5 ms·

My Startup (WindyCitizen) named one of Chicago's New Essentials

68 points by brandnewlow 17y ago

rms 17y ago
Congrats! No obligation for you to answer, but have you raised any funding yet? Would you be able to spend a lot of money to scale more rapidly or is going more slowly a better strategy for you?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Great question. Someone asked me about funding last night at the HN Chicago meetup. In all honesty, I haven't thought a whole lot about it. I reached out to alumni entrepreneurs from my university when I was starting Windy Citizen to get advice. One of them, a guy who works in VC in the energy field, pointed out that I had no clue what I was doing, so: a) Evaluating a technical partner would be extremely difficult. b) Evaluating potential angel investors would be just as hard. He offered to give me a call every Sunday for a year for advice and moral support if I promised to go it alone for one year, build my own tech (tricky considering I'm a decent designer but not a backend guy), and not take any money from anyone. That first year was miserable as I iterated through a few versions of the product and lived on about $10k that I earned from freelance writing and design gigs. The first idea was to build a big blog network for Chicago. I found about 20 writers, but ran into two big problems: 1. Drupal's content creation forms are not suitable for non-technical users or people without special training. They have some WYSIWYG add-ons, but they're frankly terrible compared to Wordpress/Squarespace/MT. This meant I had to post up most of the blog posts myself and my writers were always frustrated and demoralized. On my end, I lacked the skills to build a good writing UI or the funds to hire someone to do it for me. 2. With my time swallowed up by posting and editing stories, I had no time to even worry about ad sales or recruit new writers. I think a local blog network could work really well...if you had 2-3 guys. As a solo project, no dice. So 9 months in, I switched to letting anyone join up and share links to their favorite local news, blogs, and events. We've been doing that for the last 14 months. Midway through that, I picked up someone to handle ad-sales on commission with some opportunity to earn equity in the business. Together we've reached a healthy "ramen profitablity" position and are having a lot of fun. 4 months ago, I scored a $35k grant from the Chicago Community Trust to invest in our tech. We've spent a bit of it on performance improvements and are looking to spend a bit more on FB/Twitter integration (if you're good at that stuff, drop me a line!). So I've been pursuing the slow growth strategy. All bootstrap so far. I believe we're very close to "cracking the code" for doing this sort of thing which then could change things a bit, but in the meantime we're working on incremental improvements to our sales strategy and product.
  - nkh 17y ago
    Could you elaborate more on the process of getting the grant? That is an avenue of funding I would love to hear more about. Please don't give away any information that might hurt you or that you would be uncomfortable sharing.
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      I wish there was some magic to it. I've only applied for stuff that was aimed at supporting new news-related ideas. So far I've applied for 7 grants and won one of them. I have two applications in the hopper right now but both are longshots. For this grant in particular, the Chicago Community Trust announced it had $500,000 and wanted to give it to Chicago-based, Chicago-focused, news-oriented projects. About 70 people applied and they gave money to 12 applicants. I received a little less than half of what I requested but am extremely grateful and excited to have some cash to play with. Considering the criteria, I probably would have done something drastic had I not made the cut for that one... :)
      - tbrooks 17y ago
        How do you hear about these grants? Are there any sites that specifically focus on available grants?
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    Here's a great example of how our users feel about Windy Citizen: http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/media/2010/02/25/windy-citizen-named-one-of-chicagos-40-new-essentials-by-time-out-chicago#comment-21317 http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/media/2010/02/25/windy-c... <blockquote>The nice thing about Windy Citizen is that is embraces a diversity of views -- even allowing stray libertarians and organic conservatives on board -- along with the usual multitude of bloviating Chicago nanny state enthusiasts. I just wish that WC could get someone to work out all of the computer programming glitches.</blockquote>
brlewis 17y ago
Congratulations! What are some good examples of feedback from HN that helped you get there?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  HN has been my secret weapon from day one: 1. You helped troubleshoot the first of my epic hosting/performance problems and helped get me onto Slicehost http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326012 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326012 2. You helped me find a dev to build a Twitter tracker for the special election to replace Rahm Emmanuel in Congress http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466468 3. You helped introduce me to my biz-dev guy (an HN reader forwarded this onto him) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670204 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670204 4. And so on, and so on.
tptacek 17y ago
Congratulations!
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Thanks man! Your advice and support have been a big boost. Been following your suggestions about how to spend our cash so far. While it took 2-3 devs before we found someone who wouldn't whine about working with a non-programmer on a less-than-awesome codebase, we found a great guy and are getting stuff done in bits and bursts.
nlwhittemore 17y ago
Congrats! I used to live in Chicago and would have loved this as a resource
hockeybias 17y ago
Good for you!!! (Go Blackhawks!)
Jun8 17y ago
Congratulations! I see GrubHub is there, too. It's great to see the increased number of startups in Chicago, which is, you know, not a big startup hub.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Yes indeed! Last night's HN Chicago meetup was a lot of fun. This is the third or fourth one we've had. There's a great mix of bootstrappers, VC-types, CTO-types, and gainfully employed devs looking to make the leap.
  - Jun8 17y ago
    Shucks, I didn't know we had HN Chicago meetings. I joined the Google Group. Will be there next time.
    - sdevlin 17y ago
      I'm in the same boat. Could you post a link to said group, if it's not too much trouble? EDIT: Found it. For any looking: http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago
  - sachinag 17y ago
    Where the fuck were the gainfully employed devs looking to make the leap when I was there? I didn't want to move to Boston... And it's baseball season, to boot. :(
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      There's always a gap between what people tell you over beers and burgers at an HN meetup and what they're actually willing to do...as you found firsthand...
  - cpher 17y ago
    Had a great time last night at the meetup. Didn't get a chance to meet you though! FYI, I'm in the latter group above.
kreem 17y ago
Awesome!
ryanb 17y ago
The traffic growth is impressive. How did you first start getting traction? What methods did you use to promote the site early on?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  A lot of that is the secret sauce. But direct e-mails to people who might be interested in your content, and a lot of them, is really the only tool that's worked.
kadavy 17y ago
Great work, Brad!
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Thanks, man!
jpomerenke 17y ago
How do you make sure that people are only posting news from Chicago?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Thus far it's been security-via-obscurity plus aggressive moderation.
  - jpomerenke 17y ago
    How much time do you spend on moderation? Seems like it would be a lot of work. Problems with spam?
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      That's what interns and crowdsourcing is for. We've got a nifty "bury" feature that lets you hide stories you don't like just like on a lot of these sites.
      - jpomerenke 17y ago
        Cool - Every major city should have one of these. Nice Job Man!
shafqat 17y ago
This is awesome, congrats. What really stands out is the way you engage this community, seek advice, and give back with your honest response. Part of what makes HN great. What can we help with? I have a dev team that might be able to spare some bandwidth. If there's anything we can do, please let me know (email in the profile). No strings attached.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Thanks! I'll drop you a line off HN.

