Show HN: RandomStartup.org – Refresh the page to discover another startup | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: RandomStartup.org – Refresh the page to discover another startup

randomstartup.org

119 pointspaulborza45 comments

When is a startup no longer a startup?

Should mint.com (acquired by Intuit five years ago after raising thirty million in five rounds) or redfin.com (ten years old, and has raised a hundred million dollars in seven rounds) really be considered startups?

I think a reasonable point at which to consider startups just normal companies is upon IPO or acquisition. That's certainly the end goal for most startups, and when the structure really changes.

...unless they don't IPO, or they aren't acquired. Hopefully there are less grim options for startups to be validated.

I think IPO or acquisition is to narrow criteria. Not all companies go public. You won't call behemoths like Koch Industries, Ernst & Young, Dell or Heinz startups, yet they are not public.

"When is a startup no longer a startup?"

There is really no dejure definition of a startup as it is. Not to mention that the site doesn't even give its own definition of what qualifies to be listed on the site.

+1. I wonder if making the work of curating the list of startups driven by a community, like in Wikipedia, would be more beneficial? It would also work better if start-ups are defined as part of the guideline.

This looks like a collection of startups whose web site is vulnerable to click jacking [1]: they all allow to be embedded in an iframe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickjacking

Seems crazy that sites need to individually opt in to anti-Clickjacking with CSP, instead of modern browsers disabling it by default.

In other cases, the default is to not let a page mix origins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-origin_policy#Cross-Origin...

I thought this is a really good startup generator, until I realized it's real ...

Same here. A generator was posted a few days ago and it took me a couple of startups to realize this was not a (far) better generator. Great initiative though.

Simple and useful, very cool.

One thing I thought was interesting as I was clicking around was how so many of the sites have "converged" to a single UI design style, e.g. full screen photo background overlaid with a short blurb about the site, and a big slightly rounded-rectangular "start" button (sometimes some text fields), then as you scroll down you usually get a couple horizontally laid out big icons, etc. etc.

Of course, this isn't surprising, but it just becomes so apparent as you click refresh. Just thought it was interesting, that's all.

I also noticed a high frequency of "X made simple" or "X made easy" headers on the landing page.

Most sites seem to look like a Bootstrap template, even if they don't use Bootstrap.

Just goes to show the impact those guys from Twitter have made. Whether that's a positive thing or a negative thing, it is still massive.

Very addictive and a neat way to see what is going on out there with a quick browse.

I'd suggest more modern look and feel for the top bar, maybe something like a black bkgd with opacity? Currently it pulls the feel of the site down a bit.

A mechanism to flag sites as 'not a start-up' would be good. There are already sites like 9gag and upworthy in the mix. (4 & 144)

What counts as a startup? Both 9gag and Upworthy raised many VC millions.

Neat! It's like Stumbleupon for Startups. Also, I tried to add mine, but it's restricted?

You're right, it's restricted :| I'll fix it soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

It's fixed now!

I was thinking on making something like this, I am happy you beat me to it. Just remember, this should be used for discovery.

Scratch that, google docs for submittal :) seriously?! Even graduates from devbootcamp's can do 100 times better and we should give them some slack.

What's wrong with Google docs for submitting? By using it he was probably able to whip this site up in a few hours instead of a day or two. Why waste time building something you won't end up pursuing?

Good job! How do you check if the startup's site can be embedded into your iframe?

i check for the x-frame-header

Nice, simple, and addictive! If you don't mind, adding it to startuplister.com

It is kind of addicting.

1)The top bar can be improved.

2) Hackerrank constantly refreshes for me. Some sites do not load properly.

3) Lots of startups appear again, if a startup site has been shown can it be removed from the queque?

You could add a link to the startup in question to the panel. Sometimes the startup's page doesn't have a clear link to click on.

EDIT: Noticed that you can click the #<number>

I actually like this. Although it "feels" a bit slow when loading up the page, its compensated with a smooth scrolling experience which is not choppy.

Strangely enough, the first startup that was shown is the only startup from Arkansas that has gone to Y. I am a developer in Arkansas. Creepy.

It's just a coincidence. The selection of the startup to show is done randomly on each request.

Similar to: http://startuptabs.com/tab/

Yup, there's also a chrome extension available.

Would be good if considers user location. I'm not interested in startups outside of my country =)

I've built this over the weekend so that I get a chance to play around with Node.js

I've been wanting to build something like this, different vertical. Would you be willing to share the source, techniques, or write a tutorial? Just trying to learn and would love the help. Thanks!

I'll push the source code to a public repository on GitHub in the next few days and we can take it from there. I'll also add a link to the repo. in the site's header so that anyone can find the code.

Awesome thanks!!!!

Thanks for that. I tried to submit my startups, but I get "You need permission. This form can only be viewed by users in the owner's organisation.", unfortunately.

I've fixed the security problem on the submission form. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please try again.

great, thanks for being quick.

Awesome. Hook it up to Angel List and you'll have made a fun sweepstakes investment game for VCs. How do you add a startup?

Definitely! Angel List has a really simple REST API, it shouldn't be hard to do.

I used it with my (fake) EdTEch Startup Generator[1], to check if my fake startup is actually a real startup. I was surprised how often it happens.

[1] http://eduwampus.herokuapp.com *

* May load a little slow, it's on Heroku free tier.

You can use the "submit yours (free)" link which is at the very top of the page.

Good job, it makes discovery easy!

Everything looks fine. Please try to modify the css of the top frame. It looks little old. You can try modern flat colors.

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