answerly

Thanks for the kind words and feedback!

>>I haven't been able to figure out why it is delivered as a browser extension, though

This came largely from alpha user feedback. Those folks told us that they wanted access to the question stream, but didn't want another login to manage to access Twitter data. So, we started with the extension which made it easy to be notified when there were new questions.

We are working on a web app as well as integration into some of the major Twitter clients and social media dashboards. Eventually we'll get to mobile (another highly requested platform). That way folks will have lots of options as to how they access our tools.

When that happens it is usually a conflict with another extension. If you email me with the other extension you may be running we can do our best help out (joe@inboxq.com).

Thanks, Alex. That is definitely something we are aware of and are adding a "mute" button so you can block the type of users that you are talking about. We are also building a quality filter specifically to address that type of behavior (ie so those folks just don't show up in the first place).

We are a startup (YC W10) looking for great summer interns and would happily help with visas, etc for the right person. My contact info is in my profile if you'd like to chat.

Yes- we were accepted in the Winter 2010 batch a little over a year ago. We weren't planning on applying at first, but did so on a lark at the last minute. It has, without a doubt, been the best decision we ever made for our business.

There is nothing age specific about YC. There have been YC founders over 40.

I think that folks that complain about being "too old" for YC usually mean that they have lots of commitments that aren't compatible with the requirements of the program.

But, there are plenty of YC founders of all ages with significant others, kids, mortgages and other financial commitments.

People that are looking for an excuse will typically find one.

Applying to Y Combinator.

Thanks for trying out the plugin!

If you are open to sharing, it would be great to see the keywords/phrases you are tracking and quality settings you are using. You can email me at joe@inboxq.com if you like and I can do my best to help you find the right mix that will improve the output for you.

There are about 1.5m Tweets with a question mark each day. We start with that pool and then use a bunch of filters to get down to about 30-60k actual questions. Our models aren't perfect, so you will likely see some tweets that may be in the form of a question but not have an information need. But that number shouldn't be 99%.

We've also seen that there are big swings in question quality based off of the topics related to the keywords you are tracking.

At any rate, happy to help figure it out so please email if you are so inclined.

There is a bunch more paperwork and cost related to dealing with non-accredit folks.

Since they are non-accredited, it is safe to assume they don't have a lot of money to invest anyway. So, the additional overhead/legal cost is very likely not worth the hassle.

If there are value add folks in this group maybe consider taking them on as advisors rather than investors.

Sorry about the confusion!

Queryable, Corp. is the corporate entity that we set up when we founded the company.

Answerly.com was our first consumer product. We've always been known to our investors, partners, vendors as Answerly because that was the consumer facing piece.

We've stopped actively developing the Answerly.com q&a search engine and are focusing all of our time on InboxQ now. It is the exact same team, same corporate entity and much of the same core tech.

Hope this clears things up a bit. If you have any questions, just let me know.

Thanks for asking!

I agree with you. I think there will ultimately be different variations of the product based on the goals/objectives of the business.

Our goal at this stage was to put enough structure around the product that it would be useful, but also make it accessible enough that lots of different types of users could get value out of it. We'll move in the direction(s) that users point us in.

Great questions.

Our thesis here is that Twitter is a major channel for businesses to interact with existing and potential customers and is only going to get bigger.

Big companies are already deploying lots of resources in an attempt to find high quality engagement opportunities on Twitter. For example Microsoft employs a whole team of support folks looking for xbox related questions and making sure they get satisfactory answers.

Most companies aren't Microsoft and can't afford that type of resource outlay, but will also want to take advantage of this channel. We hope that InboxQ will be a tool that helps them do that efficiently.

Ultimately, our goal is to help reduce the transactional friction on the channel as a whole (ie the funnel you detailed above). This is the first step towards that goal.

Hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Thanks!

The feedback we got early on from potential customers was that they loved the idea of sourcing questions from Twitter. But, they didn't want another place to login to access Twitter data.

So, we figured a browser app was a good first step since its persistent and didn't require constant monitoring. There will be a full web app in the future.

>but I'm just wondering how common this kind of lock-in is

This is very common. One of the primary purposes of employee stock options is to create the lock-in effect you are talking about. That is why they are sometimes called "golden handcuffs".

>I think founders often have extraordinary skill

I think that was Aaron's point. Daniel is an extraordinary person. An ordinary person would probably have just given up given a similar set of circumstances.

You certainly don't have anything to worry about. There is nothing age specific about YC.

I am pretty sure that I remember pg mentioning in a previous thread on this topic that there have been YC founders in their 40's and 50's.

The age range in our batch (w2010) was 18 to late 30's with the average probably being somewhere in the middle 20's.

Startup.com and E-dreams are documentaries about high flying startups (GovWorks and Kozmo.com, respectively) from the first dotcom boom.

Interestingly, both document NYC startups rather than Silicon Valley ones. There are some great Sand Hill road scenes in Startup.com, though.

That is really just the standard "style guide" of the site. YC companies are always referenced that way in titles.

It seems a bit unfair to make the assumption there is something opportunistic going on. The 1000Memories team are very thoughtful about the sensitive nature of their business in my experience.

Check out: http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/

There is obviously no replacement for situation specific legal advice from a real live lawyer.

>>I recall about.com as a decent site a while ago, but I believe it was acquired a while ago by ... Yahoo!? Go figure.

About.com is owned by the New York Times Company, not Yahoo.

Salary.com has reasonably good data that I have found to be at least directionally accurate.

Crunchbase.com is a great resource for this type of research. Try searching for companies in the categories you mention and see which investors are in those deals.

Test all this stuff. Use a tool like Optimizely to create a few variations and see what works best.

A pending legal action could put the acquisition in jeopardy. I'd expect that they would take any credible legal threat very seriously. See if you can get a lawyer to write a threatening collections letter. That may be all you need to get them motivated.

It shouldn't cost you very much to get a letter drafted by an attorney. It took my lawyer about an hour to draft a similar letter in the past, so figure 1-2 hours times your lawyer's hourly rate.

Are there any established, complimentary products in the market? That is, companies that sell to the same types of clients that you want to target but that you wouldn't consider competitors.

If so, try talking to those companies and see if you can structure a partnership where they sell your product to their clients and keep a chunk of the sales price. The downside is that you make less money, but you also presumably have lower cost of sales.

>>But if there's a third-party saying "you with the steaks: you'll get those from this particular guy with potatoes. and you with the potatoes: vice versa."

That doesn't happen.

YC is more like a university alumni association. They foster communication between companies through events, mailing lists, introductions, etc. But, each company makes decisions independent of the larger group.

It sounds like you are asking the investor to take all the risk of a standard investment, but with potentially less upside. Seems like a tough sell.

It indicates to Google (and presumably other crawlers) that the site supports the AJAX crawling scheme. More here:

http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started...

We also have a bunch of internal data from our q&a search engine. I wouldn't want to publish that publicly, but feel free to email me (address in my profile) and I'd be glad to share.

According to the Google keyword suggestion tool, the global search volumes for those phrases are:

"How to" - 226m "How do I" - 9.14m "How do you" - 11.1m