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Yeah, they are definitely similar. The main difference I see is that all the lists look individualize - that is, you can't merge lists across all users to get a comprehensive lists that includes all items.

Thanks for the heads up.

Good question regarding our audience. We don't really intend to make Seekler a place you would visit every day (as you noticed, we have quite a few gaps in our content, so for any niche, you'll probably only find a few lists that interest you right now) - instead, we're trying to make it resource, more like Wikipedia, but for opinions. The idea is that if you're looking for something in particular niche, you'll start your search on Seekler. Our goal is save you time - instead of spending 20-30 minutes finding your next movie, book, whatever, we can make that 5 minutes or so.

Of course, until we get a lot more data, people won't really start their search at Seekler. But we're starting to show up pretty high on Google results for a number of our lists, so we are trying to get our initial traffic that way.

Your point about the widget and FB is interesting. We have a widget that is being tested and we're strongly considering building a FB app to play up the social angle. For instance, right now the 'Best Movies' list merges the lists of all users - would it be interesting to see a list created from just the lists of your FB friends?

Thanks for the questions and feedback. We're learning something new every day...

Yes, basically it'll be supported via advertising and affiliate partnerships once we can get traffic going. The issue we've heard from users (including the news.yc community - thanks everyone for the feedback!) is that the site looks a little "spammy." The redesign will keep most things the same, just show a bit more about each item (including a description and some reviews).

We just launched seekler.com on January 7th. Seekler is a collection of community-built lists that make it really fast and easy to find new stuff like movies, music, etc.

We had some good early traffic (from a few great links to one of our lists), but unfortunately things have slowed down a lot in the past few weeks. We think the basic concept is great, but we're wondering if the UI is keeping people from really digging into our content. We're going to probably release a slightly tweaked interface on Monday. And, as always, we're always looking for feedback on how we could make Seekler better.

OK, good to know. We'll definitely try some tweaks to decrease the spamminess of the site.

Thanks for the feedback, we'll continue to try to simplify the page so it's less crowded.

Very interesting. We actually got feedback that we didn't have enough on the front page before (and as result, we weren't getting the main idea of site across).

Do you think the 'too much text on the front page' issue is primarily because of our example lists (the 'popular','recent', and 'featured' lists)?

Thanks for the thoughts.

Well, I'm pretty passionate about comics, but I'm always having trouble finding the next really great Batman graphic novel. We're trying to appeal to consumers who know something about an area, but are still looking to find new stuff within it.

The scenario we imagine is this: I'm looking for a new Batman comic. I google 'Best Batman Comics' and Seekler appears in the first page of results (we're not there yet, but we on the front page for a few of our lists). I go there, and hopefully quickly find something I hadn't heard of. But, during this process, I find that 'Batman: Year One' is ranked above 'Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'. I think that's obviously wrong, so I create my own list to rank the Batman comics I have read, putting TDKR on top and adding another Batman comic that wasn't even on the list.

So in our mind, the scenario is reversed - most people will come just to find new stuff on lists built by experts (who will be us and outside sources, initially). Eventually a small percentage of them will start contributing back to the site and make the lists even better.

Thanks for the feedback. You're right that we need to clarify the benefit on the home page - and narrowly targeting a list-centric audience is a great idea too, we're planning on doing exactly that.

We have heard that during our alpha as well. Do you mean the home page or when looking at one of the lists? Or both?

One of our challenges has been to present a lot of information without, well, looking too spammy. We'll continue to work on it.

Oh, if you'd like to see an example of a list that's got a number of contributors (and some good information and tags), check out

http://seekler.com/lists/Anticipated+Movies+of+2008

Ideally we'd like to have a ton of lists that have this much info.

We released our alpha a few months ago and got great feedback from this community. Now we've added some new features, fixed bugs, and most importantly, anyone can create an account.

We'd love to hear any and all feedback. Thanks!

Interesting. The site is designed for 1024x768, it should should not require horizontal scrolling. Is your browser window full-screen, or do you browse in a smaller window?

No, a devil's advocate is definitely what we need. I hear good feedback, not harshness.

I think you're right - the user account is going to our biggest barrier to entry. I think that using the info that already exists in a user's profile on Facebook, Myspace, etc is a great idea. For Facebook, we could build an app that grabs this data. For other services, we might just be able to scrape the data from their profiles on demand.

We definitely want to make it as easy as possible to input data into Seekler. Thanks for the great feedback.

Thanks for the heads up. We have been looking around for competitors (and have already shown the site to a large number of people) and you're the first to point out Unspun (so at least they are not really well-known yet).

There are a number of existing competitors out there, but this one definitely looks the most similar to our concept. We'll just have to differentiate ourselves with features and usability. Thanks!

Hey, great feedback. I totally agree with you - the navigation on the results is pretty confusing and we should make it all consistent. Thanks a ton!

No, you're not belittling it at all. Communicating the purpose and value of the site clearly and quickly has been a recurring problem (and we still haven't gotten it right yet).

To answer your question: The value to you is to find new stuff. So if you are interested in crime comics, you would come to Seekler to quick find some new comics to buy. Ditto with music, movies, etc. If you happen to have an opinion on some area, it'd be awesome if you made a list yourself, but it's not necessary.

Interesting. I can definitely see what you're saying and we don't want to give that impression to first-time users. Thanks!

