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My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?
My YCombinator Applicants Video page ( http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants ) got over 3000 uniques in a single day, many from domains of "very big name" companies here in the Bay Area.
I moved to Silicon Valley this summer to find angel funding and/or work. With me practically begging for angel money and/or work in the page comments, I thought for sure somebody would say "Hey, Patrick. You did all this basically by yourself. Obviously, you've got some sort of talent. We'll definately help you out." Instead... nothing. I got a total of 3 legitimate inquiries, all of which I responded, none of which I've heard back from a day later.
My question is... with all the deep pockets and easy start-up money I hear about, what's it take to get somebody to actually commit to some angel money?
Patrick Keys
citizenkeys AT gmail DOT com
- timelinex 16y agoWhen reality doesn't match expectations, modify expectations to match reality. You can start by actually getting realistic data on: 1) Time to get angel investment 2) Number of people with 3000 unique in a single day that hit front page HN.[I reach front page only for a brief period and had 2k unique visits, twice]
- petervandijck 16y agoLink to video?
- citizenkeys 16y agovideo of what?
- cperciva 16y agoRemember that the best way to get money is to not need it. Investors aren't interested in "helping you out"; they're interested in making money, and broadcasting "we were rejected from YC and we're desperate for money" isn't a very good way to convince potential investors that you can make them rich(er).
- citizenkeys 16y agoThey call it "angel money" for a reason. If you were "ramen profitable", then you wouldn't need angel money, you'd need legitimate venture capital to get big fast. "Ramen profitable" right now is about 500 bucks a week. I also indicated I was looking for work. If I had some outside work, I could self-fund my ventures. With all these deep silicon valley pockets, I'm surprised nobody offered me any sort of work.
- coryl 16y agoMaybe your project just isn't interesting enough, or has little commercial potential.
- citizenkeys 16y agoTell that to twitter, instagram, or even youtube. A website where people can only type 140 characters at a time in a little box? Forget it. A mobile app that lets you take one picture and post it online? Been done already. A video sharing site that may never be legimately profitable? No way.
- coryl 16y agoListen Patrick, maybe you're upset that you were rejected and that's why your lashing out. I don't know. I was rejected from YC last summer; in hindsight, the idea we had was garbage and we deluded ourselves into buying our own hype. You've bought into your own hype. I've been to your site, I have no idea what it does or why its useful. It looks like a bunch of wikipedia scraped articles thrown together. It doesn't solve any problems or make life easier or fun for anyone. Don't try to cite examples like Twitter or Youtube, they are freak chances and you CANNOT simply replicate patterns to success. So humbly, and as politely as I can say, I suggest you wake up and stop bullshitting yourself. Stop whining, step away from the computer, and either change your project or kill it.
- mattwdelong 16y agoMost of us here are entrepreneurs, we know what it`s like to have a rough patch better than most people. We have all endured weeks, or months with little income. My best suggestion would be to start cold calling, find someone who needs some work done that you can do. I can however guarantee that they won't come to you looking to spend their money, you need to give them a damn good reason to.
- answerly 16y agoJust to contribute a data point: We were lucky enough to be accepted to YC a couple batches ago. It took us about 2 months of constant pitching and investor wrangling to close our seed round after demo day. It is great that the original post brought you some initial visibility. It is not clear to me that you have done much to proactively capitalize on that.
- citizenkeys 16y agoWell... that's what this particular thread is all about. What exactly should I do "to proactively capitalize" my "initial visibility"?
- answerly 16y agoFor example... I just looked up your LinkedIn profile and you have a contact that is connected to 5 entrepreneurs that I happen to also know who have raised seed funding. Have you tried reaching out to that person to get intros to those entrepreneurs (4 of which have raised money in the last 3-6 months)?
- citizenkeys 16y agoMy personal belief is that a broad "anybody want to help" approach is better than a creepy "in your face" approach to a particular person. I would think that singling-out a particular person and harassing them would result in burning all sorts of bridges. That's just my particular belief. Seriously, What other suggestions you got?
- answerly 16y agoUnfortunately, your belief in this regard is the exact opposite of what investors tend to suggest when asked how they can be reached. Investors want a genuine introduction from a single trusted source like a portfolio CEO or another investor that they have done deals with. The good news is that entrepreneurs typically really like helping out other entrepreneurs with advice and connections when they can. But, entrepreneurs also tend to very, very busy running their startups. So, leaving it up to someone else to take the initiative in order to secure the outcome you want may not be the best course of action.
- jim_h 16y agoWhat exactly is your project? I looked at your link, but it seems like it's just a collection of videos. I went to the main site, but it seems like it's a blog.
