Optimizely (YC W10) Makes It Remarkably Easy to A/B Test
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The compelling story in Optimizely's case is - "A YC funded company". I'm not against of Optimizely in any way, but this just shows the power of being YC network.
As for why they may have been passed over in the first place, I don't have a definitive answer, but a few things come to mind. First, the name sounds off alarm bells in my head (or at least, makes it sound mediocre). Given the dearth of good, brief domain names I know this isn't fair, but most sites we see that are 3+ words strung together in a non-clever way are terrible.
Also, I notice that the latest email I have from the founder was sent at 3:40AM on a Sunday (he's out in India, so that would probably explain it). If you're going to send a pitch, try doing it on a Wed-Fri, around noon or afternoon. The news cycle tends to slow down then (and I'm still at my desk), though there's no set rule.
I am the founder of Visual Website Optimizer. And to be fair I have been expecting Optimizely post on TechCrunch as soon as I learnt that it was a YC funded startup. To be honest it bites me to actually read it on TC especially when I emailed you thrice :) But anyway that is life. I guess special connections do matter!
As far as name is concerned, the company's name is Wingify (which isn't as dull as Visual Website Optimizer). The product name was chosen to differentiate it from Google Website Optimizer, as my tool makes creating tests super easy.
As far as differentiation is concerned, well we launched way earlier than Optimizely (so it is them whom you should be asking this question). Actual differentiation comes in the ease of use, while offering all enterprise level features. Here is a comparision table: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/feature-list.php
As far as interesting story is concerned, well we're bootstrapped (2 people actually), launched two months ago, are profitable (more than just ramen) and have managed to bag customers like Microsoft, Rackspace, 99Designs, Aweber and Threadless. Here is a partial customer list http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/customers.php
The tool has helped numerous small businesses in increasing conversions and sales. Here are some case studies: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/case-studies.php and if you must compare it with other tools, here are numerous (all non-asked) testimonials comparing VWO with other tools: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/testimonials.php
I don't know how else to pitch you rather than just providing facts. Please let me know if you wish to do a story, I will be happy to provide you with more stats or make it into an interesting story.
-Paras Chopra
PS: Thanks for mentioning VWO at the end of the post, but I will still stand by saying that it was bit unfair on TC's part.
I am sure you are pretty cool about it, but take it easy about the TC (or any other such blog's) (non-)coverage. You got paying customers and if this continues, relevant news coverage would follow soon.
Cheers.
TechCrunch trades in links, traffic, retweets, and comments. Take two companies of ANY flavor side by side, and TC will pick the one that is somehow associated with a newsmaker (or is otherwise going to drive the metrics they care about).
There's nothing "fair" about it. You're just not speaking the language that bloggers care about. You're talking about case studies, feature comparisons, and testimonials, for pete's sake.
I LOVE VWO. Love it. But I can totally see why TechCrunch would pass on it (even if you gave them the above pitch at a time where they'd get/read the email).
When TC, Mashable or RWW didn't reply I realized A/B testing may not be as sexy as location-based-gaming or a cool new iPhone app. But then covering an A/B testing startup on basis of YC while passing on another A/B testing startup (because it is not YC) is what I call "unfair". Right, I know it is not an ideal world, but someone has to keep reminding what a fair world could be :)
PS: Almost all your examples of news-maker point to the VC/Angel/Web clique and perhaps you are right that blogs that serve that clique may not be interested in a (bootstrapped) startup that doesn't fit the "culture".
It definitely isn't fair, but media coverage is transient, long term what matters is business savvy, customer satisfaction and technology.
No two bit article featuring a 'me too' competitor, funded or not is going to make a difference there in the longer term.
So it makes sense then that TechCrunch would cover every single YC launch, because this site is going to drive a boat load of traffic their way.
If it makes you feel better, people who read hacker news shouldn't be your target group anyways. The 'winner' in this market will be the people who engages webmasters who are inexperienced and wouldn't have heard of A/B testing before landing on your page.
Sure, but being here and not being Y combinator funded should not translate in to a disadvantage either. After all, bootstrapping is a lot harder than getting VC money and some names behind you for equity, once your idea is out in the open the least you could ask for is a level playing field in terms of coverage. It's not like a posting about other start-ups would cost TC traffic.
In this case it almost seems like they delayed mentioning paraschopras offering until the YC combinator venture went live.
I meant "as good as anything else" in the sense of "better or at least equal to any other story"
I agree that the david and goliath story has potential. He should play that up.
Reading the TC story, and this discussion, the gapingvoid cartoonists' line comes to mind: "Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me."
My point is that the story isn't in the facts, it's in the storytelling. You can call it a juicy steak or a muscle tissue sample of a castrated bull and it's the same damn thing. If you want to catch the eye of key bloggers, you can't make them dig through facts for a great story. They won't take the time to do it.
Leaning the word up against something like GWO seems more like hoping to catch some customers who confuse the two. I know that is probably not what you are doing but it could be interpreted a such and I would stay away from that kind of possible confusion.
If you want it to stand out, call it Wingify. It's not the name that makes the success, it's the product(and the connections and timing etc), but if you want to differentiate your product calling it almost the same isn't going to create anything but confusion.
Microsoft's first product was simply called MS-DOS and I don't think having a "OS" word in it caused them any disadvantage (in fact it helped them). But then in days of MS-DOS there were no tech blogs :)
It seems to leverage on what google created.
I am not saying that is a bad thing, but I fail to see the "pitting against" factor.
