281–288 of 288 posts
If there was one line to write what you thought: Brightwork: A bit toyey Gresham Dollar: Mad Author Investments: Fairly dull WedWell: Boring Cadwolf: Could be used in VR TruSert: Ok Eat My Dust: TF Tiz.com: Interesting Brodlist: Fantasy Wanderlust: Really. Probably the unicorn so far. Pikii: Ok Jury Board: No idea Pinboard: Why? Utiliz: Ok Feynman Nano: Best AutoMicroFarm: Cute Krewe: Doesn't fit in Hacksplaining: Wh…
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But to be a unicorn you have to be in a billion dollar market. How many of the start-ups listed can say that?
It doesn't work that way. Brodlist is not in its final market, for example -- it's in its first market.
This probably again leads back to a strong team picking a good market (or having a better/unique view on how 'their' market will grow/progress).
Edit: This may have come across as too terse to pass the not-just-civil-but-nice test so I've added more explanation to my choices I wasn't following the initial wave of submissions so here's my fresh-eyes take on the finalists. I'd particularly like to see other people's assessments of the whole field (vs individual submissions) Not Ambitious Enough: These are in competitive spaces -- even if they delivered on their…
+1 on the problem with a law startup. A couple of years ago I went to some law firms and asked about their need for search over all their documents. They weren't really interested in it as they can bill out s librarian at $125/hR while paying them $45/hr. So they actually make money on this. That isn't to say this can change in the future but until then it is a very hard market to crack. Oh and lawyers are cheap, man…
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It doesn't work that way. Brodlist is not in its final market, for example -- it's in its first market.
I agree, it isn't always so obvious, but you need to be able to expand into larger markets or at least have your eye on larger markets. I think that is a challenge to get across in the application. This probably again leads back to a strong team picking a good market (or having a better/unique view on how 'their' market will grow/progress).
So, using our imagination, what would happen if someone had the Tesla for databases? Something so much better that it would do for databases what Page Rank did to all those search engines in the 1990's -- obviate them. Could you imagine that taking off and eating a large portion of the market?
OK, now let's take a random situation: You have a business that makes widgets. You have customers, suppliers, parts, etc. Do you store all that information in a Word document as text? Of course not. You either have a spreadsheet or database, right? Text is great for a novel or a poem... but not for data. That would be crazy. But imagine trying to use search in Word to find the right part. It wouldn't be fun.
Currently, the web is still a big collection of text documents. What is not clear to us right now because we're knee-deep in it is is how deeply sub-optimal that is. The number of people going to the Google homepage is declining because people are now just going directly to the database that represents what they're looking for. Looking to buy a home? You go to Zillow or Trulia and query their database. People want data, not text. 95%, almost all, of the web wants to be data. It's instant, discrete, and truly searchable.
Now imagine if that company mentioned before gains that significant market share. It's all RESTful. The authentication/API(language) is common across all of these databases, so that they can actually appear as one giant database to each user. Do you see? You can look at individual databases or have it appear as one large database of everything. That's the fate of the next web. The next Google won't be better text search but instead something completely different: it will be data search: instant, discrete, and truly searchable. And the web will become essentially a massive database.
Google knows this and has been working hard to get there, but they're missing the technology to do it. It's my honest opinion that Brodlist has the technology they're missing. Does it have the team? I don't know. Every single big hit was made by a college student/dropout without experience: Experience reassures, it doesn't predict. We entered this contest for fun, not because we thought we had investor-appropriate answers for every question -- and certainly not to get grandiose on "what could be". My point isn't that we can do this, but that its absence in the application is not indicative that it's absent in general.
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I agree, it isn't always so obvious, but you need to be able to expand into larger markets or at least have your eye on larger markets. I think that is a challenge to get across in the application. This probably again leads back to a strong team picking a good market (or having a better/unique view on how 'their' market will grow/progress).
Since no one is around in this thread anymore but you and me, I'll talk about this. I specifically didn't want to talk about it in my application; I felt (rightly) that it smacked of being too dreamy. Just describing our existing technology meant many of the comments were already along the lines of 'fantasy' and 'too ambitious'. And that was for what we're using today, what our first customer is using. One person ref…
I wasn't responding to your application in either of the previous points. Now that I hear what you're doing I hope you never to offense to my previous comments.
Now, my 2cents about your database.
In some ways, Google IS the database you are referring to, just that it is a secondary repository of that information (don't ignore Google's Cached results, etc).
Google can do an amazing amount of slicing and dicing on metadata too.
I STILL think you have something. It doesn't have to be The Database for all the Internet, but it may be.
You sound like a very smart guy, so I'm assuming you've done the homework and know what niche you can serve first which can help you grow.
On that note :) I too didn't get too deep in the larger opportunity for my product, but in the next few weeks (probably early next month) I'll start taking data from a group of open data sensors. Would that be a good fit for broadlist? I'll drop you an email in a couple of weeks and see where you're at.
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If people don't trust their GD to convert to USD in 30 days, the only way for them to get rid of it is to spend it. Who would accept it (at par value) under such circumstances?
Who would accept it (at par value) under such circumstances? Right. So, during the initial phase, all GD will be guaranteed to convert to USD when it expires because we'll literally have enough USD in our reserves. During this first phase, we will sign merchants to contracts that require them to accept GD at par with USD (i.e. one price) so a dollar is a dollar. If there are people who happen to be paranoid about Gre…
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+1 on the problem with a law startup. A couple of years ago I went to some law firms and asked about their need for search over all their documents. They weren't really interested in it as they can bill out s librarian at $125/hR while paying them $45/hr. So they actually make money on this. That isn't to say this can change in the future but until then it is a very hard market to crack. Oh and lawyers are cheap, man…
Huh. Can't they just charge a fixed fee per search regardless of how it is done. The fact they can make a mark-up already implies yes.
Granted this sounds like a license to print money and shows that the legal profession isn't as cut and dried as say building a bridge. But the reason you are going to a law firm is because something weird showed up and you need it fixed as there is a lot to lose.
Notice I said "weird". There's plenty of room in this space for routine contracts. But that's rapidly going to zero profitablity with canned downloadable forms.