- citizenkeys 16y agoThe project is user-created lists of downloadable videos. The main page looks like a blog because I'm presently redesigning the main page. "User-created lists of downloadable videos" may sound simple, but it's deceptive simplicity will make it the twitter and/or instragram of its day, I am entirely certain of it.
- timelinex 16y agoOk, what is it sustainable competitive advantage? How do you plan on getting traction? What are the legal implications? How much have you personally invested both in terms of time and money into this project? What previous projects have you completed? Can you get a friend to co-found this with you? Show us something that would indicate you punch above your weight class, eg Academics, Social, Hacking.
- citizenkeys 16y agoSustainable competitive advantage is that we don't incur the costs of bandwidth or storage. Videos are stored on any other site on the Internet. Another advantage involves some API possibilities. Traction is people creating lists. Yes, the ycombinator list got 3000 uniques a day. But ANYBODY can create a very particular list of videos that draws that many uniques or more. More traffic equals more traction. I have invested a year of work into this project. Self-funding is my development time and hosting costs. I don't have much in previous projects worth showing off. Why do I need a co-founder?
- jim_h 16y agoHow is it different from other torrent sites?
- bfung 16y agoI've seen some posts about wikitorrents the past few days; finally went to see the site. Perhaps the amount of unique page views (especially on that page) is a side effect of ycombinator brand and timing of events and investors trying to see what kind of companies ycombinator wants to invest in (in an effort to better their own investments). What are the unique page views from other pages? Or the entire site in general? Why should someone use this site as oppose to something like facebook or del.icio.us? Aside from combining two buzzwords together (wiki and torrent), I can't actually tell what the site is really about (and there's nothing that would point me to some description...) or the value it would provide. Also, I don't really see what it has to do with bittorrent except for a banner on the right side. Hope this feedback helps.
- citizenkeys 16y agoWikiTorrents doesn't really have much to do with bittorrent. It's an evolving idea. The idea is simple: if you can come up with a good, unique, specific list of videos, then you can translate that easy into lots of traffic. Traffic = traction = money.
- bfung 16y agowho gets the money? =P Why wouldn't I just put that list of videos on my own blog to generate revenue? I think my point is that it's not enough to just make something that's already been done (a website of a list of stuff...). Your solution needs to solve someone's problem... say if you had some algorithm that could generate these interesting lists of videos w/o user intervention, or some automation to aggregate videos of similar content.
- citizenkeys 16y ago..I agree with your suggestions. But algorithms without user intervention and automatic aggregation sound like version 2.0 features. My idea right now is building something that reliably works, basically a version 1.0 product.
- bobf 16y agoIt may be harsh, but here's some honest feedback: I don't see the value of WikiTorrents. (That probably doesn't mean anything, as I wouldn't have considered Twitter to be a huge winner either, but it is a data point for you nonetheless.) The name is non-intuitive, as it doesn't have much to do with torrents - or wikis in the traditional sense. Manually compiled/user-submitted lists of videos seems to be easily duplicable, meaning there is little competitive advantage.
- citizenkeys 16y agoIt's very tao... Some people look at the empty bowl and say "this bowl is empty and therefore worthless." Other people look at the bowl and say "this bowl is empty. How useful to have an empty bowl that I can fill." I'm a member of the second group. The site has little to do with wikis and/or torrents. The value of wikitorrents.org is the lists of videos, not the simplicity of the site. One good list of videos, regardless of the topic, can generate an exponential amount of traffic that find that particular list useful. If you had seen the traffic from just that one specific list of ycombinator applicant videos, you would understand the potential.
- cheae 16y agoisn't it easy to replicate?
- citizenkeys 16y agoI think many of you are missing the forest for the trees. If the idea were profitable, I wouldn't be looking for seed money. If the implementation of my idea were very refined, then it would be a mature product and not a working prototype. The idea now is a working prototype of a site where users can create lists of videos. That's all the idea is supposed to be. Right now, it's very rough around the edges with lots of usability issues. That's why I need seed money to work on it and make it user-friendly, add features, move features, etc. If I may paraphrase Paul Graham, implement an idea that the founder himself needs. In my case, it's lists of videos I can find all over the Internet. To quote Paul Graham again, release early, release often, and surprise your users by constantly listening to them and revising the product.
- LabSlice 16y agoEvery startup has the chicken and egg problem -- It's worth a million dollars, but only if it had the customers/dollars/advertising/partnerships to make it succeed. You've obviously got belief and vision for the project, which are great traits to have. But consider yourself being an investor. How do you calculate the ROI? Will giving you $500/week (peanuts) generate a future return of $1,000/week or $20,000/week, or maybe just $10/week? Investors are business people, so they need some way to guesstimate a ROI. If I sponsor you, then how can you convince me that I will at least break even on the investment within the next 2 years?
