

IFTTT raises $7M from Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Lerer - SeoxyS
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/20/ifttt-gets-7m-from-andreessen-horowitz-nea-and-lerer-to-connect-all-of-our-internet-silos/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=social%20media&awesm=tnw.to_e0THg&utm_medium=Spreadus

======
TomAnthony
What is the monetisation options for IFTTT?

They've now received $8.5M in funding, but charge nothing for the service,
AFAIK? I'm interested to know how that is going to make a return for the
investors.

(I love IFTTT, and think it is a great service - just interested to
know/learn)

~~~
sologoub
The integrator market is insanely large. There are very big name players that
are effectively system integrators and charge huge sums of money to get
different systems to talk to each other.

Once they have the platform fully ironed out, the level of application for
Enterprise clients is virtually limitless.

For example, imagine if you could build a workflow by dragging and dropping to
connect your Salesforce.com implementation with your back-office provisioning
applications, based on a conditional logic and then send out SMS confirmation
to the client, make a SFDC case note and update a bunch of statuses... all
without writing a single line of code.

Enterprises already pay for this through the nose. They will keep paying,
because it's worth it.

Enterprise customers also LOVE control. If they can have a business analyst do
the work, instead of hiring an army of 3rd party integrators, they will over
pay for it. If they can keep everything in-house at a reasonable cost, they
will.

~~~
josh2600
Enterprise usually means proprietary data structures. If IFTTT could go from
SAP to ADP that would be worth a lot of money.

Don't get me wrong, IFTTT can do a lot of cool stuff, but Enterprise is
inherently difficult because of proprietary everything. Implementing a layer
of abstraction means abstracting away this complexity through code to create a
simple interface. IFTTT has a simple interface, but expanding into systems in
the Enterprise won't be easy.

------
jobowoo
From a 30,000 foot level how does IFTTT and Zapier differentiate from each
other? IIRC, Zapier is focusing more on business-related APIs but those are
lines that I see eventually becoming very blurry.

~~~
roycehaynes
@jobowoo, Zapier is for business, as IFTTT is for, well, users of (mostly)
social networking type products. You can tell the clear difference by looking
at the services provided by Zapier vs IFTTT.

~~~
roycehaynes
Zapier seems well positioned to help companies sync data, and create streams
of info between web APIs, IMO.

~~~
philip1209
Taking this a step further, I see B2B (Zapier) as being more reliably
monetizable than B2C (IFTTT)

------
goronbjorn
How does Andreessen Horowitz reconcile being an investor in both IFTTT and
Zapier (by virtue of Start Fund)?

~~~
groby_b
Hedging their bets?

~~~
goronbjorn
They've publicly said that they won't invest when there are conflicts, e.g.
Instagram and Picplz

[https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Andressen-Horowitz-invest-
in-P...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Andressen-Horowitz-invest-in-PicPlz-
when-they-were-already-investors-in-Instagram/answer/Marc-Andreessen)

------
bdickason
IFTTT is powerful because it allows your average user to 'mash up' (sorry for
the lame term) API calls without any programming knowledge whatsoever.

There's alot of potential out there for simple user-friendly integrations
between services. I'm really excited to see how they progress... democratizing
platforms is a great business to be in.

------
mdanger
Dumb question: isn't IFTTT one of the companies that HN always cautions
against building (one dependent on the availability of others' sites/APIs)? Or
does that only apply for sites dependent on 1 other service?

~~~
Finster
Well, they don't rely on a single API, though. They've implemented dozens of
API's. They also have some of their own API's, as well.

If it were a case of relying on 1 or 2 mission-critical API's then I'd be
worried.

------
acangiano
On this topic, HN what are your coolest or most useful IFTTT recipes?

~~~
justhw
There are some neat recipes on IFTTT: <https://ifttt.com/recipes?sort=popular>

~~~
tarr11
Interesting. None of these things compel me to use IFTTT.

~~~
icebraining
The only recipe I have on IFTTT is one that watches their own Twitter stream
and shoots me an email whenever they talk about new channels ;) For now, it's
way too limited.

~~~
thyb
It will be always limited, because APIs are for developers, applications for
humans. Only developers can levergage APIs to make advanced services.

------
mrlase
As a side note about IFTTT, why is their font size so large?...

------
Causalien
Been using IFTTT since the beginning and asking them how I can throw money at
them because I need them to remain functional.

I use them to backup all my social media onto my wordpress blog which in turn
is a record of everything that happens to me in my life.

Cheap quick scraper for a few websites to monitor items that I want to buy and
get cellphone notification the moment they are posted.

It's a good glue.

------
bosky101
this is fantastic news for IFTTT. IMHO the 'internet of things' possibilities
seems most promising.

------
borlak
<https://ifttt.com/wtf> hmm

------
grinich
Congrats to Linden and the IFTTT team!

