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Ask HN: Heard of any good startups?
52 points by markchristian on July 19, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 91 comments
Three times a week, I write about a new startup at Venture Pimp (http://venturepimp.com/). It's actually really hard to find cool things that haven't gotten much press.

So, as always, I'm on the hunt for interesting startups. If you've got a startup, or have heard of something nifty, let me know. I'd really appreciate it. :)

Happy Sunday, folks.




<raises hand>

Loggly - http://loggly.com/ is a cloud-based log management service funded by True and Trinity. Logs are normally a real PITA, especially on something like EC2, but we make dealing with them fun and easy.

Basically you point your logs at our servers where we catch them and store them safely away. We apply a fulltext index to the logs to make them searchable. Results can be processed with custom scripts you write and then run from our shell-in-a-browser interface. Our API provides a way for you to programmatically view raw data, searches, facets of searches, or results of MR jobs to drive charts, graphs, or other mashups. We'll also support streaming of logs in via a persistant HTTP connection (and Mongrel2!) so you can send data from webapps or other client based applications.

We're planning on launching a public beta in the Fall, and we have a fun madlibs form you can fill out to be notified when we're getting close to release: http://loggly.com/signup/


Just a quick point: Your beta signup form (http://www.loggly.com/signup/) requires far too much thinking in order to complete.

After almost a minute of figuring out how I can fit what I want to say into your pre-structured dialog, I gave up.


I'll second this feedback, and add one other minor point: I wouldn't use the acronym (or is that an abbreviation since it is not pronounceable?) "IaaS" as part of that signup form. I do a lot of work with SaaS and it took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about. (It didn't help that in your chosen font upper case I and lower case L look quite similar. At first a thought you mean "logging as a service" which seemed like a strangely narrow expression.)

For what it is worth, I would either spell that out, or even better, change it to something a little less jargony, such as "cloud based services" or something like that (which is still a little jargony).


Nice idea, but how do you handle privacy concerns?


any chance of some early beta action?


Out of curiosity: Do I have to install a cron or something to automatically scp my logs to your server? How does that work?


Actually you just run syslog-ng or rsyslog and point them at our servers by changing a few lines in your config file. If you need to monitor a file which isn't feeding into syslog, it's just a few extra steps.

For most of the AMIs on Amazon, you'll have one or the other of these services already installed on your machine. It takes about 2 minutes to set up the configuration.


My own startup: Visual Website Optimizer http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/

And, yes, we haven't gotten much press. Proof: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520001


Oh Hi. It's funny who you run into here. :-)

I'm a developer at 99designs and we've been using Visual Website Optimizer to do A/B testing. Our marketing guys love it.


Hi Dennis, glad to find a customer here on HN!


I like the design, but it would seem a call to action to signup would be best put at the top of the page.

What do I know though? You're the one with the A/B testing hammer! :)


Yeah, the call to action has been under serious experimentation :)

One hypothesis for not having Plans & Pricing button upfront is because it works great if your software is priced at sub $50 level. But VWO goes for $49, $129 and $249. So, unless visitors watch a video and get familiar with what exactly we offer, such prices will scare them into not learning more about the product.


Stormpulse http://www.stormpulse.com

Bootstrapped, just went profitable, 2 co-founders, recently hired employee #1 (me) and #2.


When I move the map the new parts take some time to load. Is it possible to preload some of them? Otherwise, great site.


The tiles or the "data"? Tiles are served over S3 (non-CloudFront).


Very cool, but can we get metric units? Google does a good job of facilitating this: http://img.skitch.com/20100719-t7nebfpieb75hrsbhu9w29361k.jp...


I dig the toggle; thanks for the request.


How do you guys make money? Sorry, didn't have time to explore the entire site


Looks like they have a 'pro' account, which gives you access to a lot more data (radar maps), plus email alerts.


Advertising and Pro accounts (b2c & b2b).


TimeInB5 - http://www.timeinb5.com

This is an angel backed startup from Grand Rapids, MI. The idea behind the site is to build a communication platform for mass transit (namely flying). The site allows semi-anonymous posts between those waiting around at the same airport. There is a chatbox feature for live anonymous chatting.


My faves include http://jamlegend.com http://gotreehouse.com/


http://www.nearmap.com

Based in sunny Perth, Australia :)

We have high-res PhotoMaps of the major Australian cities and allow you to see change over time by flicking through the dates of places we have captured.

http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-31.959417,115.859435&z=17...


Very cool.


Thanks for all your suggestions, folks — this has been a great turn out. I'll check each and very one of them out.


Chitabox - Mobile Video Start-up. 3-4 Weeks away to launch for private alpha participants, iPhone's required to be in this!

Really could do with peeps from here. Bootstrapped Non-programmer sysadmin founder, outsourcing webdev team. Time is very scarce, up late nights and most weekend, but persistence it key.

Thanks to all here for the great articles. They provide great support and motivation for someone in my shoes. Shout-out to http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/. HND saves me an hour each day!

Android users - Apologies in the delays. App planned for late September release, ready for Beta.

And before people say it...no were not harvesting emails. Any email given will only be sent one email invite!