- gallerytungsten 16y agoHow does a band get signed to a contract with a major label? Most often, they play shows. They tour. They put out their own releases. They make money. Success attracts attention. When they have demonstrated value, the big money is attracted. So far, I don't see any value in your site. I think you need to articulate this better, and, you know, actually make some money. If you can't make any money, why should anyone invest?
- slouch 16y agothe average computer user doesn't know what a torrent is, and a google or bing video search is easier for them everytime.
- krisneuharth 16y agoWhat if you compiled all of this scraped data and made microsites for each category? I think your idea is interesting but so far the implementation is off-putting. You could do all sorts of organic SEO tweaks and then put some ads on the pages for a revenue stream. Don't give up, but also don't expect people to throw money at you for making something. If that were true, everyone on HN would be millionaires.
- citizenkeys 16y agoI don't consider my goal of 500/week to pursue the idea much the equivalent of people throwing money at me. That's about minimum wage to pursue a technical idea that might payoff big. $500 a week is nothing by silicon valley standards.
- krisneuharth 16y agoHave you considered the possibility that your awful attitude, inflated sense of entitlement, over-attachment to a poor implementation of an unfocused idea, etc. are contributing to your lack of success finding this all important fabled VC money? Let that sink in. Now, I gave you encouragement and a legitimate suggestion on how to take what you have and spin it into something that would probably generate some money. Others have done the same in this thread. You responded with a delusional claim that people should provide money for you just because your idea "might" pay off big. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence on HN that speculative words like "might" are pretty worthless. If you think your idea is that good, commit to it, prove us all wrong. It is however counter productive to complain to fellow HNers, who are most sympathetic to the frustrations of trying to build products people want, about some bias against you because no one wants to give you jobs or money for your talents. That is not how it works.
- rdamico 16y agoCouldn't agree more with krisneuharth. I think many people have posted on this thread in an attempt to provide constructive, candid feedback to help you out, but the way you are reacting so negatively to it all is really counterproductive. One trait you'll find in any successful entrepreneur is the ability to have a thick skin and be open to feedback from others, even when it isn't what they want to hear. That doesn't mean you need to act on or even agree with others' advice, but if you really want to increase your chances of success you need to be able to at least hear others out in a respectful way.
- timelinex 16y agoclickable: http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants
- citizenkeys 16y agoMy final comment about the value proposition before I go to Thursday NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences ( http://www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife/ http://www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife/ ): The value proposition of WikiTorrents.org is that you can easily find a continually evolving list of videos about whatever topic you're researching, no matter how specific or obscure the topic and no matter what sites actually have the videos.
- ABrandt 16y agoTo put it simply, your value proposition doesn't exist. Maybe after years of seeding the site with content, but right now I cannot "find a continually evolving list about whatever topic." In order to gain traction among users, you must provide me value _now_. I know you might feel like you're getting beat up in this thread, but every comment I've read has been constructive criticism. Take it in stride and don't discount anything offhand. I can almost see your vision for WikiTorrents; it has merit. You're certainly passionate so I believe you can do it.
- citizenkeys 16y agoThe paradox, as is frequently explained, is that many of the most successful sites are those that people spend almost no time on. Lets say you go to google, find a search result, and click to leave google. If you do all that within a coule seconds, then google was successful even though you spent almost no time on google. This is similar to that. Remember, too, to paraphrase paul graham for at least the fourth time in this thread, that the yahoo directory started out as jerry yang's personal collection of bookmarks. jerry yang's multibillion dollar company bought out paul graham's viaweb and made paul graham into a millionaire. so consider all that, let it all sink in, and then decide whether you want to tell me that my idea is bad.
- jim_h 16y agoOne thing to take into account is that Jerry Yang and David Filo did their Yahoo directory in 1994 when there was a great need for search engines and people just didn't know what was out there. Their directory gave people a way of seeing what was there. They also have great timing. They did it in Jan. 1994, only a few months after the first few search engines. So lots of people not knowing about their other options and a great need for a 'directory' of the relatively unsearchable web made their company very popular.
