shafqat

Some anecdotal evidence that its not just YC startups. My company, NewsCred, raised a seed round of approx 1M this summer. We raised it from "top tier" super angel funds. We are not YC, and were not even based in the US. We also were not serial entrepreneurs, although I'd like to think that we're "above average founders!"

Long story short: we did not give up any board control but did not worry too much about price. We got a fair valuation, but nothing crazy.

We can do that for you... http://www.newscred.com.

I'm personally very interested in this as well. Feel free to email me - shafqat at newscred dot com if you want me to put you in touch with our engineer directly.

Sure - we have no fixed vacation policy (apart from that fact that it's unlimited). It's purely based on mutual respect. If a team-member wants to take vacation, its up to him to be responsible and plan accordingly, make sure projects are finished etc. Of course, respect means that you shouldn't take 6 months off. But to date we've never had an issue and we've been doing this for two years and will be close to 20 people soon!

Seedcamp is probably the closed to YC in Europe.

New York, no remote but will relocate people.

NewsCred - a global news distribution platform. Lots of interesting technoloy, great VC backing, product in market with strong revenues.

Looking for an engineer with background in search, information retrieval, solr, lucene or a strong desire to learn.

More here: http://platform.newscred.com/jobs

Great office in Union Square in NYC, unlimited vacations, and other perks. Great office atmosphere - think "Dunder Mifflin."

Its not just the title. There is a story about them going to meet you guys for the interview and then getting rejected.

NewsCred - NYC - prefer to have someone in the office.

We're building a global news distribution platfom and reinventing the traditional newswire business.

We've been struggling to find a great information retrieval engineer. If you know Solr/Lucene or willing to learn, please get in touch. We have great perks (including unlimited vacations) and are based in the union square area of the city.

More here: http://platform.newscred.com/jobs

Why is the text inside the document hard to index? Isn't that what Lucene/Solr is for? Not sure what you mean...

Are you in NYC?

We (http://platform.newscred.com) might be able yo help. Drop me a line (email in platform).

Would love to chat? Can you drop me a line? I'm Shafqat at NewsCred dot com. My startup is in this space so really intrigued!

Pretty good statement in my opinion. It's sad that western media portrayed this entire incident as a "crazy muslim country that does whatever it wants in the name of Sharia law." Seriously?

The communication could have been better (or perhaps it was nonexistent), but if they have regulations not allowing adult and NSFW content on their domains, they are well within their rights. There are many US hosts that have similar regulations and its absolutely understandable.

Would be interested to hear how many funded entrepreneurs on HN were able to cash out some shares at any point in their company's history (similar to what the Foursquare guys did)...

I did. I was fairly senior at Merill Lynch, and left a cushy job, bogus corp title and well over six figures to start NewsCred. Have never looked back. Apart from marrying my wife, it was the best decision i've ever made in my life. Oh yeah, I was scared shitless. Just do it!

There is certainly a structured market (secondmarket) for this. Also, many angels are now selling their shares in later stage financing. So its certainly more liquid now than a few years ago.

NewsCred is always looking for great Information Retrieval engineers (part time or full time). If you love Solr/Lucene, drop me an email! More here: http://platform.newscred.com/jobs.

Nope, you just take as much as you want/need. We dont put restrictions, but expect our team to be respectful and not abuse. As long as you work hard, you can play hard. The type of people we hire understand that and we have never had a problem in the past 2+ years.

Information Retrieval Engineer - New York

Were urgently looking for engineers who have some background in information retrieval, lucene/solr etc. A senior role at venture backed startup opening up a new office in NYC so you would be part of an early team. We already have a product in the market and customers/revenue!

Lots of perks - good salary, equity, unlimited vacations etc.

More here: http://platform.newscred.com/jobs

Can you share what it is? I can atleast intro you to some of my investors if the business/product is compelling and you would at all be interested in taking some investment and continue working on it? Or you can email me (see my profile).

Not sure why you got downvoted for this comment. I've upvoted you to bring you back to neutral. Seems weird.

If you tell us what the product is, there's a much higher likelihood of getting help. In fact, there are people here who might invest. FWIW, I can certainly introduce you to angels/VCs who will take a meeting, but I'd have to know more about your business first. So bottom line: share!

NewsCred Platform (http://platform.newscred.com)

We got to where we are with 250K, and are pretty close to product/market fit. We have paying customers, a great product and a repeatable sales model. However, for us to really step on the accelerator and grow, we need to hire A+ salespeople. We can pay them from cashflow, but that will slow things down. We'd rather raise a small amount of capital (i.e. < 1M) so we can hire a couple of great sales guys and really speed up the growth of our business.

Just a tangible example of why our startup needs money!

Normal dilution is 20-30% per round. Unless you are an outlier (i.e. a 'hot' deal) it will probably be in this range.

Have others experiened the same thing?

We've been successfully selling to medium-to-large businesses for a year now.

1) B2B sales is hard and takes a lot longer than in takes Get used to it now and be patient.

2) For us, only two metrics matter. MCRR (monthly committed recurring revenue) and cashflow. Focus obsessively on cashflow because it's easy to confuse booked sales with cashflow. Money comes in a lot later than you expect.

3) In an early stage startup, the CEO should be selling. A sales guy can't replace the passion and product knowledge that a CEO has.

Just my opinions and lessons learned from the past year. Ping me anytime for specific advice.

I would be really worried if there was no other company in the world that was working on solving the problem that you also working on. Competition is good, it validates the market etc.

The real question is not "some one else is working on this, should I quit?" To me, the real question is "someone else is working on it, the problem is real and there is market demand - am I ready to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to make this company successful?"

Great post. On a slightly related note, are there people in the HN community who are awesome salespeople? Any of you looking for a job?

I've found that selling to enterprise customers isn't the hardest part - it's find really awesome salespeople.

What tool do you use to track search term rankings? Manually or automated?

I just clicked on a link over to a vendor, and didn't see any affiliate tags on the URL. How do you make money on this purchase?

The product was the first one (CNS360 Neoprene)?

Great looking site, and nice idea.

Would you still consider investing in new B2B startups that have shown traction with sales?