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Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#41

Post by wanorris »

shawndrost wrote: post #40
cperciva wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that I'm not aiming for the entire online backup market. I'm aiming for a small (but growing) corner of the market: people who care about security. Really, I'm just playing to my own strengths here -- I can't compete in the "shiny GUI" market, but security is something I'm really good at.

All the same, I'd suggest, for instance, omitting the phrase "the hands of the US government". It's generally found in the context of conversations I don't want to be a part of, and the people that it appeals to will substitute it for "anyone that might want to steal it".

Personally, I'm not worried at all about the U.S. government getting at my stuff. But a company working on security sufficient to keep the NSA from reading my mail has more security than I'll ever need, which is reassuring.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#42

Post by Poleris »

shafqat wrote: post #22

Short pitch: NewsCred brings you all the world's most credible news in one place. Longer pitch: Do you trust the news? How credible are the journalists and sources you turn to each day? NewsCred is a digital newspaper bringing you all the world's credible news, from your favorite sources, in one place. Interested in our Alpha? Drop me a line at shafqat[at]newscred.com. http://www.newscred.com

I like the fonts you used (for the logo on top). What are they?

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#43

Post by tstegart »

Alex3917 wrote: post #12

A service that allows you to geotag things for your municipal government to fix: pot holes, poison ivy, graffiti, car accidents, dangerous trees, etc. This automatically creates a to-do list online for everyone to see, and lets people with an @town.state.gov email address check items off as they get done. Things like downed power wires would be submitted the same way and then automatically routed to the relevant auth…

i think this is a great idea. Think of a mix between Digg and a Google maps mash-up. Each town or city has its own area in google maps highlighted. You can make icons for each problem that signify what it is, like a pothole, (small, medium, giant meteor crater sizes), trees, problems with power or water, missing signs, etc. People can add them where the problems are. Then people can vote on what they'd really like to see fixed the soonest by clicking on the icon. It really connects people to their government. If people invest the time to point out a problem, they're going to be really annoyed if it doesn't get fixed, and care more about who in government is not getting it done.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#44

Post by LPTS »

jkent wrote: post #39
cperciva wrote: post #14

Six word pitch for tarsnap ( http://www.tarsnap.com ): Online backups for the truly paranoid. Longer version: Security is hard. Governments and organized crime are getting increasingly involved in identity theft and corporate espionage. Tarsnap is a backup system designed from the ground up to keep your data out of the hands of the US government (and anyone else who might want to steal it).

Like the pitch but it reads - Backups for Criminals - to me. Isn't it possible to encrypt already and then backup?

What's wrong with serving criminals? Their money is good.

To me it reads more like backups for the nonconformists that are singled out by an american mindset eager to declare war on anything unexpected.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#46

Post by cperciva »

jkent wrote: post #39
cperciva wrote: post #14

Six word pitch for tarsnap ( http://www.tarsnap.com ): Online backups for the truly paranoid. Longer version: Security is hard. Governments and organized crime are getting increasingly involved in identity theft and corporate espionage. Tarsnap is a backup system designed from the ground up to keep your data out of the hands of the US government (and anyone else who might want to steal it).

Like the pitch but it reads - Backups for Criminals - to me. Isn't it possible to encrypt already and then backup?

Backups for Criminals

Is Airbus a company of criminals? They have a perfectly good reason for wanting to keep their data out of the hands of the US government: Every time the US government gets some information about Airbus, Boeing has it the next day.

Sadly, industrial espionage is something which many governments are actively involved in; wanting to make sure that your foreign competitors don't have access to your trade secrets does not make you a criminal.

Isn't it possible to encrypt already and then backup?

Yes, but if you do that, you lose the benefits of snapshotting (performance of incremental backups, convenience of full backups).

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#47

Post by cousin_it »

http://openphotovr.org - 3D photo albums.

I didn't invent this pitch myself - it's how other people tend to describe my project. Strangely, all three words are (strictly speaking) false. There's no 3D, only image interpolation. The project is not limited to photographs. And it has no reified concept of "album". A truthful pitch would sound like "images connected by fluid transitions", pretty boring.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#48

Post by davidw »

cperciva wrote: post #26
davidw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be a bit contrarian and say it still needs more work. I think - perhaps the business people you are targetting find themselves nodding when you say "truly paranoid", and "out of the hands of the US government", but... I think you're walking a fine line, where some may look and say "nah, I'm not one of those guys". You'd probably have to go around asking people to get an idea that's more than just guesswork.

Keep in mind that I'm not aiming for the entire online backup market. I'm aiming for a small (but growing) corner of the market: people who care about security. Really, I'm just playing to my own strengths here -- I can't compete in the "shiny GUI" market, but security is something I'm really good at.

I don't know... I'm not a marketing guy, but I think you could still find a way to play up the high quality of your security without looking a bit... "fringe". The "truly paranoid" bit isn't so bad if you combine it with a different second phrase. However, something else might be even better at evoking a "yeah, I need that" response in more people. To me there's also a bit of contrast: in my mind, the "truly paranoid" aren't going to trust anyone else to do their backups anyway.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#49

Post by jluedke »

Snarfbot, a new way to search. It allows you to easily compare results from multiple search engines at once without altering or reinterpreting the results. Create custom search tabs and tab groups that you can share with your friends and colleagues.

http://www.snarfbot.com in early alpha, but mostly works :)

Still working on the pitch... Not sure how to word the last line, it doesn't make much sense until you have used the site which is likely a bad thing. I am open to suggestions...

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#50

Post by shafqat »

Poleris wrote: post #42
shafqat wrote: post #22

Short pitch: NewsCred brings you all the world's most credible news in one place. Longer pitch: Do you trust the news? How credible are the journalists and sources you turn to each day? NewsCred is a digital newspaper bringing you all the world's credible news, from your favorite sources, in one place. Interested in our Alpha? Drop me a line at shafqat[at]newscred.com. http://www.newscred.com

I like the fonts you used (for the logo on top). What are they?

I'll have to ask my cofounder - we spent a lot of time debating the font, but I never asked for the name. Glad you liked it.
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