

Forrst Gets Seeded With $200,000 - nathanh
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/24/forrst-200000-seed/

======
jordanmessina
$200,000 isn't cool. You know what's cool? $41,000,000.

Honestly though, grats Kyle. Passionate users, revenue is coming in, you
obviously deserve it.

~~~
kylebragger
Haha, indeed.

But thank you, I really appreciate it!

------
charlief
kylebragger (forrst's founder) first introduced forrst with a small _Tell HN_
invite session a year ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132947>

Then a more wide-spread RWW article:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440847>

Grats Kyle!

~~~
kylebragger
Thanks so much. It seems like forever ago that those went up. I'm really proud
of the progress we've made in the last year.

~~~
makira
Question for you: According to the article, 10% of users pay 9$/month:

9$/month-user * 12 months/year * 10% * 23000 users = 248400$/year

200k$ seems like a small sum compared to your yearly revenues.

What did you gave up for 200k$ ? Why not just wait for the revenue to come in
?

~~~
stephenou
It is 10% of forrst.me accounts that cost $9/month, not forrst.com accounts.

Forrst.me can serve as the central place of your online profiles, but not
everyone on Forrst have a forrst.me portfolio.

~~~
makira
Thanks for the correction. I guess I got confused by the similar names,
especially since <http://forrst.me> redirects to <http://forrst.com> . I can't
be the only one confused by this dual use of the same trademark...

------
alphadog
Over 40 Million and you get to buy a vowel. Less than 40 million? No vowel for
you.

------
justinxreese
Great for forrst, well deserved, even if this is yet another article that
pretends forrst is for designers only...

Us devs are on there, I promise.

~~~
dugmartin
Yes we are but one of the reasons like it is that it's mostly about design.
There are already enough dev dominated ghettos on the web.

~~~
code_duck
I like that it's a mixture of coders and designers. It's enlightening to mix
up with a different group of people now and then.

------
spencerfry
I love this. A small, sizable round for Kyle and his two employees -- I think
there are three people building Forrst? -- to advance the product and see
where they get. If all things go well, they'll get more financing and continue
to build it out. If not, his options are to (1) sell for a reasonable amount;
(2) reduce the team size and chug along on their revenue; or (3) let it run as
a side project.

------
wallflower
The reason I like forrst is because an engineer created a community that
brings together people who might have never have ever met. Also, the name
rocks.

------
JonnieCache
Good for them, but it still annoys me that I have to give a twitter username
to sign up. Not everyone tweets all day. Some of us waste our time on here
instead ;)

~~~
kylebragger
Thanks. I appreciate where you're coming from. It was a bit short-sighted of
me to add that field. FWIW We're working on an overhaul of the invite system
and model.

------
blhack
I applied to forrst, but never got a response on being rejected or approved.

Is it always going to be invite-only?

~~~
kylebragger
We're requiring invites always, in order to keep out recruiters, "idea"
people, and other non-dev/designers, as that would likely detract from the
community in a grave way.

We are, however, in the middle of a huge overhaul to the invite system to
ensure that developers/designers can and will get access, while still ensuring
_only_ they do so.

The new system will be much, much less of a black box, and hopefully alleviate
the frustration too many folks have had to experience.

~~~
PStamatiou

      ensure that developers/designers can and will get access, 
      while still ensuring only they do so.
    

