Show HN: Our little bootstrapped startup is powering CNN's ticker for NYE

How did you get CNN to know you exist much less use you? Did you have to tell them about your technology stack or do any kind of stability testing? Congratulations!

It's actually pretty funny. You know those contests that kind of seem pointless and cost like $200 to enter? When we first launched, we entered one of those contests. We didn't win, but someone who produced Anderson Cooper's ill-fated daytime talk show was a judge, and passed us along to his team. After Anderson's daytime show was cancelled, CNN wanted an extremely simple system to show tweets on-air for a show they were launching.

Anyway, our peg is simplicity. If you read that whole blog post it'll make more sense, but yeah.

So you're telling me it's all in who you know?!

I think the real lesson is that it is all in how much you put yourself out there!

There were no family or college connections at work here, they just put themselves out there and serendipity. The former is necessary but not sufficient for the latter (need hard work and a product people want too).

Holy shit, congrats Randall! It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Great start to 2014 :-)

Congrats Randall! If you can answer, I'd love to hear a bit more about the unknown-guy-vs-major-broadcaster relationship :) Did you have any issues as such a small company dealing with a big giant like CNN?

So just like any company, the bigger your price, the more people who have to sign off. So given that we're really really inexpensive compared to most other companies, it's actually really easy for us to get spun up inside most broadcast companies.

CNN was a total non-issue. We showed them a demo at a conference, and then it was just a matter of getting the actual "button pressers" ready to use it on TV. Really simple.

Typically, we can just work with an individual production team, show our vision (the vision helps a lot. People love that we're not just hackers, we're broadcasters too) and get on the air really quickly.

CBS, for instance, had a production team for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And the day before, they called us so they could use our system to get Instagram photos on the air. Normal broadcast procurement processes are like 6 weeks minimum.

Most local broadcasters are in "station groups", and sometimes when we get presented to the higher ups, it's a less-than-pleasant sales cycle because they do things the old way. (a billion meetings, back and forth on contracts, etc.) For the most part though, we're able to avoid that headache.

Does that answer your q? I think you were one of the first people I showed the prototype to at startup school a few years ago, so it's fun to talk about how far it's come since then! :)

Thanks for the detail! One of the folks I'm working with is having trouble banging their head against a big co, but it's good to hear you didn't have such issues. Hadn't thought about it in terms of price, beyond individual budget expense caps...

Awesome to see how far it's come, yeah!

As a fellow entrepreneur also running a bootstrapped startup, I have a question regarding the setup of your employees. Do you have offices in NM and Karachi, or do you have employees in these cities who work from home?

What channels and methods did you use to find them?

Just employees from home. NM dude worked on a previous project with me... Karachi guy emailed us when we launched in TechCrunch a long time ago... and then just kept in contact. Turns out he used to live a few blocks from me in NYC. Pretty crazy.

What sort of options do you have for curation, filtering? How do you find the wheat from the chafe?

Our peg is simplicity. So really, people can search by keyword, filter out unwanted keywords, ban users, filter RTs, etc.

We don't do any big grouping or the sort yet... we just rely on producers to find the posts they're looking for.

What is a "peg"?

Ha. It's a news term. It means like "why should I care about you".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_graph - the same thing in print. :)

Nice work! Cheers from another Utah startup :)

Can you say "cheers" in Utah? You must be referring to non-alcoholic Red Punch, and not what "cheers" really implies! :) Congrats Russell.

We're obviously talking about Martinelli's Sparkling Cider

That's a serious move against someone like Mass Relevance. Super congrats, Randall! Would love to talk sometime :-)

I don't know who you are, so shoot me an email. :) My contact info is in my HN profile.

Hey Randall! I've heard of Vidpresso! Congrats on the hustle. Team Wediges is super excited for you.

hey Randall! our vision is also to change how video is produced! :p glad to see a fellow mario award winner doing well. we're about to announce a big ass customer as well. let's catch up. we're moving to LA...being in video and all.

Yeah dude. I'll ping you when I'm back in my "natural habitat" next week.

Very nice Randall, congrats!

Impressive tech. Congrats on landing CNN, and thanks for the motivation.

You have a team member in Karachi? That made me super happy !

Congratulations !

I had this same idea a few years ago after fighting with vizRT about something or other. Chyron was just as bad. Good job for doing it!

If we have our way, we'll replace them anyway. :)

Heh, interesting. I did some work for those guys when I lived in Innsbruck. Interesting example of how an IT company can be pretty much anywhere.

Congrats! How did you get CNN to work with you?

Awesome Randall, keep killing it in 2014!

Thx dude! Someday we'll work together, I swear! :)

Hi Randall,

If you need any help in Europe then please let me know. I've got a great deal of experience in this area.

Bob

How long did it take to develop it? And how long did you work on that startup?

Best wishes for the New Year!

I've been working on it since October 2011. I went full time on it in 2013.

Thanks for the quick reply =)

Excellent Randall - congrats!

Congrats!

Congrats Randall. Very cool. Here's to a great 2014.

That is awesome! Sounds like a great start to 2014!

Awesome! Great work!

how much preceding knowledge did you have of hardware? How did you manage to find a supplier that will make you the hardware that runs your software?