- iampims 16y agoPatrick, 3,000 uniques in a single day doesn’t validate an idea, let alone a business model. The influx of visitors you had is equivalent to the traffic any blog receives when one of its post hits the HN front page. Yet, none of them is complaining about not having gotten a lucrative book deal. That being said, the idea of a torrent of videos is interesting. I’m much less convinced about its implementation. Not to sound rude, but a bunch of links on a wiki, that's it? Maybe you could look at XSPF? It’s a shareable playlist format. See http://www.xspf.org/quickstart/ http://www.xspf.org/quickstart/ for more info. Since you are sharing links to videos, distributing them into a standard format could be a good idea for instance. Or hook it to the YouTube API, to provide more info about each video. And most of the time, it takes a while before things get off the ground, so be patient and keep working hard on it. Good luck.
- citizenkeys 16y ago"Working hard on it" requires seed money and somebody that believes that the founder just might be able to pull off the idea. You can't work hard on an idea while you're worrying about food and rent. The point with the ycombinator video page was this: theoretically, if you had 365 lists, each able to generate that much uniques each day, then you'd have over a million uniques a year just with that traffic. A million uniques is a good size of traffic and potential traction.
- cheald 16y agoNo offense, but unless you're working 3 jobs to cover food and rent, you can work hard on an idea without seed money. Stop watching TV (seriously, unplug it and put it in a closet). Stop playing video games (same deal). Stop going out barhopping. Devote your evenings and lunch breaks to working on your idea. You have plenty of time that you're not utilizing. You'll find that most startup founders - especially new entrepreneurs without a previous "win" - don't start by getting seed money thrown at them for an idea. They toil in every spare moment they have to produce a product that is worth investing in. pg says "Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly" and it's true. You get to bust your ass 24/7, bend over backwards, wear sixteen hats at any given time, and learn at least 3 new major skill sets for no promise of reward, and a better-than-even chance of failure. If you're not willing to give it all you've got, then honestly, entrepreneurship probably isn't for you.
- YuriNiyazov 16y agoAh yes, the "wtf??" reaction that happens a few days after a yc rejection. Its one of the 5 stages of coping with a loss. You are now at "anger".
- TYPE_FASTER 16y agoA day later? Give it a week or two.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- citizenkeys 16y agoYou all criticize my idea and yet "workflowy" is a YC-funded site devoted to making lists: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/workflow/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/workflow/ http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1870473 http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1870473
- gallerytungsten 16y agoI checked out your site, and also checked workflowy just now. Let's compare and contrast. 1. They have at least a somewhat clear and professional design. One that's focused on just the one problem they're solving. (I do have to criticize the horrible kerning between the "W" and "o" of their name though.) Minor quibbles like that aside, your site design is awkward at best. 2. They have a video that explains the problem they are trying to solve; and you only need to watch the first fifteen seconds or so to understand that they are an online outlining tool. Does the world need that? I don't know. But it seems they are definitely solving a problem. Your site is unclear and lacks this kind of focus.
- benologist 16y agoYour front page says you plan to sell the domain to the Wikimedia guys at the earliest opportunity and that your grand plan is to have full length videos all over Wikipedia. Wikipedia publishes images/etc that they have the verifiable right to include. I really can't imagine any circumstances other than vandalism where going to Arnie's page = sit back and watch the Terminator movies. So that's the first obvious problem. The second is this. Lists of videos are a Google search. On any topic, and up to date within minutes. If I want to maintain my own list then I can make a playlist or use Delicious or browser bookmarks or StumbleUpon or dozens of other services. You need a much, much, much stronger idea, a calmer approach and a much better measuring stick than 3k visitors from HN.
- zbruhnke 16y agoOk Patrick, here goes. I do not know your entire situation and i would like to start off by saying I am no "expert" in the field of UI or UX, but I can tell you that your site has some usability issues that you said you were going to address which is a good thing, but you need to do that sooner rather than later. As someone who has been down this road (and yes I was turned down by Ycombinator tuesday too) I know that hardly anyone succeeds the first time they try something. The idea itself may succeed in the long run, but the implementation must change for it to work. You NEED to know that. If you are dead set on your ideas working as is you will probably never have them actually work. Keep in mind that everyone feels that their idea is wonderful and it will succeed, I believed that so much to the point that I took jobs selling cars on the weekends and working at geeksquad at night just to pay my bills while trying to make it. Ultimately I did so, but I would argue it was the tenacity I had that made my success a reality (I was also very lucky like most entrepreneurs). If you are not willing to do anything and everything it takes to succeed including eating cans of soup 1/2 can at a time in order to stretch meals out for several days and sleeping on your bedroom floor because you sold your bed on craigslist to pay your server bills chances are you are not the kind of entrepreneur anyone is interested in investing in. Listen to some of the stories of the guys who made it but just barely. My recent favorite is Brian Chesky who is one of the founders of AirBnB ... truly a teriffic story where they believed in their idea enough to sell CEREAL to make a software company stay alive. That my friend is wanting it and THAT is the kind of spirit and tenacity that the "deep pockets" in SV are looking for.
