lloydarmbrust

Umm, it took seven years for Craigslist to become "an overnight success". Newspapers knew about it--we did and I was working for a newspaper at the time--but they ignored it.

If every newspaper in America would have gone to a free + paid model they could have saved at least half of their revenue and craigslist would still only be in 7 cities. But they wouldn't embrace change a lost big.

Agreed. Newspapers aren't dying, they're slowly committing suicide.

True to a degree. Think of small local papers as having a 10-year buffer--they're like looking at large papers in 2001.

There are several groups trying to kill small papers (like patch.com). And they will succeed if newspapers do not rise to the challenge. Technology is becoming cheap and accessible enough that makes this scenario possible. But the difference between patch and a local paper is that Patch doesn't really care about the markets they server--if they stop making a enough revenue they could pull out and leave after they've killed the small paper serving that market.

Okay, that statement was incorrect--but I'm not sure how to phrase it.

My point was that if we were still in Minnesota, there is a 0% chance that you or any of our awesome investors would have given us a chance. Being a part of YC gave us the chance to meet and interact with some of the greatest minds in the Valley.

Our idea is essentially a unique approach to a sales model--it's hard to convince someone of that over e-mail.

I do apologize for phrasing it incorrectly.

Ha, yeah, with a wife and two kids I can say that I can at least agree with the latter part of your assessment. :)

It's true. Telling friends and family what we do usually ends in an awkward stare. It consistently blows me away that people would rather work for 3M or the government than build something awesome that they love.

It's not--want to see my excel sheets?

Yeah. Poor company name. Maybe we should have gone with "Newpaperly".

Pretend you're a local locksmith in a town of 10k, or an auto mechanic, or hair dresser. You're been paying the Yellow Pages $199/mo for 20 years but less and less people are coming in from that ad. Now, you have two options: one, do you go with Google or Facebook, or YP.com, or some other company probably from "California" that you just don't trust; or two, go with your local newspaper who has a very similar product and who you've done business with your entire life?

These people are our customers. I've actually heard folks say "I don't trust those California people"--wrap your mind around that and get back to me.

The truth is that by partnering with newspapers Seeing Interactive has a potential sales force of 30,000 trusted-local reps. Even if the newspaper industry is dying--which is a ridiculous claim--we still have the feet on the street and technology today to sell markets that Yelp or Google will never reach.

Really? The YP industry lost 25% market share last year. Print YellowPages is gone in 5 years. Local businesses literally hate YP reps because they only enter their market once a year looking to collect their "protection money". Contrast that to their Newspaper reps who they actually like and have an industry average of 10 years experience.

Got ya.

Were you there? I was and didn't see this "meh" reaction you're talking about.

Right. I guess I don't understand what part of all this makes you "not really impressed" with us?

The other companies in the list you actually gave reasons, but with us you just keep referring to this previous conversation and I do not understand your point.

Hmm... I'm Seeing Interactive and not an "HN'er". Yeah, we're from the Austin area but I challenge you to find a start-up anywhere with 250 newspaper relationships.

I don't think you can put the value of YC in one sentence.

Finally! Now ... umm ... certain people I know won't have to pirate stupid Acrobat. I hate that program.

The funny thing is that Adobe could probably make the same thing in about three weeks, but they won't because they hate change.

I was referring to the competition to get in.

It makes sense that if YC is getting more applications than their applicants will be better and more prepared. Several companies in this round had already produced several products, were ramen profitable, and had been operating for sometimes years previous to becoming a YC company.

Where's the BlackBerry love Chad?

I think the competition to be a YC company is high enough now that most companies show up the first day with an actual product.

I can't imagine how the YC partners have time to make this happen, but then again, I'm not sure how they fulfill their current responsibilities.

The correct answer is that there is no set number. They seem to try to interview as many applicants as they can in three days and then pick the ones that work from that batch. Since PG believes that they are getting better at picking startups that will not die, my bet is that number will grow every year.

Another thought: I seriously doubt that the number of startups funded has anything to do with available capital, but rather the logistics of each startup being able to work directly with Paul.

Yeah, me also with the BlackBerry. Regrettable I know, but my office forced everyone to go RIM, so that's what I use to share pictures with grandparents, etc.

I absolutely tired of this crap.

Newspapers never made money from content. Never.

Circulation revenue was created to subsidize the cost of the print medium--the online medium is now basically free so revenue should scale according.

Where did this fantasy of "content sells" come from? And why do Murdoch-types seem so keen on bashing Google? It's like he forgets 75% of his web traffic comes from Google.

Personally I'd like to see the search giant pull links to News Corp's web properties and watch Murdoch slip from the Forbes 400.

Do you have a demo?

I'm Jnovek's co-founder. We deal with businesses who are used to being trampled on, so impressing them is really not that hard--but here's a quick list of some of the things we've done:

1) We're honest and super-fast in responding to problems. This is huge, even if you say, "whoa, we have no idea what's wrong but we're working on it" that makes them feel like you care.

2) If anything does break, we're quick to give discounts. I firmly believe that if our product doesn't perform as advertised then our customer shouldn't have to pay for it.

3) I take any chance I can to "wow" them. For example, once an employee of one of our clients had to do a bunch of extra work to make our product work on their platform, while on the phone I had overheard her talking about how excited she was to go see New Kids on the Block in concert and so we had a NKTB shirt sent to her the next day. It cost us $50 but we have that client's love forever.

4) We send letters. Real letters. (In the mail.) When you send someone a hand-written note in the mail, they know you took the time to make that happen--little things add up to big things.

5) We ask our clients for suggestions, and work with them to make the product work better for them. It's very important that our client is making money with our product--not just paying us for it.

6) I try to understand how their business works and uses our product. For example, if I know they are usually busy on Wednesdays, I'll write that down and call them on another day.

When you sit down with a client, talk about their problems, and try to build products that solve those problems they get really excited--when you use their ideas, they feel like they have ownership of your product.

How does this pay off? We have clients who go to events and speak to others in their field about our product. And most of our clients are happy to receive calls from others about our business.

Our self-appointed evangelist clients are probably worth more to our company than the code we write.

Have you ever worked in a newspaper? It's like working in government (I know, I've worked in both).

The problem with newspapers is bureaucratic waste . . . and the inability to adapt quickly. I think journalists should be paid more, but that the bureaucratic structure that surrounds them should be eliminated.

So, their customers are spammers and MLMers then?

I think a startup's competitive edge is often not the product or space that they are in but the people on their team. For example, my company is in a pretty competitive space with lots of big corporations as our competitors--but we don't worry because the one thing that News Corporation or Rupert Murdoch doesn't have is me and my team.

I've heard that in previous rounds they e-mail around 9:30PM CST.

Makes sense, I mean if I were PG I'd take all the time I could (seems like a hard decision).

Also, be sure to check your spam folder as I've also heard the message can end up there.

What's killing publishers is not a content monetizing problem, it's a basic business-model problem: publishers have been making too much money on print-ad sales and like everything else the internet has made advertising cheaper.

Publishers don't just need to perfect a micro-payment solution for content, they need to change the way they create that content to make their entire business cheaper to operate.