Chitabox Team (Me and my fish!)


Send me an invite?


Hi Mark,

Xtify - http://www.xtify.com - We're bringing the supposed "holy grail of marketing" to a smartphone near you - efficiently (and judiciously) delivering a notification to a consumer based on that person's location.

Xtify provides application developers (publishers, marketers) with a platform for creating and managing mobile push notification campaigns across multiple smartphone platforms - and offers the ability to trigger those messages based on rules including user preference and location.

We are based in NYC and backed by Acadia Woods and Seventy-Six Ventures. Many great businesses live and coming live soon (real estate, retail, web publishing).

Thanks! Josh


CareCloud http://www.carecloud.com


Hi HN, I'm Director of Marketing & UX at CareCloud, if you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them!


It sounds a bit risky to put your medical records in the cloud.


The idea is that with your medical records in the cloud, an ER doctor in europe treating the ankle you broke skiing in the Alps would know right off the bat whether you were allergic to any particular meds. It would prevent the need for redundant tests if they had your access to your health data, thus saving money in an industry fraught with wasteful spending. I personally think this is a great idea, and to encapsulate the service in such an elegant and refined user experience is the stuff of startup success.


Our credit info is online, our home addresses, our banking info, our friends and family photos, what we buy, what we search for, where we go, where we are. What's so risky? :D


I like the space you are in.


Hi Mark.

You've already covered my startup, a bike reference for cyclists (VenturePimp writeup at at http://venturepimp.com/post/673622703/brightspoke; my site lives at http://brightspoke.com/) but I'd like to thank your for your kind writeup.

For what it's worth, your post sent a few hundred visitors my way, and they seemed more engaged than those from some other blog links we've had.

Thanks for your blog, it's great to have a feed of new stuff people are working on, especially when presented in such a clean and straightforward way.


Thanks — that's great to hear. :)


I'll throw in my own startup here as well:

www.adsreloaded.com - It's an alternative iPhone advertising platform.

I'm a 21 year old student founder, and am always open to answering any questions you might have, just let me know.


Favetop http://www.favetop.com : A social web desktop for saving and sharing favorites. Check it out and let us know what you think.


@markchristian

Sending you an email with more info, but in the meantime, check us out http://www.repustate.com

And we're Canadian, too. Double-double anyone?


Where was this a couple of years ago?! I had worked on a project with a friend and we were looking for exactly this to support it. We dropped it because we would have had to build what you offer plus our service. Your API looks clean and simple. I just might have to play with this still.

Oh and I'm 1/4 Canadian, does that make me cool too? :P


So glad I popped into this thread and discovered repustate. Really cool API!


I would kill someone for some Tim's at this point. ;)


Wow. I must be the only person living in Canada (though not Canadian) who does not like Tims. Though timbits are a different story.


I assume you are talking about Tim Hortons, which is the only Canadian thing I know named "Tim".

I've been there once (I'm American). You guys got it right up there. Who doesn't want drive thru muffins?


Tims coffee is gross, brown water.


I Live in the UK, but I get some Timmies imported. I dont even drink coffee, but try The French Vanila Coffee, Abso. Awesome!

And Don't forget the Garlic Cream Cheese Beagle,Apple Fritter, Boston Cream, Blueberry Fritter.....

Why have you done this to me!!!!


Hah I love that this became a thread about Tims. We're such hosers.


Oh yeah, eh.


I'll put my workplace out there: Akaza Research http://www.akazaresearch.com/ http://www.openclinica.org/

We create open-source solutions for the clinical research field.

Also of note: http://opower.com/ - tracks energy efficiency with solar power + software. Something like that.


Check out Gigayo in the online banner and advertising space http://www.gigayo.com


some that aren't mine but I'm finding useful recently:

http://pinboard.in # delicious alternative

http://extension.fm # collects mp3 players from sites you visit

http://invisiblehand.com # offers cheaper price listings for products inline in web pages


That's http://www.getinvisiblehand.com :)


thanks! can't update the comment now. good plugin btw.


(Self referential) The Great Books Project: The Great Books Project aims to distill the wisdom of the greatest and most useful business and self-improvement books of all time. Till date, they have done 120+ books http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com/greatbooks.html


Wordzoku - Site a friend and I created. http://wordzoku.com - free service to help people improve and learn vocabulary. Take a new word and use it in a sentence. Site live but still in development. By creating a sentence with the word you're given, you put word to use and into a context.


GuruFi - http://gurufi.com/ : Service for directly connecting essay editors with clients.

We are still very much an alpha site, but we are bootstrapped and breaking even. We hope to add transparency to an otherwise obscured industry and to generally give people a chance to get writing help from experts.


This is a great idea. A while ago, I had brainstormed something like oDesk + Etherpad for writers that would be based on reputation/ratings, and it looks like you're well on the way to something similar. Best of luck. :)


We're launching this week (Sleep.fm) an updated site (http://sleep.fm/coming-soon/) to announce our iphone app.

We just learned & became skilled at Objective-C; stoked to finally be releasing a product outside of web browser. Appreciate any/all feedback on new site UI/UX.


The "Stop" button, used when testing, needs to be more... conservative.

