Hacker News Reader

Comment by Estragon | Hacker News Reader

So, how are octopart and wufoo doing? (They both seem to be around, still. Have they been in the news, lately?)

They're both doing well, actually. Both are profitable. Wufoo remarkably so, but they've had longer.

Quick question: Do you make a note of how successful a startup would be when you fund it, and then revisit those notes a year or 2 down the line? How do you make sure you have the right feedback mechanisms in place?

wufoo's demo video peters out just where it gets interesting to me, and it confuses me about their value proposition: once you've got the form made, what do you do with it? Do they just give you the html and point you to where the URL for the CGI ought to go?

You're right in that creating a a form in Wufoo is only the beginning. At that point, you can start sharing the link to the form or embedding it on a web page to start collecting data, leads or even payments. You can do all this from our Code Manager: http://wufoo.com/docs/code-manager/

Built into every form is also the ability to subscribe to the incoming data in real time to your email inbox, mobile device via SMS or your RSS Newsreader.

We also have a robust report building feature that can help you visualize and export your data so you can better understand the information you've collected.

You can learn more about all these different steps in our other video tutorials at http://wufoo.com/docs/getting-started/

Thanks for the explanation.

Wufoo is the easiest to use backdoor to a database out there.

i asked the MIT Electronics Research Society http://mitERS.mit.edu if anyone used octopart and what they thought. here are the responses so far (sent to public list not just me personally):

"It's a great idea, it's useful, but it's a work in progress and not yet a replacement for searching distributor websites." -henry

"If you know what you're looking for and Octopart has incorporated it, you'll find it in seconds flat, and it's fantastic. Unfortunately, it seems spotty in terms of catalog completeness, and it is not as comfortable as browsing/guided search on, say, DigiKey or Mouser, so it gave me mixed results." -darwin

I agree and disagree. Octopart is very revealing if you do low volume manufacturing had have been caught in the 'digikey convenience turbine'. Like any search engine, it's useless if you don't have the part. But there are a lot of core parts to a generic circuit board listed, so I end up using it quite a lot.

thanks for asking mitERS for their input. please let everyone know to email me with suggestions on how we can help them search for parts (andres@octopart.com).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com