3 ms·

I'm really disappointed in YC on this one. I'm sure there were some awesome companies selected, but http://trunk.ly http://trunk.ly flat out rocks. I have no v

I'm really disappointed in YC on this one. I'm sure there were some awesome companies selected, but http://trunk.ly http://trunk.ly flat out rocks. I have no vested interest at all. I'm not an investor, not an advisor, just a user and a fan. Trunkly's become an essential tool for me, it has traction, it has a product that 100s of thousands would find useful today and millions could find even more useful in time. Maybe I'm blinded by my own selection bias (because I find it so useful and everyone who joins makes it more and more useful for me), but I'm going to have some very high expectations for the startups that do get selected :-)

rkon 15y ago
Actually, I'd be willing to bet the people at YC agree with what you said about how useful and popular it could be... but how do you make money with it? That seems to be the one point that everything hinges on here.
- robryan 15y ago
  On the surface it seems an easier proposition to make money here than other companies, plenty of data to target ads well through the links being shared and like Twitter you can build in ads that are like regular content so people would be buying sponsored links that appear like the ones being saved. I guess the issue is, the uptake of the product, and retention rate with the ratio of people actively using frequently to those using it as a link archive service which they don't revisit frequently as their links are being automatically archived. The delicious aspect would be similar to say someone starting something in video and getting the question of how they are going to be able to make money when it's taken youtube crazy scale and availability of cheap internet bandwidth with that scale to turn a profit. Either you taking the same angle and are somehow going to do it better than Google or your clearly differentiating yourself in a way that will allow you to turn a profit without the same scale.
- randfish 15y ago
  When I talked with Tim, I had three ideas for monetization. His/Alex's may indeed be even better. #1 - Sponsorships/promotions on topically-specific "top" pages. Advertisers (like my company) pay top dollar for highly focused branding to specific audiences. If Trunkly created subject-specific pages like "Top Startup Links," "Top Travel Links," "Top Gadgets Links," etc. and earned decent traffic to them (which I think is very possible given how useful/interesting/powerful and SEO+social-sharing-likely those pages could be - think HN/Techmeme/Alltop/etc.) , that's a big advertiser revenue stream. #2 - Tools for management/analysis/tracking/enhanced data for specific users. I'd personally pay $10-$50 a month and my company would pay $100-$500 a month to have all our links not just tracked and indexed, but show data, signals and analyses of what predicts more clicks/shares/etc. I've always wanted something that could tell me which features (length, use of words, time of day, when I shared vs. others, etc.) predicted higher CTR/engagement/RTs/FB shares/etc. and Trunk.ly's well poised to build that. #3 - Social graph data ala Twitter + Facebook. Dozens of companies, in particular Bing + Google, are really interested in and paying top dollar for access to social sharing data about URLs. Trunk.ly knows not only what I share on Twitter/FB, but via my personal blog, LinkedIn, Quora, and anything with a feed that I add.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mikeyur 15y ago
You mentioned the service on Twitter and I signed up immediately and added my Twitter account. Within 2 hours of signing up I had used the service no less than 3 times to dig up links I wanted to share with other people. So damn useful.

rkon 15y ago

Actually, I'd be willing to bet the people at YC agree with what you said about how useful and popular it could be... but how do you make money with it? That seems to be the one point that everything hinges on here.

robryan 15y ago
On the surface it seems an easier proposition to make money here than other companies, plenty of data to target ads well through the links being shared and like Twitter you can build in ads that are like regular content so people would be buying sponsored links that appear like the ones being saved. I guess the issue is, the uptake of the product, and retention rate with the ratio of people actively using frequently to those using it as a link archive service which they don't revisit frequently as their links are being automatically archived. The delicious aspect would be similar to say someone starting something in video and getting the question of how they are going to be able to make money when it's taken youtube crazy scale and availability of cheap internet bandwidth with that scale to turn a profit. Either you taking the same angle and are somehow going to do it better than Google or your clearly differentiating yourself in a way that will allow you to turn a profit without the same scale.
randfish 15y ago
When I talked with Tim, I had three ideas for monetization. His/Alex's may indeed be even better. #1 - Sponsorships/promotions on topically-specific "top" pages. Advertisers (like my company) pay top dollar for highly focused branding to specific audiences. If Trunkly created subject-specific pages like "Top Startup Links," "Top Travel Links," "Top Gadgets Links," etc. and earned decent traffic to them (which I think is very possible given how useful/interesting/powerful and SEO+social-sharing-likely those pages could be - think HN/Techmeme/Alltop/etc.) , that's a big advertiser revenue stream. #2 - Tools for management/analysis/tracking/enhanced data for specific users. I'd personally pay $10-$50 a month and my company would pay $100-$500 a month to have all our links not just tracked and indexed, but show data, signals and analyses of what predicts more clicks/shares/etc. I've always wanted something that could tell me which features (length, use of words, time of day, when I shared vs. others, etc.) predicted higher CTR/engagement/RTs/FB shares/etc. and Trunk.ly's well poised to build that. #3 - Social graph data ala Twitter + Facebook. Dozens of companies, in particular Bing + Google, are really interested in and paying top dollar for access to social sharing data about URLs. Trunk.ly knows not only what I share on Twitter/FB, but via my personal blog, LinkedIn, Quora, and anything with a feed that I add.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mikeyur 15y ago

You mentioned the service on Twitter and I signed up immediately and added my Twitter account. Within 2 hours of signing up I had used the service no less than 3 times to dig up links I wanted to share with other people. So damn useful.