Until I click "Set Alarm" I have no idea what those icons at the bottom do. Title them so that I can also click them. It will save users a bunch of time.

I know I shouldn't, but if I type www.sleep.fm/[special_char] I get a 503 page. Make that fancy or forward it with htaccess.

I really like the voice, as well as, it telling me my flight, weather ect. All of that is awesome.


Hi thanks so much for the feedback.

Re: icons at bottom yeah they are just static - they add color to our dark design. Though I have heard this comment before, so I'll c how it looks without & a bigger clock window.

Re: [special_char] ... when it goes live will get our alarm links working as they do on live site (http://Sleep.fm/7am, http://sleep.fm/8am, etc). Maybe that' what u meant?

Not sure what you meant by "Stop," button. Is it too big?

thnx again


A fellow Raider! I'm doing my final semester of Criminal Justice, along the way I learned how to program and I'm too lazy/far in to change majors.

Here is a rough idea of what I had in mind: http://imgur.com/5HHOQ.png . The Rooster is active so the "Test" link appears under it. When you click "Weather Alarm" a test link will appear under that and disappear from the under the Rooster. You can arrange the icons any way, but I think labeling them would help the user know what they do.

I wasn't aware you weren't fully live yet, it looks nice so far. I would recommend creating a nice 404 page so that users who go to http://sleep.fm/<>; or http://sleep.fm/7 are either directed back to the homepage or to a pretty 404 page telling them they messed up.

>Not sure what you meant by "Stop," button. Is it too big?

Yes :). A simple stop would be more than enough, although the big button did work- i.e. I knew how to stop the test alarm.

I see potential here. The name is awesome, there are some nice design aspects. Give it a few more features- tweet the alarm time, intergrate pandora/last.fm/grooveshark- and I think you have a nice piece of work.

Good luck!


Thanks for all the helpful feedback.

So what languages are you skilled in? Feel free to say hi im ryan@sleep.fm or ryanspahn on Twitter.


and hey cool you went or are going to my Alma Matter. MTSU - though Baltimore is hometown and where I reside now.

Recording Industry major. Fun times!


http://www.chompstack.com : A mobile website builder for restaurants.

The biggest source of traffic we've gotten so far is the Ask HN thread I posted 2 weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492184


Hi Makchristian, great idea and thanks for helping us get the word out.

http://www.gmbhnews.com/ is my try, bootstrapped but not yet generating revenue (still in Beta RC), it targets mobile devices and webkit browsers with the goal of bringing the web/blogs to mobile devices.


Notifo - Mobile Push Notifications platform http://notifo.com


Got it already :) http://venturepimp.com/post/526176519/notifo


Well, im from midwest...Chicago to be exact...i started TuneCloud.fm (though we are not live yet). But some other midwest music startups im cool with are merge.fm, g2.fm, and bln.kr. Check em out. By the way, I read and subscribe to VenturePimp...sweet. Keep it up


Thanks :) I covered bln.kr last week: http://venturepimp.com/post/802527796/bln-kr


Alright, mergefm is today's pimped venture: http://venturepimp.com/post/832618806/mergefm — thanks, sabredata. :)


Check out http://www.twimpact.com, or their japanese licensee http://twimpact.jp while they are upgrading. It's like Google PageRank for Tweets.


http://isitnormal.com - Niche Q&A site that's been around for a while. Recently added a lot of cool features and it hasn't gotten much press in a long time.


Some Nebraska Startups

http://www.rockdex.com

http://www.hudl.com/

http://www.tripleseat.com/


Friends of a friend started http://www.chictopia.com

It's fashion oriented, but I don't know much else about it other than that they appear to be successful.


http://www.gogyc.org

How about non-profits? We're focusing on using web and mobile technology to help microfinance institutions extend loans to youth.


Our startup is http://www.IActionable.com We're what some call 'Game Mechanics as a Service'. I'll send you an email as well.


I left a message. I'd like to test you guys out.


My own startup: Pdfcrowd http://pdfcrowd.com

It lets you convert HTML to PDF online - either directly in your browser or in your apps using the API.


http://webchiever.com - web achievements

http://inquiryapp.com - faq hosting service


We created Active Interview (activeinterview.com) and have helped screen candidates from around the world by organizations such as One Laptop Per Child, among others.


http://www.flockengine.com - Android Multiplayer Framework & Hosted Infrastructure


http://www.trafficspaces.com - alternative to OpenX. Bootstrapped and profitable :)


http://www.briefcam.com - Automatic summarisation of video footage.


NewsCred Platform (http://platform.newscred.com)


www.isocket.com -- Commission free direct ad sales, works with adsense too.


Hey, I work at isocket - thanks for the shoutout! I didn't recognize your username though?

To the OP, ping me if you have any questions at alabut at gmail.


TaskRabbit is neat if you haven't written about them yet.


http://www.facecash.com

Designed to kill the credit card.


www.taroby.org


I've tried it. It's a really cool application for messaging and collaboration.


Robert X. Cringely is doing a startup tour that's short on details but seems interesting. Might be worth a plug. http://www.cringely.com/2010/07/slouching-toward-sunnyvale/




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