no result for the query 'sex' , what more should I expect from it. It should show me some flash animations over that!
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
#42no result for the query 'sex' , what more should I expect from it. It should show me some flash animations over that!
look for body parts ;)
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Validated by players that are very likely to crush any start-up into oblivion. I wouldn't be too excited ;).
I had this happen to me with my last startup right around the time we were dealing with some angel investors. Every single of one of them called me to say "Well, Microsoft is going to be doing this now, we don't want to throw our money away." It's one thing to have market validation by companies you could theoretically catch up to; it's an entirely different beast to try to compete with Google or Microsoft.
Every single of one of them called me to say "Well, Microsoft is going to be doing this now, we don't want to throw our money away."
That thumping sound you just heard is a bunch of diehard Apple shareholders -- the ones who bought on Steve Jobs' first day and held on -- falling off their chairs in helpless laughter.
But I feel for you: I'm sure it's nigh-impossible to look your potential investors in the eye and tell them that they don't understand how business works. I'm sure they're all so focused on becoming the number-one player in a small and obscure market that they ignore the advantages of being the second (or third, or twelfth) player in a large and buzzing market.
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#44And we are in process of a re-design. I have to wonder if I should keep working on it...
You might at least want to get an original logo. I like bluebison.net as much as the next guy, but you should probably have something original if you're going to have a bunch of traffic.
We got permission from bluebison.net and she even offered to make a custom logo for us, but we're waiting to see if the idea is even worth investing money into at this point. We bought a logo off ebay (not suggested) that's on our wiki page of logos: http://mediawombat.com/wiki/index.php/Logos
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had this happen to me with my last startup right around the time we were dealing with some angel investors. Every single of one of them called me to say "Well, Microsoft is going to be doing this now, we don't want to throw our money away." It's one thing to have market validation by companies you could theoretically catch up to; it's an entirely different beast to try to compete with Google or Microsoft.
Every single of one of them called me to say "Well, Microsoft is going to be doing this now, we don't want to throw our money away." That thumping sound you just heard is a bunch of diehard Apple shareholders -- the ones who bought on Steve Jobs' first day and held on -- falling off their chairs in helpless laughter. But I feel for you: I'm sure it's nigh-impossible to look your potential investors in the eye and tel…
Well, frankly it worked out for the better that the Angels shied away. My startup was too ambitious, and there wasn't enough focus in the product, we were focusing too broadly.
Someone mentioned in another comment that startups should be more agile than the big corps, and they were absolutely right. In the vein of 37signals, we should have been focusing on one problem instead of a class of problems.
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#46wow 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 ;).
I thought the same thing in 2003, when me and one of my current cofounders decided to build an AOL IM firewall. Then AOL announced they were going to package AIM and offer it to companies with access control and management, and we said "ok we're doomed".
AOL mothballed the project, and the leading AIM firewall companies now make mid-high 8 digits.
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#47John Gruber of Daring Fireball (http://daringfireball.net) grumbled today about the closed nature of Adobe/Google/Yahoo's methodology on this one. Which means there's surely an opportunity to appeal to everyone who prefers openness in their web--and that's a lot of people. Go for it.
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#48Figure out the sort of thing that Google and Yahoo don't or won't do, and do that.
Exactly. There has to be an approach or angle on this data that Google isn't doing -- maybe they wouldn't think to do it, or maybe they'd just find it anathema.
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#49That totally sucks for you.
How much money/time did you sink into this, and do you have investors yet?
Re: We've been working really hard on our startup and now this
#50Hi 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…
You were denied funding? "The VC group"? How many times were you told no by how many investors? The way you said it makes it look like you talked to 1 firm and then stopped. Fundraising is a process-- not a single ask. Expect to have 1 person pitching, largely full-time, for 3-9 months to tons of different investors. But to be honest-- a VC firm isn't going to touch a company with no traction except in the rare event that the founders have an unusual amount of credibility. You'd really be better off with angels. Though (on the surface), I don't think you'll get buyoff from ANY investors unless you can prove there's a business there. In your shoes I wouldn't talk to investors until I had a proven growth rate and 10-20k uniques per day.
I'm going to disagree with the people saying, "oooh, market validation". This validates that Google wants to index more stuff and Flash builders want to get indexed. It doesn't validate that users would go to a vertical flash search engine.
When Google does something in the search game, they are generally going to win. Without the exit strategy of selling to them, you are left with building your own search brand (supported by ads). Are there enough people who are passionate about finding Flash stuff that they'd rather use your (better) flash search engine over an integrated experience at Google?