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Startup School Radio: How Optimizely Knew It Was on to Something Big
- jak1192 11y agoReally been enjoying these podcasts. Very cool to hear these first-hand stories
- marktangotango 11y agoSerious question; what is the deal with the something-ly.com names? It just seems really odd and me-too-ish to my ear.
- timdorr 11y agoBecause of the .ly TLD. Many companies employed a play on words to have a single-word domain for any word ending in -ly. Bit.ly is probably the most well-known. The problem is that .ly is managed by Libya, and they tend to have restrictive laws and government practices that many people take issue with. So, many companies just got the -ly.com versions of their domains and made the switch.
- beambot 11y agoTo expand upon your comment.... those startups used something.ly domains when they were small and just starting out -- i.e. before they could afford to buy something-ly.com. Once they had traction and raised money, they purchased the proper domain. It's the same reason TheFacebook later dropped "The".
- xirdstl 11y agoAgreed. After the first few, they just sound too 'cutesy' to me.
- groby_b 11y agoCute-ly. Clearly you mean cutely.
- Eiriksmal 11y agoMr. Graham thinks it's not cool to have .ly anymore. It's an interesting means to date a tech company's founding in the Post-Web 2.0 era. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/601821633385398273 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/601821633385398273
- diego 11y agoI know companies that did the same thing, only they were not onto something big. Having customers pre-product is a good signal. I'm sure that the class of companies for which this happens have a much higher success rates than a typical startup. However, that's far from knowing you've hit something big. That's something you can only say in hindsight.
- tarr11 11y agoI wonder if they collected the check up front. Big difference there too...
- lubos 11y agoPeople who paid them up-front were basically companies they've done some business with before. It's good to work your network to get first customers but every startup can do that. It's just common sense. And nowhere in the article Optimizely claims this was how they knew they were onto "something big". So the title is misleading.
- loyalelectron 11y agoFair point on the title -- perhaps I should have left it at "on to something." Will keep in mind for next time.
- duncanawoods 11y agoThanks for these I will give it a listen. Even "on to something" is a click-bait title which HN guidelines say should be neutered. IMHO you don't need to force it, just be classy and straight-forward e.g. "YC Startup School Radio Ep. 3 - Optimizely & Lawn Love" or something.
- faithfone 11y agoWhen the guys at Optimizely asked for money upfront for their new software idea, were they already backed by YC?