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Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

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Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#41

Post by pg »

kerryfalk wrote: post #40
pg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nowhere I say that "starting a company is the best thing in the world to do." I describe it as an efficient but intrinsically painful way to solve the money problem. "Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundament…

I haven't read anywhere that you have said that, but would you agree that starting a company was the best thing in the world for you to do? My network of company founders is much smaller than yours but I think if I were to ask them if starting their company was one of the best things they ever did, and I know it to be true for myself, they most certainly wouldn't say no. I'm guessing that's also probably true of the…

You mean as more than a way of making money? It depends on the type of person you are, and what your ambitions are. If you're (a) the right sort of person to start your own company, and (b) your ambitions in life would be best realized in the form of a company, then yes. So e.g. Steve Jobs clearly has (a) and as far as I can tell has (b), so for him starting a company was in itself a good thing to do.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#42

Post by dabent »

pg wrote: post #39
mb21 wrote: post #22

seriously not trying to be a downer, but doesn't this smack of starting a company just to start a company? they all took $0 in salary in 2008, I wonder if they are making live-able wages now in 2011. They took on their first employee and maybe had to again cut their salaries to afford it? YC worries me that it convinces everyone to start a company rather than go to school, work for another company as an employee or f…

There's nowhere I say that "starting a company is the best thing in the world to do." I describe it as an efficient but intrinsically painful way to solve the money problem. "Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundament…

"Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years."

Maybe it's a matter of how pain is perceived. I think I'd rather do 10 5-year stints at startups than endure that sort of pain. Nothing against post office personnel, but I've been in government-like operations before and much prefer startups or earlier stage companies I've worked for.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#43

Post by pg »

nl wrote: post #13

I'm kinda surprised this got YC funding. I meant it's a good idea, but ultimately it's an affiliate marketing play right? The main barrier to entry is getting good SEO (and I guess becoming known as a direct source) - there doesn't seem to be huge technical barriers. Affiliate plays can be highly profitable, but I never thought that they were all that attractive to investors.

That's what it is initially, but they're not done yet.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#44

Post by mb21 »

pg wrote: post #39
mb21 wrote: post #22

seriously not trying to be a downer, but doesn't this smack of starting a company just to start a company? they all took $0 in salary in 2008, I wonder if they are making live-able wages now in 2011. They took on their first employee and maybe had to again cut their salaries to afford it? YC worries me that it convinces everyone to start a company rather than go to school, work for another company as an employee or f…

There's nowhere I say that "starting a company is the best thing in the world to do." I describe it as an efficient but intrinsically painful way to solve the money problem. "Imagine the stress of working for the Post Office for fifty years. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four years. You do tend to get a certain bulk discount if you buy the economy-size pain, but you can't evade the fundament…

sorry - I knew I'd read an article about enticing people to leave school and associated it to YC. It was actually Peter Thiel: http://www.dawnmontgomerypresents.com/?p=2104 Now, having said that, there does seem to be a lot of pressure to go be an entrepreneur when the chances for success are still extremely small (depending on how you define success of course). success != happiness however and I agree that there are a lot of people out there that will grow immensely if they go take these chances.

I would much rather people go take a chance starting a company than go into finance - that's my personal bias.

Thank you for responding to my post and clarifying.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#45

Post by kerryfalk »

pg wrote: post #41
kerryfalk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read anywhere that you have said that, but would you agree that starting a company was the best thing in the world for you to do? My network of company founders is much smaller than yours but I think if I were to ask them if starting their company was one of the best things they ever did, and I know it to be true for myself, they most certainly wouldn't say no. I'm guessing that's also probably true of the…

You mean as more than a way of making money? It depends on the type of person you are, and what your ambitions are. If you're (a) the right sort of person to start your own company, and (b) your ambitions in life would be best realized in the form of a company, then yes. So e.g. Steve Jobs clearly has (a) and as far as I can tell has (b), so for him starting a company was in itself a good thing to do.

Yes, I did mean as more than a way of making money. You've stated that you did in fact start Viaweb to get rich. I know a few other founders that also started companies as an attempt to get rich (I am among them) and continue to chase more. But if I were to ask those same people, whether their companies earned them wealth or not if starting their company was one of the best things they ever did I doubt that the money (or lack thereof) would be much of a factor. Realizing other ambitions (b) is a much, much greater factor.

I'm curious now though. The YC application tries to screen for (a) but doesn't test for (b). Or at least, I didn't recognize that to be the case. Why is that? Is it not just as important? I would think so as I think it's realizing those ambitions that seem to keep people going and provide them with the relentless focus on winning. Or am I wrong and you've designed the application to screen for that as well?

Why a founder will continue to push seems as important as the ability to continue to push.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#46

Post by ChuckMcM »

mb21 wrote: post #36
ekidd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$12,000/month after taxes is $144,000/year for a single founder company. U.S. median family income was $45,018/year before taxes in 2003. Even for programmers working in Silicon Valley, $144,000/year after taxes is pretty decent. For comparison purposes, if you sold your company for $3.6 million, invested the money at 4% above inflation, and lived off the real interest, you'd earn $144,000/year. Now, that's clearly n…

yes - typo. $1,000/month or 12k/year is not livable in the US. Thanks for pointing this out. I actually did reread the post, but pre-coffee.

$1,000/month is great beer money. How much work goes into day to day operations?

One of the things to keep in mind that if something 'only' makes $1,000/month but only takes two or three days out of your time a month its "effectively" paying you $15K - $20K/month because you have those other days to do something else. People who set up linkbait pages (I'm looking at you content farms) which bring in 4x their operating cost just replicate the crap out of them.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#47

Post by colindowlingq »

Congratulations to the team. It is always worth celebrating when perseverance triumphs.

I was somewhat critical of Octopart when TechCrunch first wrote about the company years ago. My opinion was that there were already a number of similar sites that boasted the same features but (at the time) had MORE distributor listings. This continues to be the case.

In my opinion, if Octopart is interested in massively increasing usage then they should find a way to market to the enterprise side of things and not just hobbyists. Most all of the buyers I speak to on a daily basis (and the buyers employeed at our semiconductor distribution company) use OEMSTrade or Find Chips dozens (if not hundreds) of times every day. Furthermore, there are still a number of distributors that are not published by these two sites (Samtec, for example) that are increasing their footprint in the CM community. One place for differentiation - and a chance to "win" the sector - can come from adding some of these lesser known yet very important distributors to the network.

Regardless, congratulations on the hard-earned success. Best of luck in the future.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#48

Post by staunch »

sam wrote: post #20
staunch wrote: post #10

There are only like 4 companies that sell these products. Why would those companies bother giving Octopart a referral fee? It's not like Octopart is going to remove their listing if they don't pay up, that would hurt them more than the companies. What am I missing?

We're listing about 65 distributors right now. Early on we did remove listings from distributors who didn't want to pay. Usually they would call back the next day to make a deal. Sometimes it took longer. From what they tell me now, we're providing a good return on investment.

Ah cool. Good to hear. Hoping you guys continue to do well.

Re: Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

#50

Post by Hisoka »

What's Octopart's backup strategy if Google somehow punishes their site in their next algorithm change (ala so many other innocent sites during the Panda Update)? I bet 80% of the traffic comes from search engines. If those 80% leave, it's game over in terms of revenue and partnerships.

I think Octopart should somehow develop a strategy for returning visitors that doesn't depend on search engines.

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