Interesting. What would you expect to happen when you click on that image? We weren't sure what to do with that link, so we just had it take you to the main page. This seems to be a pretty common pattern (Reddit, Digg, and Favebook all behave similarly), but if this goes against user's expectations, we'd happily change it.

Great idea. It is pretty tedious to go through that many pages of results. Thanks!

Do you mean the "Seekler" image in the top left links to itself?

Same here. Bummer.

Congrats to the winners! And to those who weren't accepted (like me) - go kick butt anyway.

I just wanted to follow up and let everyone know how we ended up answering this question. Hopefully this helps somebody out there.

The more we thought about it, the more we realized that we had no idea what the company would really be worth after three months. It was just too hard for us to figure out a number that we could defend. Other people are probably better at this than us.

So instead we thought about why we wanted to create the startup in the first place. In a nutshell, we want to work really hard on cool problems that we love and get rewarded for it. Someone buying our company basically takes this away from us (since we would already be working on something cool that we love, and we wouldn't get to work on it anymore).

So we asked ourselves: how much money would we want to ensure that we could work hard on cool problems we love again? In other words, how much money would we need to go back to square one and start another startup?

For us, we basically decided we wanted enough money to work on any problem we want for a few years, plus enough money to fund our next startup when we come up with an idea we're excited about. That's the best way we found to attach a dollar figure to what we want. You may have other factors to consider, but for us, it worked pretty well.

In any case, thanks a ton for all the good responses and feedback. It definitely helped us.

I think I've stated our question poorly. It's not that we don't want to answer truthfully, it's that we're having a hard time converting what we want into a dollar figure.

Here's what we want: We want to work on cool problems. We want to make software that solves problems. We want to make enough money to live comfortably. We want to love our work.

Hopefully, in three months, we'll have some of what we want, and be on track to get the others. Someone buying the company from us may change those things in lots of different ways, depending on the situation.

Our question is, how do we quantify those wants? It's not clear to me how to do so. One approach may be to quantify other factors that would lead to us getting what we want - such as the amount of money we'd want to start another startup.

I could just give something in the ballpark, but it wouldn't be particularly accurate. For instance, I could say that giving away the site we love to work on is worth x, but if someone asks me why not x-1 or x+1, I won't have a good answer.

"The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size.

Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me

Programming:

Getting Real

The Pragmatic Programmer

Hackers and Painters

Business:

Good to Great

Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about small business before I started, and it's a good intro)

Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished)

Technology/Culture:

The Long Tail

The World is Flat

Productivity/People:

Getting Things Done

Getting to Yes

How to Win Friends and Influence People

We're working hard on finishing up our YC application, and we're having a lot of problems with this one:

"If one wanted to buy you three months in (August 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?"

First of all, what if we're not particularly interested in selling the company that fast? Should we just put some ridiculously high number that no one would actually pay?

Also, the numbers would seem to vary significantly depending on the details of the acquisition. Are we getting jobs at the purchasing company with good salaries, stock, and creative freedom? Or are we getting some lump sum? Should we put different numbers for different situations?

But assuming we knew we wanted to sell and knew some specifics of the deal, it's still hard for me to come up with hard numbers. Should I base it on how much money we think the product will make? Or perhaps how much money we want to have in the bank to fund future startups? Or on the estimated value of our assets after three months?

How are you approaching this question? What factors are you considering? Any help is appreciated.

Yeah, the social stuff and the girlfriend are not really top issues, but still things we thought about. In fairness, my co-founder told me flat out that the gf thing was not a huge issue for him, simply because, like you said, it's going to be rough for them either way, and she understands we need to make this work.

As for the social aspect, I'll admit it - I'd like to be able to occasionally have some fun outside work. Do I think we're going to be partying every night (either in Cambridge or Denver)? Hell, no. Would I like to have some good friends around? Well, yeah. Is not having a group of friends available a con? Yeah, it is. My life is both work and play. I have no illusions about the ratio of those two while creating a startup, but I'd still like my limited play time to be of high quality.

Plus, It's very unlikely it would be for only three months - if it were just that, I'd wouldn't worry about it. But the reality is that if we move to Cambridge, I we wouldn't be leaving unless we had a good reason.

In any case, thanks for the feedback...

That's a good point. We don't have a strong network of angels, VCs, and other founders here in Denver. That's definitely a huge plus of the YC experience. I do wonder if we could build a network that would be good enough in the next few months, since we have a few good contacts and Denver/Boulder is pretty good for that type of stuff (admittedly, not as good as Cambridge or the Bay Area).

Again, not knocking YC, just weighing our options.

Whoops, my fault. Thanks for the heads up. I've fixed it.

I hope I didn't come across as not willing to go "all in." I certainly didn't intend that. My intent was to outline the issues we considered, with the hope that others might find it useful and even suggest variables we hadn't considered.

At this point, I really couldn't back out if this startup even if I wanted to (and I have no desire to): I quit my job, spent a ton of money to move, and told everyone I know about my plans. As Dharmesh Shah of onstartups would say, I'm emotionally committed, which is more significant than my financial commitment (He has a good post about this at http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1204/Startup-Founders-The-Involved-vs-The-Committed.aspx ).

As dfranke pointed out, we have more options than only accepting YC funding or not accepting. The real question is whether it makes more sense for us to keep going with money we have in Denver and find angel funding on our own, or move and take YC funding in a few months.