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We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

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Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#11
post #2

And we are in process of a re-design. I have to wonder if I should keep working on it...

Keep going. You don't know what opportunities lie ahead . We make our own "luck" by creating opportunities for "luck" to happen. So until their is a definite reason to stop (such as no more cash), keep going and see what happens.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#12
Why not contact Google and Yahoo and see if they are interested in acquiring you? It couldn't hurt.

Also this is perhaps the downside of waiting too long to launch. Can you rescope this thing and release it sooner? Could you release a flimsy version 1 right now and then improve it and flesh it out over the next few months? Don't worry about solving technological problems that you don't have yet. Solve them when you have them.

I realize Twitter might sound like a counter-example to this line of thinking. But think about it. Imagine if Twitter had not released and was still working on their perfect architecture. Would they even know what the real problems were going to be? They might have squandered their time on non-problems. Plus, no one would know or care about them. So in retrospect, releasing their flimsy app was probably the best thing that they did.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#13
post #7

Consider licensing your search tech to companies not blessed by Adobe? (I.e., other than Google / Yahoo!) I know my company would be interested.

Exactly. Figure out the sort of thing that Google and Yahoo don't or won't do, and do that.

You can certainly leverage their marketing. For the next couple of months, the Flash universe is going to be filled with discussions of search. Google and Yahoo are going to do a bunch of marketing, and a bunch of market research, all of which you don't have to pay for. Just monitor some Flash-user forums, watch the users rave and/or complain about the new tools, and see if a niche market presents itself.

Meanwhile: Launch. Get something out there you can point to.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#14
post #8
post #7

Consider licensing your search tech to companies not blessed by Adobe? (I.e., other than Google / Yahoo!) I know my company would be interested.

Sure, we'd be very interested.

Congrats on the idea!

Now do the same for Silverlight and sell the company to msft.

btw: I like the part about Investors on you website :-)

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#15
Hi there. I'm the other founder of the site (Troy made the original post on this thread) and I sent a "Hey, we're doing that too" email to the VP of Yahoo search and the VP of Google search this morning regarding SWF search. Still haven't heard anything back from them as of this post though. Also, we were denied VC funding earlier this year for this same project. Does anyone think that now is a good time to re-submit to the VC group and ask for a second chance while there's a buzz? :)

- Steve Webb ( http://mediawombat.com - http://badcheese.com )

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#16
post #6

wow your market just got validated by the major players - this is no reason to stop, you do however need to push forward on a specific niche - this can be seen a major set back or opportunity - likely there is a lot of buzz on this announcement. maybe you can great some adwords adds against the news story keywords and get folks that are excited about this server to try our your site first.

Validated by players that are very likely to crush any start-up into oblivion. I wouldn't be too excited ;).

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#17
post #2

And we are in process of a re-design. I have to wonder if I should keep working on it...

The cynic in me says your f'ed. You'll definitely have to repurpose because they have much too much inertia. Once flash search results start showing up in my google results, it'll be like, "oh, thats handy". I can't imagine myself using your site just for flash searches.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#18
I would license the technology. In my industry crawlers are required to perform a sweep and gather data. However, there is a large void in the flash crawling capabilities of various tools. Look for tools that crawl, index, data mine, whatever and see if there are opportunities to provide the flash crawling component through an API license of sorts.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#19
Shout to the world what you're working on right now. Now that the information is out there that what you're doing is worth doing, a lot of the media work is already done for you. Call tech mags and blogs and let them know you're already working on something that Adobe just announced, even if it's in beta.

And if you can, even show off the beta so that people and the media can quickly give you feedback, thus improving your site/software at a faster rate. Good luck.

Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this

#20
I wouldn't sweat it too much just yet. You don't know when/how Google and Yahoo will add this into their results, and until you launch, find customers, and start iterating, you don't know exactly where you'll end up yourself. You might find yourself not competing with Google head on after all.
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