Here's a reason to think about trial period rather than very limited functionality free-forever.
I don't know who you are targeting, but I would imagine that the customer sweet spot for you would be the intersection of:
- Traders who are engaged enough and delve deeply enough to need Bloomberg-type data, beyond what is provided by the typical broker pages/Yahoo Finance/SEC/Seeking Alpha/fintwit/newsletters/company disclosures (which are all very low cost or free and sufficient I would think for casual users)
- And yet, who are not professionals with access to the Bloomberg terminal
I suspect that this is a very small but growing group. The characteristics of this group is that they will be careful with money (it comes out of their pocket, not their employer) but if they find a tool that is actually useful and an aid to generating alpha, they have sufficient AUM that it is worthwhile to pay a reasonable monthly fee to access it.
FWIW, I'm not sure how much the uptime during market hours will be critical other than for day traders. Most of the traders in this group will also have day jobs.
This is all very unscientific and not based on data, I'm just going off my experiences and those of others I know who are in a similar boat.
P.S. Unless you're trying to disrupt the Bloomberg terminal itself for professionals, in which case please disregard this entire comment.
As an advanced(!) retail trader, this looks very interesting. I haven't signed up yet. Looking at your pricing structure, I don't quite understand - does the free tier mean that once you look at five pages of data, your free usage is over? Or does it refer to being able to create five custom data pages, and then payment if you go over?
If it's the former, I think it would be helpful to have some sort of trial period where you can use the site. I don't want to use up my "five free pages" just clicking around to see what is there.
As an aside, Koyfin has some similar functionality, perhaps not with as much data, and they have a free tier where you can build some custom pages (e.g. watchlists). The paid tier starts if you want more of those.
This is a question a friend of mine has been closely researching recently - more specifically:
Where do you search for Software Executive jobs [Sr Dir/VP-level] at small-to-midsize and larger companies?
His answer so far: Monster (good), LinkedIn (ok), CareerBuilder and CraigsList (poor). YMMV.
I realize this doesn't exactly fit the startup context at HN. I apologize if it's considered off-topic, but I thought it might be of interest for some.
I personally know several people who have moved back to India, both to start up Internet companies and to work at senior levels in multi-nationals.
Given the increasing amount of outsourcing going on at Silicon Valley companies, it's harder for experienced people with high salaries to find a new gig here; many of the software centers in India, conversely, are in the middle of a major boom.
Having said that, working conditions and norms in these countries are quite different, and it takes quite an adjustment to settle down there.
Yes, this industry is still very young. Another way to think about it is that we still build software the way they built cars in 1905 - to a large extent, most products are build from scratch by hand to serve a very specific set of requirements.
Admittedly OSs, compilers and frameworks are significant steps forward from pure Assembly language, but we're still a far cry from how autos are built today: automakers build a "car platform" by composing different systems, which themselves are composed of assemblies and sub-assemblies and so on. The platform is then targeted towards a specific application by bolting a car body on top, this body is usually separate from the core engineering systems of the car.
One approach I've found useful when trying to meet any of the speakers at a conference (which I assume includes the FAMOUS GUY you refer to): find the speaker in some other setting at the conference, such as when everyone picks up a boxed lunch and sits at random tables, or people are standing around outside the conference room. At that point, the speaker is just another person hanging out (unless the person is REALLY FAMOUS, and getting mobbed all the time). I once met the Fed CTO at a Starbucks just outside the conf center.
Right after a speech is the WORST time to try to strike up a conversation with a speaker, as some of the other commenters have pointed out - at that point, they're usually surrounded by a group of people handing them business cards and talking at them; yet that's when most people try to meet them.
Getting a friend to introduce you to someone he or she knows is usually the best way; most people will be happy to perform an introduction if you just ask. In the worst case, they can just tell you that they're not comfortable doing it.
This is what I was thinking as well as I followed this thread. What we call "intuition" is often a conclusion from our subconscious mind based on cues and observations of which we may not be explicitly aware.
In other words, our mind is constantly watching and learning, and then matching that data to patterns we've observed in the past; not all of this information reaches the front of our consciousness.
Of course, if it's subconscious, it is easy to get misled, or match patterns inaccurately since there is no rigorous examination involved about the underlying assumptions.
The problem is that most people are used to blue links to indicate clickability, and use this information subconsciously. If you make the links gray, you have to train users to click on those, and it's yet another barrier to actions/clicks/conversion.
Thank you, Denny. That's a good point about self-employment tax.
Yes, that was my plan, to do it myself, but I find that I'm spending quite a lot of time on busy activities like this - as a follower of MVP/Steve-Blank, I'd rather be out talking to (potential) customers.
I don't know who you are targeting, but I would imagine that the customer sweet spot for you would be the intersection of: - Traders who are engaged enough and delve deeply enough to need Bloomberg-type data, beyond what is provided by the typical broker pages/Yahoo Finance/SEC/Seeking Alpha/fintwit/newsletters/company disclosures (which are all very low cost or free and sufficient I would think for casual users) - And yet, who are not professionals with access to the Bloomberg terminal
I suspect that this is a very small but growing group. The characteristics of this group is that they will be careful with money (it comes out of their pocket, not their employer) but if they find a tool that is actually useful and an aid to generating alpha, they have sufficient AUM that it is worthwhile to pay a reasonable monthly fee to access it.
FWIW, I'm not sure how much the uptime during market hours will be critical other than for day traders. Most of the traders in this group will also have day jobs.
This is all very unscientific and not based on data, I'm just going off my experiences and those of others I know who are in a similar boat.
P.S. Unless you're trying to disrupt the Bloomberg terminal itself for professionals, in which case please disregard this entire comment.