68 points by brandnewlow 17y ago

rms 17y ago

Congrats! No obligation for you to answer, but have you raised any funding yet? Would you be able to spend a lot of money to scale more rapidly or is going more slowly a better strategy for you?

brandnewlow 17y ago
Great question. Someone asked me about funding last night at the HN Chicago meetup. In all honesty, I haven't thought a whole lot about it. I reached out to alumni entrepreneurs from my university when I was starting Windy Citizen to get advice. One of them, a guy who works in VC in the energy field, pointed out that I had no clue what I was doing, so: a) Evaluating a technical partner would be extremely difficult. b) Evaluating potential angel investors would be just as hard. He offered to give me a call every Sunday for a year for advice and moral support if I promised to go it alone for one year, build my own tech (tricky considering I'm a decent designer but not a backend guy), and not take any money from anyone. That first year was miserable as I iterated through a few versions of the product and lived on about $10k that I earned from freelance writing and design gigs. The first idea was to build a big blog network for Chicago. I found about 20 writers, but ran into two big problems: 1. Drupal's content creation forms are not suitable for non-technical users or people without special training. They have some WYSIWYG add-ons, but they're frankly terrible compared to Wordpress/Squarespace/MT. This meant I had to post up most of the blog posts myself and my writers were always frustrated and demoralized. On my end, I lacked the skills to build a good writing UI or the funds to hire someone to do it for me. 2. With my time swallowed up by posting and editing stories, I had no time to even worry about ad sales or recruit new writers. I think a local blog network could work really well...if you had 2-3 guys. As a solo project, no dice. So 9 months in, I switched to letting anyone join up and share links to their favorite local news, blogs, and events. We've been doing that for the last 14 months. Midway through that, I picked up someone to handle ad-sales on commission with some opportunity to earn equity in the business. Together we've reached a healthy "ramen profitablity" position and are having a lot of fun. 4 months ago, I scored a $35k grant from the Chicago Community Trust to invest in our tech. We've spent a bit of it on performance improvements and are looking to spend a bit more on FB/Twitter integration (if you're good at that stuff, drop me a line!). So I've been pursuing the slow growth strategy. All bootstrap so far. I believe we're very close to "cracking the code" for doing this sort of thing which then could change things a bit, but in the meantime we're working on incremental improvements to our sales strategy and product.
- nkh 17y ago
  Could you elaborate more on the process of getting the grant? That is an avenue of funding I would love to hear more about. Please don't give away any information that might hurt you or that you would be uncomfortable sharing.
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    I wish there was some magic to it. I've only applied for stuff that was aimed at supporting new news-related ideas. So far I've applied for 7 grants and won one of them. I have two applications in the hopper right now but both are longshots. For this grant in particular, the Chicago Community Trust announced it had $500,000 and wanted to give it to Chicago-based, Chicago-focused, news-oriented projects. About 70 people applied and they gave money to 12 applicants. I received a little less than half of what I requested but am extremely grateful and excited to have some cash to play with. Considering the criteria, I probably would have done something drastic had I not made the cut for that one... :)
    - tbrooks 17y ago
      How do you hear about these grants? Are there any sites that specifically focus on available grants?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Here's a great example of how our users feel about Windy Citizen: http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/media/2010/02/25/windy-citizen-named-one-of-chicagos-40-new-essentials-by-time-out-chicago#comment-21317 http://www.windycitizen.com/chicago/media/2010/02/25/windy-c... <blockquote>The nice thing about Windy Citizen is that is embraces a diversity of views -- even allowing stray libertarians and organic conservatives on board -- along with the usual multitude of bloviating Chicago nanny state enthusiasts. I just wish that WC could get someone to work out all of the computer programming glitches.</blockquote>

