: Arizona places, people, food, events and local business storytelling.
Who this is
David Vicente is the co-founder of Welcome to Arizona, which has grown to 1.3 million followers on Instagram and more than 500,000 on TikTok, making it one of the state’s largest local storytelling platforms. David Vicente and his brother started it while they were students at Arizona State University, and the original idea was not a media brand at all. David Vicente wanted a directory of Arizona businesses, something like the Yellow Pages, and chose Instagram only because neither brother knew how to build a website and Instagram was free. Within about a year the analytics pointed somewhere else, and the directory became photography.
In this Off Deadline conversation with Proof Publicity founder Melissa DiGianfilippo, David Vicente is blunt about the timeline: ten years, with the first 10,000 followers taking roughly two years. David Vicente says early success would have cost them the day-to-day skills of running a business. The brothers worked corporate jobs, came home around five or six, and worked in their in-house studio from eight to midnight, editing and pitching, for years. Welcome to Arizona is now past seven figures in revenue and David Vicente employs eight people.
The moment David Vicente names as the turning point is not a viral video. It is the first time a business, 3D Golf in the East Valley, asked what it would cost to be posted. The brothers had never charged anyone, looked at each other, and said 100 dollars. David Vicente says asking for money was the scary part, because taking it made the work serious. They celebrated with wings. David Vicente also talks about what a 1.3 million follower audience does to a small team when a political story breaks, the hate mail that arrives whether they cover it or not, and telling his immigrant parents about the business, whose first question was whether any of it was legal.
In their words
“It took about ten years for us to get to this point. A lot of people don’t get to see that.”
“At the time we weren’t charging. So me and my brother kind of looked at each other. It was like 100 dollars.”
“We were literally so nervous just asking someone for their money, because now it’s serious.”
“Their number one question was, is it legal?”
“We’ve covered it and we’ve got so much hate for certain posts. We didn’t cover certain things and we still got hate for not posting.”
“Our first 10,000 followers took us about two years. A lot of people expect 10,000 followers in their first month.”
What this means if you are pitching creator platforms, Proof’s take
Two things worth taking from this. First, Welcome to Arizona is a business with eight employees and seven figures of revenue, not a hobby account, so treat a pitch to David Vicente like a pitch to a publisher. Bring the story, the visuals and the budget conversation, in that order. Second, David Vicente became a credible source on Arizona rather than a fan page, which means a client that shows up there is being vouched for by an audience of 1.3 million. That is worth more than impressions, and it is why vetting matters on both sides.
Watch the full episode
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