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How a 19-Year-Old Raised $5 Million to Revolutionize Search
- pchristensen 16y agoDid Andrew Warner write that headline?
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- mkramlich 16y agoprobably not, but this will save him the effort when he inevitably interviews him :)
- mjh8136 16y agoDo startup founders in Israel tend to be relatively younger than US-born founders, and if so, why do you think that is?
- rudiger 16y agoJewish men and women are a precocious bunch :) I'm sure you'd find that US-born Jewish founders are relatively younger too.
- VladRussian 16y agomilitary draft at 18.
- iworkforthem 16y agoeasy to click Greplin Programming Challenge: http://challenge.greplin.com/ http://challenge.greplin.com/ Anyone managed to pass level 1? I am stuck at level 1. Please share the logic.
- erwanb 16y agohere is a naive but working way to do it in ruby : https://gist.github.com/849625 https://gist.github.com/849625
- iworkforthem 16y agoThank you. 0.upto(string.length - password_length) do |index| that's the line of logic I didn't it get correct.
- ntoshev 16y agoPython: max((s[start:end] for start in xrange(len(s)) for end in xrange(start, len(s)) if s[start:end]==s[start:end][::-1]), key=len)
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoWhat a crock - the second challenge requires calling a USA phone number. Color me unimpressed.
- Natsu 16y agoThe last time it was posted, they had an alternative. I don't know if it's still up, though. I'd check the previous story, though.
- lysium 16y agoThere's an alternative, just click the provided link: http://challenge.greplin.com/static/nophone.html http://challenge.greplin.com/static/nophone.html
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoThanks - I might get back to it in a few hours. Currently busy now - I did have 20 minutes to spare earlier and thought a small challenge could be fun.
- nandemo 16y ago
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- asr 16y agoNice piece. I have a question that comes up every time I read a "we came up with our Y-Combinator demo in the last weekend and got funded" story--is this rare? It seems like I hear it all the time, but maybe most of the "last 24 hour" demos don't get mentioned. It's surprising to me to think it might be common, because my gut reaction is that this means the founders don't actually have a viable product, but because they got funded before they could figure that out, it will now take months or years for the founders to move on (or pivot significantly). I'd love to hear why that's not what's going on, though.
- gooberdlx 16y agoMet this guy sitting outside of Facebook a few months ago. Nice kid, smart, savvy. We chatted about Greplin and it sounded like he was making good progress... Let's hope he keeps it going...
- jhuckestein 16y agoDaniel, if you're on HN, I'd love to know how the visa/immigration situation worked out for you in this case (if you can publicly talk about it, I know that this is not always the case).
- acconrad 16y agoI thought this was a cool article until I read this line: "But regardless of how successful Greplin is, say, even if we go public someday, my parents won't be satisfied unless I get a degree. They won't speak to me." That's pretty sad, actually :(
- m_myers 16y agoI came here to say the same thing (even worded the same way in my head). Why are people so fixated on college degrees -- even if they've already built a profitable company from scratch? Is it to prove something? If so, what?
- dkl 16y agoBecause they are an obvious measure of worth for some people. Shallow, yes, but that's the short of it.
- mannicken 16y agoIt's a status thing. Same reason why people buy expensive cars.
- yason 16y agoIt used to mean something. Fifty years ago fewer people had degrees and it was likely to mean good life and secure career. Not so much any longer but the old tricks of the trade of life from 1-2 generations back keep living on. It'll take some time to change.
- mixmastamyk 16y agoThey're nice in that they force you to learn some subjects you wouldn't normally ... that and the college chicks. Agree that the idea in that you have little worth without one is a bit absurd.
- EvilRobotMonkey 16y ago> college chicks? Is every founder either a man or a lesbian?
- elvirs 16y agoTraditional media and established blogs have sympathy for small startups that take on giants like Google, etc. especially if they are founded by someone under 20. btw, where is cuil now?
- kouiskas 16y agoMy thoughts exactly, also that of story reminds me of many articles published in the bubble era, as do many valuation and funding stories lately.
- kouiskas 16y agoIt looks like he's using APIs, which means that he can only index as much data as the services are willing to provide. They can squeeze him out of business by shutting down or reducing access to the data whenever they please. Or just add to their API TOS that keeping a cached copy of the data is a no go. The service would lose a lot of relevance if suddenly one of the main players like Facebook decided that they don't want to be indexed by Greplin anymore. Without long-term partnerships or contracts with all the stakeholders, I wouldn't bet on that horse.
