Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
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Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#2Soon after that I sent Andres the link, and we started throwing around ideas for startup companies. In the spring of 2006 I got a phone call from Andres. He was having trouble finding a low temperature capacitor for his experiment and suggested that we build a database of electronic parts and make it easily searchable on the web.
I love seeing successful YC startups that are outside of the fairly insular "startups serving startups and other stuff startup people are interested in" space.
There's so many verticals out there that have passionate users that are being under-served by today's technology. It might be less sexy from a TechCrunch perspective, but I have the sense that's where a good amount of the lucrative business opportunities are going to be for this next era.
We don't need "a better Twitter", "the next Google", or to be "as big as Facebook". But we do need to bring the power of these products to more and more people and markets.
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#3I was wondering what happened to these guys - I was watching a YouTube video this weekend of PG speaking at a conference circa 2008 and he spend a good deal of time talking about Octopart and their business model...
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#4Its funny how often successful products and services are just obvious modifications of pre-existing ones. Correct me if Im wrong but this sounds like the Google of electronic parts.
Thats not to downplay the genius or ingenuity of these companies by any means--in fact, if anything, its a compliment to their observational skills. Still, funny how it tends to be the obvious ideas which prove the most successful. Bravo
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#5Soon after that I sent Andres the link, and we started throwing around ideas for startup companies. In the spring of 2006 I got a phone call from Andres. He was having trouble finding a low temperature capacitor for his experiment and suggested that we build a database of electronic parts and make it easily searchable on the web. I love seeing successful YC startups that are outside of the fairly insular "startups se…
Lately, the internet has been calling that 'selling shovels' in reference to the gold rush days. Arguably, the guys selling tools to the miners were much better off than the miners themselves. Levi Strauss did pretty good business selling blue jeans.
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#6Its funny how often successful products and services are just obvious modifications of pre-existing ones. Correct me if Im wrong but this sounds like the Google of electronic parts. Thats not to downplay the genius or ingenuity of these companies by any means--in fact, if anything, its a compliment to their observational skills. Still, funny how it tends to be the obvious ideas which prove the most successful. Bravo
Parametric search is a very different problem from text search. It's nothing like the Google of electronic parts.
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#7Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#8As a Computer Engineering student, Octopart is defiantly one of nicest sites for buying parts or just looking for data sheets. I actually wasn't aware it was a YC company, but it makes sense!
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#9Its funny how often successful products and services are just obvious modifications of pre-existing ones. Correct me if Im wrong but this sounds like the Google of electronic parts. Thats not to downplay the genius or ingenuity of these companies by any means--in fact, if anything, its a compliment to their observational skills. Still, funny how it tends to be the obvious ideas which prove the most successful. Bravo
Parametric search is a very different problem from text search. It's nothing like the Google of electronic parts.
Its described as a consolidated search engine so i dont think its fair to say that its "nothing" like Google. Different problems though, you're absolutely right. I suppose I was generalizing but I think you see my point.
Re: Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month
#10Soon after that I sent Andres the link, and we started throwing around ideas for startup companies. In the spring of 2006 I got a phone call from Andres. He was having trouble finding a low temperature capacitor for his experiment and suggested that we build a database of electronic parts and make it easily searchable on the web. I love seeing successful YC startups that are outside of the fairly insular "startups se…
Why is it?
Is this mostly a social issue , i.e. sexiness of techcrunch like startups ?
Or is it an information problem, i.e. because it's hard for software engineers to come across worthy problems from other domains , that they have the ability to solve ?
Or is is something else ?