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10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

blog.rapportive.com

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Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#71

Post by j-g-faustus »

dschobel wrote: post #55
pg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets financing is founders. And what smart founders do is launch as soon as they have anything usable. It's not the last thing they'll build. See part 8, and in particular the third paragraph: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html It makes me wince for HN to see so many people upvoting the parent. It's not just the meanness of it; it's that it's both mean and wrong. Surely at this point everyone is at least fami…

Part of the difficulty is convincing a strongly technical crowd that companies and products live or die for reasons other than technology. Unless they're solving crazy hard problems, a lot of engineering types are just going to be underwhelmed. Add in a lot of early success and that quickly turns to cynicism and frustration.

Speaking as one of the technical crowd, it is hard to adjust to the fact that all of your skills put together contributes only a few percent to the success of a product.

It is obviously true, but it still takes a while getting used to :)

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#72

Post by mwhuss »

mwhuss wrote: post #29
dpritchett wrote: post #4

Great PR for Heroku and Nezumi: If we were on a cheap VPS, we would have crumbled to pieces like Cobb's limbo in Inception. As we were on Heroku, we could simply increase the number of dynos. I still vividly remember when our traffic hit. I was away from my desk, so I reached for my iPhone and dialed us up to 20 dynos using Nezumi. A few seconds later, we had scaled.

Glad it helped you out! http://nezumiapp.com Here's some promo codes, first come first serve, US App store only: HELW6W9WM7TT LHYWXEF3MW7L 7PXPFAFT6EL7 MKXH39WWWXKL YKYT6H3KKP6E WMNNXL6NRH9L KLPAPYJRTLLM 3P6FW6NFNEAN T7J9A79HYKY3 63HJH7NTYXXR

And a few more for those late to the game

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9M3N36YFFXXR

FRMN3PXL777Y

HN6F3PNEPPK4

4RA47J33WHMF

HKYXTJY99RYF

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9YA3RMWJJYWX

NLY67WJ393WT

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#73

Post by ericd »

messel wrote: post #60
pg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets financing is founders. And what smart founders do is launch as soon as they have anything usable. It's not the last thing they'll build. See part 8, and in particular the third paragraph: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html It makes me wince for HN to see so many people upvoting the parent. It's not just the meanness of it; it's that it's both mean and wrong. Surely at this point everyone is at least fami…

Even if we immediately see how wrong the feature comment is, it's still likely many of us won't come up with anything as useful as Rapportive's "gmail feature". That's the real kicker. I fell in love with Rapportive the moment I installed it, but probably because I'm a regular blogger and glutton for info about people. I had no idea it had 10k users in 24 hours, that's Facebook like numbers. What I'm most surprised a…

The question is whether the connections to investors and the advice is worth it, not whether the investment itself is worth it. In most cases, it's probably a resounding yes.

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#74

Post by desigooner »

mwhuss wrote: post #72
mwhuss wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad it helped you out! http://nezumiapp.com Here's some promo codes, first come first serve, US App store only: HELW6W9WM7TT LHYWXEF3MW7L 7PXPFAFT6EL7 MKXH39WWWXKL YKYT6H3KKP6E WMNNXL6NRH9L KLPAPYJRTLLM 3P6FW6NFNEAN T7J9A79HYKY3 63HJH7NTYXXR

And a few more for those late to the game 6EA3K3EJMW4Y 9M3N36YFFXXR FRMN3PXL777Y HN6F3PNEPPK4 4RA47J33WHMF HKYXTJY99RYF N3A3HNN7YKMW 9YA3RMWJJYWX NLY67WJ393WT

thanks for the codes .. really appreciate the gesture!

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#75

Post by snsr »

mwhuss wrote: post #72
mwhuss wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad it helped you out! http://nezumiapp.com Here's some promo codes, first come first serve, US App store only: HELW6W9WM7TT LHYWXEF3MW7L 7PXPFAFT6EL7 MKXH39WWWXKL YKYT6H3KKP6E WMNNXL6NRH9L KLPAPYJRTLLM 3P6FW6NFNEAN T7J9A79HYKY3 63HJH7NTYXXR

And a few more for those late to the game 6EA3K3EJMW4Y 9M3N36YFFXXR FRMN3PXL777Y HN6F3PNEPPK4 4RA47J33WHMF HKYXTJY99RYF N3A3HNN7YKMW 9YA3RMWJJYWX NLY67WJ393WT

And a few more for those late to the game

Thank you!

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#76

Post by nedwin »

nickpp wrote: post #12

That's not a startup, it's a Gmail feature. Amazes me what gets financing nowadays...

When I first saw Divvyshot (YC09?) I thought that it was more of a feature than a startup. And I guess I was kind of right because Facebook eventually bought the company - the incredibly talented company led by Sam Odio.

I'm sure that if Facebook hadn't bought Divvyshot but had instead tried to replicate the feature set on their own that the company would still be in existence though maybe working on a different product.

The investment would still have been worthwhile in terms of YC - perhaps even more so because the founders had shown the ability to identify an opportunity and actually built it.

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#78

Post by bootload »

dschobel wrote: post #55
pg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets financing is founders. And what smart founders do is launch as soon as they have anything usable. It's not the last thing they'll build. See part 8, and in particular the third paragraph: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html It makes me wince for HN to see so many people upvoting the parent. It's not just the meanness of it; it's that it's both mean and wrong. Surely at this point everyone is at least fami…

Part of the difficulty is convincing a strongly technical crowd that companies and products live or die for reasons other than technology. Unless they're solving crazy hard problems, a lot of engineering types are just going to be underwhelmed. Add in a lot of early success and that quickly turns to cynicism and frustration.

"... Part of the difficulty is convincing a strongly technical crowd that companies and products live or die for reasons other than technology. ..."

That is a really good point but part of the entrepreneur bit is unlearning to a degree - tempering if you like - and thinking how can I convert technology into something users want. I see ample evidence of pure technologists viewing ideas without this frame of mind. Entrepreneurship is the union of the hacker mindset of building things and an eye on the business of selling - "make things that people want ... and will buy".

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#79

Post by bootload »

kvs wrote: post #69
pg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets financing is founders. And what smart founders do is launch as soon as they have anything usable. It's not the last thing they'll build. See part 8, and in particular the third paragraph: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html It makes me wince for HN to see so many people upvoting the parent. It's not just the meanness of it; it's that it's both mean and wrong. Surely at this point everyone is at least fami…

pg, if you don't mind me asking, how are they planning to make money?

"... how are they planning to make money? ..."

What kind of money Ramen? ~ http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html a steady stream of income & control offered by PRCM ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/prcmc.html or by making the technology and product so good, Google has no option but to buy the company?

Re: 10,000+ users in 24 hours & YC funding a few days later: lessons learnt

#80

Post by kvs »

bootload wrote: post #79
kvs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg, if you don't mind me asking, how are they planning to make money?

"... how are they planning to make money? ..." What kind of money Ramen? ~ http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html a steady stream of income & control offered by PRCM ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/prcmc.html or by making the technology and product so good, Google has no option but to buy the company?

Either. I ask because only the latter (PRCM) is the most obvious one to me.
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