11–20 of 55 posts
I can't even begin to say how awesome octopart seemed when I first discovered it. Even today, when I go looking for a part I find myself stopping and not believing how awesome this is.
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.
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?
I've been a hardware hacker since I could walk. Finding and actually obtaining any parts at all in the 80's was excruciating. Even in the bad old days of the web, datasheets and even pricelists seemed to be the locus of some very unseemly rent-seeking activity. I can't even begin to say how awesome octopart seemed when I first discovered it. Even today, when I go looking for a part I find myself stopping and not beli…
I once made the mistake of paying $10 to subscribe to a datasheet web site because they seemed to have the full tech specs (i.e. register layouts) of an IC I was reverse engineering (see http://myhd.sourceforge.net/). It turned out to be the same marketing materials I had downloaded from the chip vendor's web site.
Octopart is like the million-dollar part spec databases that electronics manufacturers buy just to have available in their design software, but for free.
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.
Octopart was the first company that came to mind when I thought about writing Startups Open Sourced . Having not heard about them for a while, I wanted to know what they were up to and writing a book about it was a good excuse to talk to the founders firsthand. Here's an interesting part about their decision to drop out of the PhD program at UC Berkeley to do Octopart: Q: When did you decide to drop out? We wrote the…
Octopart was the first company that came to mind when I thought about writing Startups Open Sourced . Having not heard about them for a while, I wanted to know what they were up to and writing a book about it was a good excuse to talk to the founders firsthand. Here's an interesting part about their decision to drop out of the PhD program at UC Berkeley to do Octopart: Q: When did you decide to drop out? We wrote the…
He worked on Octopart in Antarctica? That is pretty awesome.
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.
Their search system is unequaled in any of the electronics parts sites I've used (Mouser, Digikey). That probably qualifies as a technical barrier.
I'd be guessing the partname->vendor price matching thing is non-trivial (because I bet the vendors all use different names and product codes). But it's not that hard.
The search itself is something that could be replicated fairly easily by someone who knew what they are doing.
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?