Comment by scumola | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scumola | Hacker News Reader

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Yea, we only submitted our site to one VC group so-far, and the competition was fierce (380 submissions and only 10 were chosen for funding). I've never dealt with Investors of any kind before, so it's kind of a new game to me. I'm comfortable with a keyboard and a compiler, not so much with business people and I suck at golf. :)

It's interesting that even this article on YC has inspired people to submit their own personal Flash websites, so we'll crawl them and index them, so there's some interest. How much interest is still yet to be seen. We're not into the 10k uniques or anywhere close to it, so that's a catch-22.

I'm intimidated by Google and Yahoo going into this market full-steam and us being the only bug to squash. They might not even care about us and just roll over the top of us, but I think - at least listening to what others have suggested is that the key is to out-innovate Google and Yahoo and just do a better job. Ask.com has great search results, but hardly anyone even knows that they exist. Personally, I think that google likes that their search results are lame - they sell more ad clicks that way. Google's search results are just 'good enough' to keep people from abandoning their site and going somewhere else. Also all of the other web-apps give customers a warm-fuzzy about using a Google service. I know that we have all of that to compete with, but I'm still optimistic. :)

"We're not into the 10k uniques or anywhere close to it, so that's a catch-22."

Seriously, solve that problem or have a VERY credible story on how you could in a very capital efficient manner with a little money. If you aren't growing organically (and FAST), you need to very critically ask yourself why. If your solution is YCombinator, TechStars, getting TechCrunched, etc-- you need to realize that none of those things generate growth. If you can't grow 100 visitors to 1000, you're not going to fare much better with the 10k uniques that a TechCrunch post gives you.

My gut tells me that the only people who want to search a database of ONLY Flash sites are Flash designers/developers... The rest of the world doesn't want a vertical search engine-- they just want the best results (whether it's Flash, HTML, or a PDF).

Maybe there's a niche business there, but there almost certainly isn't an investor on the planet who would fund it without proof of dramatic traction and growth. We're fundraising right now, have the YC stamp, a great growth rate, paying customers, bafflingly good PR coverage, and we still get plenty of investors who balk due to the perceived size of the opportunity.

"If you aren't growing organically (and FAST), you need to very critically ask yourself why."

Thank you for your thoughts. You could be completely correct for all I know. I don't mind serving a very niche community. But as far as organic growth we haven't released the site other then on YC today :)

FWIW, I love the idea of a bootstrapped business serving a niche audience... I guess my main point is that there is a fork in the road for startups-- if you want to get funded, you are almost certainly NOT going the niche route. For investors to get excited, yoou need to start getting monomaniacal about attacking a huge opportunity and building a huge business. Investors need to hear a story that involves them getting a 10x return (or at least the potential of it) or they almost certainly aren't buyin'.

Either way-- grats on what you've built!

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