Startups that TechCrunch missed out on | Hacker News Reader

Startups that TechCrunch missed out on

startupplays.com

37 pointsfrancov8819 comments

I've recently have started using Balanced Payments. It is by far the best marketplace payments processor ever however it is never covered by anyone in the tech media.

There are lots of gems out there, I wish TC and others would stop the bullshit and just write about the best start ups not just the ones funded or founded by rock stars.

There's a discovery problem here.

An article on TechCrunch is more likely to earn your company reputation among your peers (other companies and investors) than do anything for your user experience. And the best start-ups are 100% focused on the user experience, not on their "inter-corporate reputation".

TechCrunch needs to actively search for these start-ups in their earlier stages in order to cover them. The best early-stage start-ups won't go to TechCrunch until they've already gotten big.

As a counterpoint, my company was featured on TC this morning and we're boot-strapped and neither of us are even close to being rock stars. I realize we may be an exception to the rule, but it is possible for a young company (We started March 29th) to get noticed and picked up. It did take a lot of persistence and effort, but was definitely worth it.

If you're interested, here's the article: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/03/appthwack-takes-on-android-...

Awesome. Yeah there are exceptions. For example if you reach the top of HN and there is lots of feedback u will get featured on some tech blog somewhere.

No wonder TechCrunch didn't cover these. Most of them only have a landing page up.

I'm actually curious whether all these startups are linked, like through the same incubator or something.

If so, clever strategy for getting press, esp. on HN.

Travtar: way too beta to be featured

- no popup to choose a date, none of the date format variations I entered (US and ISO) were accepted, got an opaque 'your search parameters are not valid'

- search for 'San Sebastian', get 'did you mean San Sebastian, Spain' which is unclickable

- forgets form fields between http requests

http://approve.io/ seems the same way. One page. No real details. No legal details.

These all look good, however most of them look like they are still trying to get to MVP.

Agreed.

Hey, I'm with Approve.io and yes unfortunately our site is a little bare at the moment. We have a full site which we will be releasing shortly. We're funded and past the MVP stage and will be launching August.

Are you us only or will you be available in the uk?

We will be launching US only, however Canada will be following shortly after (1-2 months) and then the UK is next on the list (3-4 months).

Thanks for checking us out. What browser were you using? Right now, we're only optimized for Chrome. Would appreciate any feedback you have. Yup, we're pretty beta but working on getting feedback (on the product, generally & technically).

Is it just me, or looking at that list does one get the feeling that the golden age of web 2.0 is behind us? I'll grant you that there were quite a few weak companies back in the day, but there was always something exciting that you'd run across in the pages of TechCrunch: And looking at that list not only don't I see the next Facebook, I'm not even sure that I see the next bit.ly. Am I just jaded or am I missing something?

I agree. Reading through this list, all I saw was a bunch of sites trying to solve problems that someone else had either already solved, or targeting a market that was too niche to gain much traction.

Loved the Arden-Reed mock, although frankly I think providing style for pasty guys with excess mass is probably a more interesting angle that no one seems to go after. I means Kim Dotcom used to have serious money, you could liberate some of that with something targeting that space. Too many folks trying to capture the hipster chic it seems.

OpenEra.net looks like it could be a killer service, especially if they can integrate with more services (Google Drive, Skydrive, UbuntuOne, etc.)

GDrive integration is in the works, along with an API for connecting to other services! If you signed up for an account,leave a comment using the Feedback button re: services integration and we'll let you know as soon as we roll out Google Drive.

Loving Openera.net!

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