I'm Chris Thurston, one of the co-founders of SearchEye. We raised USD$800K from investors, and we have a marketplace model connecting brands and publishers.
Why?
1) Tech companies are addicted to FB ads and Google ADs. The CPA is growing rapidly.
2) Brands and publishers should be connected via a network marketplace model, not agencies and gatekeepers.
3) "Publishers" are fragmenting from a handful of big ones (MSM) to a long tail. Everyone consumers their own mix.
4) Search is also fragmenting across video, audio, social, etc.
5) So technology is the perfect way to connect these nodes. We're doing that.
We're focusing on authentic signals that work even if you don't care for search traffic. Ironically, these are the signals search engines most pay attention to. So either way, the path is to focus on authentic and meaningful connections.
Would love thoughts, comments, notes, questions, etc.
Is this a solution I can use when Gmail challenges a login and asks for a phone number? We often use a "[email protected]" convention, with a GSuite setup, that they share access to their Google Search Console and Analytics with so our team can access. But because we have team members across regions, they often get login challenges. How does this work with that?
Instead of build, launch the landing page and do it concierge, by focusing on the skill set you have (building) you'll likely miss out on the most important first step - seeing if there's a market and learning how to make sales.
Right now, sounds like you're focusing on the solution. Just look for interesting problems and go from there.
Well, I think pretty much any and all acquisitions make sense for WeWork. Arguably the most over-valued company in the world IMO. When that happens - diversify or wave hands faster. Acquisitions do both.
I'd change that to where _do_ they go. This trend is becoming more pronounced but has been around a while.
As other posters note, they leave for other tech hubs, or other industries. Even if they could earn even more in the Bay Area they recognize that it's a long path to a quality of life that would be more accessible somewhere else.
There's also a weariness folks in the industry get after a while. On the one hand, it's an amazing place to get 20 years of experience in 5. Put at some point the bubble grates on you.
Back in the day when I used to work on side projects in Sydney before there was really a coworking space culture I used to work at the library.
I soon stopped because it was full of high school students who didn't want to be there and the sound of a hushed conversation against a backdrop of silence was really distracting.
I quickly started going to foodcourts instead. Those are better than coffee shops for me. There's a lot more white-noise and less pressure to order anything because no vendor feels you're taking 'their space'.
Outlets were a bit harder but doable but outweighed by food choice at meal times and ability to run quick errands if needed.
This was from Waverley Library to Westfield's food court in Bondi Junction in 2012 fwiw.
Working on a script to automatically compile the best threads from HN each day and email. Might also send to pocket so I can read on my commute. Will go by thread count and screen out keywords in header to avoid topics I'm not interested in.
I find the most valuable thing in HN are the conversations in comments (sometimes also the least valuable thing, too).
I saw some folks mentioning Gigster so thought I'd add some notes. For reference I'm Christian Thurston and I've been working at Gigster from early on.
The benefits of our model is that we do fixed price, not hourly, so if you're able to work better and faster then your effective hourly goes up. Also, with us you don't have to interface with the client - you work with a PM who speaks tech and write code - that's it.
Our clients are both technical and non-technical but it's a lot less relevant because you'll always be working with that PM layer as a dev, not directly with the client.
Agreed and the 6 month mark thing will raise eyebrows amongst employers, as much as previous commenter things it won't. That kind of advice is meaningful to folks outside the Valley who need a counter-balance to the irrational risk-averseness that can occur there. For folks inside the Valley who've done bootstrapped (like yourself) I think you have a finely tuned sense of what will/won't look good to a potential employer and how something will be interpreted.
So we launched this today and the core thesis is that the issue most non-tech founders have is not knowing what to build or how tech generally gets built (outside of scrappily testing ideas, of which tech is sometimes, not always, a part).
We noticed the same broken things here. I don't want to give Elance/UpWork too hard a time - they can be good for some things (like Data Entry, etc) but clearly their model has some issues when it comes to development projects.
Where our model is different is that all of our projects have a dedicated Product Manager who overseas the build for fixed-price projects. The developers and clients deal directly with the project's PM (not with each other). That saves time for the client. It adds a layer but this counter-intuitively improves communication. I speak broken Spanish. So if I run into a Spanish speaker who speaks broken English then we can communicate. That's fine if we're doing something simple but if the nuance of different words matters then we'll do much better if we have a professional translator who's a native speaker in both languages in between us.
I actually interviewed the former CEO of oDesk for my blog a few years ago (long before Gigster existed) so I've been following this space and thinking about where it's heading for a while. That's why I agree with the OP about the opportunity for a new platform to rise in this space and the fundamental issue that a race to the bottom will impact the quality of the build.
@jalopy & @mithaldu - I think what you're alluding to is the simplicity of not having to deal with all the pain of being a freelancer (client management, paperwork, etc). That's our appeal to developers: we give them specs and they can just focus on building, not marketing themselves, client management, etc.
Why? 1) Tech companies are addicted to FB ads and Google ADs. The CPA is growing rapidly. 2) Brands and publishers should be connected via a network marketplace model, not agencies and gatekeepers. 3) "Publishers" are fragmenting from a handful of big ones (MSM) to a long tail. Everyone consumers their own mix. 4) Search is also fragmenting across video, audio, social, etc. 5) So technology is the perfect way to connect these nodes. We're doing that.
We're focusing on authentic signals that work even if you don't care for search traffic. Ironically, these are the signals search engines most pay attention to. So either way, the path is to focus on authentic and meaningful connections.
Would love thoughts, comments, notes, questions, etc.