Curious about how that might work - anything you can expand on that?

~~~
kylebragger
Sorry for the late reply. We're prototyping a new invite system where we do a
few things:

a) drop the whole "Apply" motif, since it's not so much about approval/denial
as it is ensuring the integrity of the community. It's caused a lot of
confusion.

b) move from a "use your invite and become accountable for the invitee" model
to a vote-centric one: you cast votes for folks you'd like to invite, and
depending on the reputation of the voters, after a threshold of votes is
reached that person is invited in. People who voted on users who end up being
invited get a point - we're building a leaderboard that will surface the users
with the most points -- basically trying to reward, through exposure, users
who are great at growing the community. (NB: this leaderboard will also
feature users who have a large amount of comments marked as helpful or starred
by staff)[1]. The overall goal here is to use humans as a "not a good fit for
Forrst" filter. We're trying to encourage folks to grow the community by
rewarding them with recognition -- both within the community and publicly.

c) We're also working on some other stuff that will whitelist users who want
in based on various things (e.g. having a verified email address with a well-
known company e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.). Also have been working on looking
at a user's existing social graph(s) to determine potential overlap between
that person's network and the Forrst userbase. Much of the credit for this one
goes to Nate Westheimer (innonate.com). FWIW I'd love to speak to folks who've
done similar things (kyle at forrst.com) Also looking to make it dead easy to
get dev/design shops on, and furthermore, to make it simple for existing
Forrst users in good standing to get their teams on board.

Happy to elaborate on any of this.

[1] I should add that we're really pushing right now to make it all about
quality comments. Posts, to me, are second class citizens. They only exist to
create great discussion/feedback/critique.

------
abcd_f
> Coders hang out on Stack Overflow. Designers hang out on Forrst.

Actually, designers hang out on Dribbble, and - to put it bluntly - those who
can't get in hang out on Forrst. It is really weird that TechCrunch included
no reference to former, feels almost like it was intentional.

~~~
code_duck
Forrst has a better community feeling to me than Dribbble.

~~~
abcd_f
_That_ is actually true.

------
marcamillion
Congrats Kyle + Team.

This headline made me cringe, because in Jamaica 'seeded' means 'impregnated'.

------
sokoloff
Congrats, Kyle and the whole Forrst team! Looking forward to seeing what's
coming in 2011 and beyond.

~~~
kylebragger
Thanks, Jim!

~~~
paulirish
Kyle, since you're here I figured I'd give you my #1 bug I'd love to see
fixed: The login wall loses what you were trying to access after a successful
login. It's a stab to the heart. Stabby stab stab.

EDIT: That and the login cookie seems to be one of the shortest lived of any
site I use. :(

~~~
kylebragger
Our session lib is my arch nemesis these days. They _should_ be good for a
year, but for whatever reason, it's hosing them. I'll see what I can do...

------
ses
The article kind of assumes developers and 'coders' are mutually exclusive,
and seems to suggest Forrst is not for people who write code, after a glance
at their home page for a couple of seconds it seems apparent this is not the
case.

Still perhaps I'm being pedantic.

------
zkirill
Forrst is an incredible community. I post my in-development snaps on there all
the time and receive a lot of great advice from some amazing and extremely
talented people. Super happy for them! :)

~~~
yesimahuman
I love how Forrst posts seem to get a lot of visibility on from the community
where they might not get much on HN/Reddit. Sort of a facebook news feed
instead of a vote-up competition.

As feedback for Kyle: I find the Activity and Posts menus confusing. Why the
separation? Why don't you just show me things you think I want to see, and not
give me so many choices? I feel like you can get rid of a lot of the stuff on
the top menu bars. I'm not a power user and I find it overwhelming.

At any rate, I expect that forrst will slowly start to become another one of
my regular visits.

------
sahillavingia
Proud to be an investor. Go Kyle!

------
nir
Finally, some sanity in the bubble :) Congrats Kyle!

------
dzine
Forrst has been a source of inspiration for my work ever since I started using
it. Honestly some of the designs I see there are so polished and refined that
it makes me (a developer trying to improve on my design skills) feel downright
design-dumb sometimes.

Congrats Kyle!

------
wmboy
Great, the question is though, is it enough for them to be able to purchase
the domain www.forest.com and www.forrest.com?

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Nanofied
Congrats on the seed! I have been a member of the community for a while, and
love what it has to offer members.

------
MPiccinato
Awesome to hear this. I am on Forrst daily and find it to be a great
community.

------
gobongo
Run, Forrst, run!

