How do you justify removing gmail ads and replacing them with your social addon? Isn't google going to be slightly pissed?
10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may look like that today, but when you pitch investors you sell them on the team, the market and the vision. You paint a compelling picture of how you get from where you are today to somewhere incredibly exciting.
what did you say to pg et al when they asked, "what if google just does this themselves"?
That's one of the canonical dumb investor questions. We try not to ask those. Google could blow most startups out of the water if they chose to focus on building exactly the same thing. What protects startups is that in practice big competitors can only focus on a limited number of things at once.
User indifference is a much, much greater danger for startups than competitors, big or small. So we advise startups to focus on that. What's going to kill you is the Back button, not Google.
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#43I like the idea and love to see it working for a long time, but I totally see GMAIL doing something like this in the future or hopefully buying you out...
They could obviously make it happen for other platforms and the API could be monetized :)
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#44That's not a startup, it's a Gmail feature. Amazes me what gets financing nowadays...
It may look like that today, but when you pitch investors you sell them on the team, the market and the vision. You paint a compelling picture of how you get from where you are today to somewhere incredibly exciting.
I hate how well-designed your site is!
Congratulations and good luck!
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to clarify: I have nothing against you and your team. Good luck to you and kudos! It's just that I remember a time when starting a business meant creating a product, finding a market and people in that market willing to pay for your product. I completely fail to see any of that in your case. But maybe building a feature for an existing product of a company in the idea of selling to that company IS a viable busin…
We think we have all three of those things. We do have plans for features that we think people will be happy to charge for. Right now, we're not ready to talk too much about those features, but we think there is real pain we can remove. We feel validated by the fact that people love the features we have right now so much that many have asked if they can pay for them. Free is a strategy. We'll let you know how it work…
Right on. And I am looking forward to what you do next.
Having said that though, what you have right now is a "nice to have" and it excites everyone for the soft value it adds. But I wonder if the current product can pass the Penny Gap. I know you don't think its meant to, but I am really not sure if the current users will be the ones who would pay for whatever it is that you will build in the future. Xobni is a good example of it. Dropbox on the other end is a great example of a free strategy that sold users on the same product that they expected users would pay for. Basically with a strategy where you acquire a lot of free users thinking they will pay for what they have not seen as yet, can be a dangerous one.
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#46I like the idea and love to see it working for a long time, but I totally see GMAIL doing something like this in the future or hopefully buying you out...
Google could do pretty much anything they desire in the mysterious future.
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
what did you say to pg et al when they asked, "what if google just does this themselves"?
That's one of the canonical dumb investor questions. We try not to ask those. Google could blow most startups out of the water if they chose to focus on building exactly the same thing. What protects startups is that in practice big competitors can only focus on a limited number of things at once. User indifference is a much, much greater danger for startups than competitors, big or small. So we advise startups to fo…
Awesome point and I couldn't agree more. As usual your articulation of it is better than anything else I have read before.
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate on why you wouldn't care? A competitor is a competitor, no matter if they're an elephant that can make waves, or a cheetah that can pivot on the dime. Shouldn't the mantra be to focus more on what your customers want/need rather than worry about threats from other companies?
because at the stage we invest at, we assume the idea is inevitably going to change so we're really looking at how strong the founders are. that's why it doesn't matter to us if google could 'do it themselves' or if there's competition from other startups, since we're funding the team not the idea.
Could you elaborate about the qualities that you look for in a founding team?
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
You guys seem really positive. How do you stay positive in the face of so much negativity that must come your way? This post is one example, but I assume there's a lot more where that came from.
Positivity is something I consciously work on. 1. If at every point you're taking what you believe to be approximately right decisions, given all the information you have at that time, then you can ban regrets from your mind. This is a good frame of mind to be in: you can focus on the future. The corollary is to arm yourself with information. For more on this, and more besides, see: http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/30/ho…
Rahul, awesome reply. Kudos to your team for a well executed product.
I am curious to know if you are using Rapleaf to get social profiles or if you are doing it yourself (which is tough/only partially possible). If you are using Rapleaf, aren't you loosing money with every lookup?
Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt
#50To the founders: Congrats and thanks for sharing your reflections with us. Is there a Rapportive API in the works? I would love to integrate Rapportive into some apps I'm currently working on instead of plugging into the Gmail sidebar.
Hey Fred, thanks for your kind words. Yes, there is a Rapportive API. It doesn't allow for Rapportive to go inside other applications, but it does allow folks to embed their own applications inside Rapportive. Would that be useful at all to you? For example, MailChimp recently released an integration which allows Rapportive users to see how the people who email them interact with their email newsletters. Checkout htt…
I'd second that request. It would be great if I could utilize the Rapportive engine to show all the juicy details you guys can grab on someone based on their email, within my app.