- pbiggar 16y agoWhy would they do that? That's what the APIs are for.
- kouiskas 16y agoFacebook already updates their API and policies very regularly, nothing they give an application access to can be given for granted in the long term. Especially when it deals with private content. When your service is dependent on another, you're always at the mercy of an update that can shut down the API feature you were using, whether the intention is to kill your service or not. In this case it seems like the goal of the website is to become a starting point for a person's browsing/searching experience, facebook and google want the same thing. If they feel threatened they could cut just stop Greplin in particular from accessing their API. It's not hard for them to update their API terms of service to make that kind of use forbidden, for instance. That kind of tactic has been used in the past. That's why I see a lot of uncertainty in the future of that service. I'm not worried about the founder and the company, though, their most likely exit is a talent acquisition by Facebook or Google.
- pbiggar 16y agoYes, but you haven't really address 'why' they would do it. > In this case it seems like the goal of the website is to become a starting point for a person's browsing/searching experience, facebook and google want the same thing. This is your only 'why', but it's very weak. Every company wants to be the 'starting point for a persons browsing experience', but Facebook doesn't provide that, and neither does Greplin. Google does of course, but Greplin doesn't. Your point reduces to "companies which consume APIs might compete with the companies which create them, and so might be shut down". Of course, your statement is true, but it's valueless.
- rokhayakebe 16y agoBut my mistake...was not listening to my own intuition enough
- devindotcom 16y agoIt's troubling how little of this article is about the actual service. I'm left wondering why this is worth $5m? Isn't this basically HotBot for signup services?
- hnfwerr 16y agoRaising money is not hard, what is hard is make money :/
- jasonwilk 16y agoYour comment is flawed
- yewweitan 16y agoFrom the article, on going to college: "The way it works in Israel, you have to go to the army first" I wonder how much this impacts the entrepreneurial mindset in male youth. I grew up mostly in Singapore, and they too have conscription upon reaching the age of 18 (with some exceptions, eg: for medicine and for national scholarship holders). From what I see from my friends' facebook channels, it's definitely a draining experience indeed, one that takes months to recover from once its done. But Kudos to this guy! Greplin is pretty awesome and I've already put it to use.
- edanm 16y agoI'm Israeli, so I thought I'd share on how the Army has a huge positive impact on entrepreneurship. For a lot of Israelis who are smart, the army is a great experience that really helps them. For example, there is a very respected Programming Course in the Israeli army, which trains programmers for half a year. These programmers then go on to work on all the Armies' systems for the next 5 1/2 years. This course is called Mamram (I was in it). This means that programmers in Israel are not only trained in a very intensive course for half a year, but they then go on to work on real-world (and often critical) systems, for 5 1/2 years. Which means there are many Israeli programmers who, at age 24, have 6 years of professional experience working on big, important systems. Add to this that the Mamram course is very famous (most Israeli companies require programmers to either have a degree or be a graduate of Mamra). Also, serving 6 years in the army (and being in a course with 100 peers) means you get an incredible network of connections. I'm a good example - I'm working on my own startup with two people I served with in the army, and I know many people who either work at or run a lot of Israeli startups, just because I served with them at some point. I'm probably 2 hops from most startups in Israel, just because almost all of them hire programmers from the Mamram course. OK that came out long. I only focused on the Mamram course since that's what I know best, but there are a lot of other fields the army is great for that have nothing to do with programming.
- yewweitan 16y agoThat sounds great! It seems like the Israeli military system brings with it an integrated approach to pathways in life. That's far better than the picture that has been painted in front of my eyes (South-East Asian context) with places like Singapore and Vietnam. With the former, it's 2 years of physical grunt work. With the latter, one of my friend's cousins had to serve in the Army for 2 years as a Private after having graduated with an Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. =(
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- 108 16y agodidnt anybody notice that you cannot use greplin without signing up. #fail
- EastSmith 16y agoI just linked my Twitter account and have to say Greplin is scary fast on searches. I am not sure I would like another 3rd party indexing my emails, but will keep an eye on Greplin because of the twitter searches. I always wanted to search just my twitter stream, but I have never found, until now, such an easy and fast way to do it.