I'm kind of pissed that the Web 2.0 culture has somehow made a less memorable, less descriptive name superior. It completely flies in the face of traditional, accepted marketing and branding theory and, frankly, gives the appearance of lazy incestuous journalism.
By pretty much any metric, this is demonstrably wrong. Here's BusinessWeek's Top 100 Brands list: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/top_brands/source/1....
How many of those are descriptive names?
EDIT: Also, I'm sort of interested to hear more about brand theory. I mean, isn't there a reason that Google isn't called "SearchEngine" and Dropbox isn't "CloudFileStorage"?
To me your comments smack of a valley centered arrogance and elitism that TechCrunch seems to be a mouthpiece for. Silicon Valley fads get endless coverage and everything else gets ignored. I think being an Indian startup should augment VWO's newsworthiness not detract from it. I'm not calling you out specifically, I think this attitude is widespread in tech reportig, and this story is an example.
And VWO really is a cheap sounding name, so I am not surprised jkinkiad passed on the pitch.
Interesting concept. Scan HN for good stuff by people from third world countries that are unlikely to get funding, apply to YC with a similar idea, get funded and run rings around them in the media, and to add insult to injury have them labelled 'me too' by the same media that refused to cover them beforehand.
I'm sure you can do much better than that Jason.
Also, how can you write that 'you'll check out his site' if you mention them in your article already ? Don't you do that anyway before mentioning a site ?
That said, I think the real fault here is with PG and YCombinator, who should know better than to fund teams to compete with single-founder bootstrapped startups that congregate on these boards. I mean... what's next Paul, a YC funded play at online bingo?
That said, there are some markets large enough to sustain many companies. Bingo cards probably won't support a company on the trajectory that YC would like. A/B testing, though, already supports many companies, from several big-freaking-consultingware companies down to VWO. There is room for more, and I'd suggest people remember that the biggest competitor isn't a just-launched startup or even Google. It is "Customer decides not to A/B test." This competitor is very popular, and has 99% share in the A/B testing space. Heck, it probably has 90% share among HN readers!
That is the enemy. Focus on killing that.
And the size of the market is irrelevant. To run with your analogy, the question is whether it is ethical to invite someone into your home to join a support group for small entrepreneurs and then fund a much larger team to chase their ideas once you learn about them. For an organization that aims to support entrepreneurs, this just looks bad. There is nothing wrong with competition, but they should have passed the proposal to someone else to fund.
Remind me never to let you invest my money.
I don't have any illusions about competition and am inclined to believe if not YC then someone else, but at a minimum this tarnishes the image of YC as an organization which supports underdogs, kicks dirt in the face of any independent Indian hackers hanging out here, and discourages anyone not looking for funding from participating. That's a lot of bad karma to exchange for a token investment of a few thousand USD.
It matters who is the best at pulling the levers that get exults.
VWO obviously failed at that. Optimizely, at least in this case, won. Play to your strengths, realize the world isn't fair, and move on with it already.
If I were an LP in YC and they held back because of a post on HN I'd (rightly) be pissed as hell. Who expected them to behave differently?
Btw, I'd bet this "scandal" has no effect on either HN or YCs reputation. I also think people are overestimating ghe values of a mention on TechCrunch.
I know where you are coming from, but startup names can be deceptive. Lot's of great products have bad names, and vice versa. Would you have reviewed the product if it was named Visual Studio - http://www.visualstudio.com, which in my opinion is an ambiguous and mediocre name for a developer product.
Now this is called as - the power of HN and open communication!
Any scarce resource ultimately ends up in the possession of the most worthy, and over time possessing it can have more symbolic value than utilitarian.
Well, I have a feeling ycombinator does a pretty good job of combating this considering they regularly take very young founders.
EDIT: On the flip side, it's reassuring to know that if you believe in yourself and are persistent, you'll eventually get access to these scarce resources.
One of their main benefits is the connections they give you: connections they've cultivated with their "insider" clout. I would consider them a bridge between the insiders and outsiders: they take outsiders, find the best ones, and bring them in.
However, even that's overstating the amount of insiderness that exists. It's amazing how easy it is to network your way into the valley fold. Sure, that requires you to actually be out here, but that's a byproduct of the benefits of in-person networking, not some kind of elite mentality.
People have said it here several times already: TechCrunch caters to an audience. This audience likes to follow YCombinator, and Ron Conway, and a bunch of other well-known programs and people. It's business plain and simple, fairness doesn't come into play.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paraschopra
That guy has the focus of a laser and the patience of Atlas. A young man who has a very bright future ahead of him.
Sincerely, the world outside silicon valley.
And I don't think the phenomenon is a negative one. Just as clothing fashion changes so does naming fashion. For some reason we feel that names should have a timelessness to them, but clothing should not? Both exist to engage humans on an emotional level and human engagement will change over time due to exposure to the current trend.
IMHO Rebranding long lived companies > Stressing out about finding a 'timeless' brand. Optimizing your brand must take temporal concerns into account.
ifyerously
As in: "If you seriously someone's going to remember this name, you're whacked"
That's not creativity.
If they had a system that automatically created the custom segments and let me analyze the data I want in GA that would be incredibly powerful.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l...
I really can't beat this drum enough guys: do A/B testing. If you do it right, it has the potential to really move the needle. It is an exceptionally bad place to go pinching pennies: if you have ~100 visitors a day already, the business value you will get just in a few goes at plucking the low-hanging fruit will dwarf any of the above numbers. (If you don't have 100 visitors a day already, I commend you for your dedication to A/B testing and respectfully recommend you focus more on SEO for the next month and come back later.)