- ashleyw 16y agoIf you need money so bad, why not move away from San Francisco?
- hkuo 16y agoDid a quick google search for the term "lists of videos". This link came up second: http://superl8tive.com/ http://superl8tive.com/ Seems similar to what you're going for, and they appear to have been around for a while. Checked their compete.com stats to get a rough idea on their traffic, and it doesn't look good. From 1600 uniques about a year ago down to 467 a couple months ago. And their execution is not that bad. So given their traffic, similar idea, and length of existence, it doesn't give much confidence that this idea can have a large audience. Not raining on your parade. Just want to offer this little bit of research and my take on it. I think you may want to push the idea even further given the non-success of this similar execution.
- fanatico 16y agoWhat were the 3 legitimate inquiries? And how did you respond? What kind of money and terms are you trying to raise?
- zackattack 16y agoi don't know why everyone's giving you so much shit. ignore them and proceed with your idea. like you said, you OBVIOUSLY have talent. who cares what a bunch of nerds think. are they your taret market?? serve them with the ycombinator videos. then find MORE markets. HN is just a fraction of the internet p.s. i feel like you could use a free awesomenessreminder, contact via email and i'll hook you up
- iuguy 16y agoI stopped reading through the comments and went to your site. Two things: 1. You're being abrasive, defensive and confrontational in your comment responses. This is partly why you're getting downvoted and you're not being taken seriously. It's difficult to take someone seriously when the help being given (in some cases from people who've done a lot more than you have) is being flung back in their face. 2. Nobody knows whether your idea would work or not, but your execution needs a lot of work. Have you researched the market? What's the market for a list of downloadable videos? How will you monetise? What separates you from other torrent or video list sites? How will you stop the MPAA from shutting you down? Why is it that when I go to the front page I get a blog and not the top videos? Why should I stump up money to support this? Now for number 2, instead of being defensive (and I can tell you're angry about your YC rejection, but it's not all of us that are trying to help you that rejected you) look to answer those questions. You need to work out not just if this is viable but how viable this is and what type of return an investor should expect based on investing X (where X is a range of different amounts of cash that you need) and how that money will be spent. You have what appears to be an MVP, I'd suggest you work on pitching for investment in order to grow traffic and improve usability and organic SEO. You need to go out and find investors, they're not going to come to you. Be pushy, be tenacious, ring everyone up in the valley if you have to. Someone will invest in your idea if it has legs. You just have to work on putting your idea into a structure that sells well to an investor.
- thenayr 16y agoUpon visiting your site for the first time (I went straight to the link and cheated), I am entirely overwhelmed and confused. 10 minutes in and I've yet to discover exactly what it is your site aims to help me with. Things that stand out: Why is the front-page a list of blog posts written by you asking for funds? I can't think of a worse way to welcome users to your site. Not to mention I haven't a clue what I'm looking at.. A "we need money" page. Begging for money is hardly a way to get someone interested in funding your company. This page is highly redundant and the Paypal donation button is also extremely tacky. An @gmaildotcom email doesn't exactly come off as being professional. It doesn't take more than a couple seconds to setup an email for your own domain and IMHO just looks much more professional. The big sidebar links on the right. What are they? Popular links? Favorite links? I've still yet to figure that out. Overall I'm having a hard time seeing exactly where all the hard work and effort towards this site is going. Not to be rude, but it's certainly not towards the design and usability of the site. The site itself is something I could throw up in a day with any decent CMS (drupal comes to mind immediately). It seems most of your effort has gone towards convincing yourself that you have something amazing on your hands and trying to convey that through... begging? Upon visiting your twitter I was greeted with the message "http://wikitorrents.org/ http://wikitorrents.org/ for all your BitTorrent wiki needs." That really doesn't mean anything at all. Not to mention it looks like this site has been around for over a year now. I'd expect there to be at least some signs of growth at this point. Why would someone invest in a year old site that hasn't more than a few pages of content? Maybe I'm missing something here?
- user24 16y agoThere's a huge difference between "3000 uniques a day" and "3000 uniques in a single day". What's your average traffic per day this month? But more importantly, there's really no necessary correlation between traffic and value. (examples: wikileaks, geocities, cuil, somafm, and, well I mean just browse through TC's deadpool) Can you instantly answer what your business model is? How much revenue you expect to have in the next 6 months? What your competitors are doing, and how your service differs? Who your users are? And what the next iteration of your product will be? If you have to think about those things, you're not ready to be acquired. (disclaimer: I'm talking out of my ass based on what I've read not what I've learned.)