brlewis 17y ago

Congratulations! What are some good examples of feedback from HN that helped you get there?

brandnewlow 17y ago
HN has been my secret weapon from day one: 1. You helped troubleshoot the first of my epic hosting/performance problems and helped get me onto Slicehost http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326012 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326012 2. You helped me find a dev to build a Twitter tracker for the special election to replace Rahm Emmanuel in Congress http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466468 3. You helped introduce me to my biz-dev guy (an HN reader forwarded this onto him) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670204 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670204 4. And so on, and so on.

tptacek 17y ago

Congratulations!

brandnewlow 17y ago
Thanks man! Your advice and support have been a big boost. Been following your suggestions about how to spend our cash so far. While it took 2-3 devs before we found someone who wouldn't whine about working with a non-programmer on a less-than-awesome codebase, we found a great guy and are getting stuff done in bits and bursts.

nlwhittemore 17y ago

Congrats! I used to live in Chicago and would have loved this as a resource

hockeybias 17y ago

Good for you!!! (Go Blackhawks!)

Jun8 17y ago

Congratulations! I see GrubHub is there, too. It's great to see the increased number of startups in Chicago, which is, you know, not a big startup hub.

brandnewlow 17y ago
Yes indeed! Last night's HN Chicago meetup was a lot of fun. This is the third or fourth one we've had. There's a great mix of bootstrappers, VC-types, CTO-types, and gainfully employed devs looking to make the leap.
- Jun8 17y ago
  Shucks, I didn't know we had HN Chicago meetings. I joined the Google Group. Will be there next time.
  - sdevlin 17y ago
    I'm in the same boat. Could you post a link to said group, if it's not too much trouble? EDIT: Found it. For any looking: http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago
- sachinag 17y ago
  Where the fuck were the gainfully employed devs looking to make the leap when I was there? I didn't want to move to Boston... And it's baseball season, to boot. :(
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    There's always a gap between what people tell you over beers and burgers at an HN meetup and what they're actually willing to do...as you found firsthand...
- cpher 17y ago
  Had a great time last night at the meetup. Didn't get a chance to meet you though! FYI, I'm in the latter group above.

kreem 17y ago

Awesome!

ryanb 17y ago

The traffic growth is impressive. How did you first start getting traction? What methods did you use to promote the site early on?

brandnewlow 17y ago
A lot of that is the secret sauce. But direct e-mails to people who might be interested in your content, and a lot of them, is really the only tool that's worked.

kadavy 17y ago

Great work, Brad!

brandnewlow 17y ago
Thanks, man!

jpomerenke 17y ago

How do you make sure that people are only posting news from Chicago?

brandnewlow 17y ago
Thus far it's been security-via-obscurity plus aggressive moderation.
- jpomerenke 17y ago
  How much time do you spend on moderation? Seems like it would be a lot of work. Problems with spam?
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    That's what interns and crowdsourcing is for. We've got a nifty "bury" feature that lets you hide stories you don't like just like on a lot of these sites.
    - jpomerenke 17y ago
      Cool - Every major city should have one of these. Nice Job Man!

shafqat 17y ago

This is awesome, congrats. What really stands out is the way you engage this community, seek advice, and give back with your honest response. Part of what makes HN great. What can we help with? I have a dev team that might be able to spare some bandwidth. If there's anything we can do, please let me know (email in the profile). No strings attached.

brandnewlow 17y ago
Thanks! I'll drop you a line off HN.