

YC and HN is a joke - konaaceo

YC hates competition to its companies, so much that it scrubbed the article about Rentul from the front page and newsfeed.  Fuck you yc, Airbnb I am coming for you.
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pilom
Looking at Rentul, my first impression was that it took too many clicks to get
to a listing. I clicked on Breckenridge Colorado and was given a page that
said "here are what we found in breckenridge." I didn't realize at first that
I had to click on that text to actually see the ratings. Second impression was
that I couldn't find any properties listing their rates. Every one of them
said "Contact the owner to find out the rate" but then I clicked "Contact
Owner" and was accused of being a spammer. Then I realized I needed an account
to ask an owner a question at which point I bounced.

Plug your funnel, put the rate right on the page, and don't make me "click
here to read more." Might improve your conversion rate.

That being said your submission was probably just flagged. _probably_ not
someone at yc actively discriminating against competitors.

~~~
konaaceo
We are improving search, however if you search by city as the search indicates
you get 30+ results. We are just transferring photos and rates from our
curation project and will be up by the end of the night. This includes rates
with the listing in search.

Additionally, do you complain about signing into HN to make a comment like
above or other social sites??? From a "Security Engineer for a big company",
come on guy you're not for real.

On the YC front, the article was a link to Raspwire not our site. All we did
is make the submission. There was no reason to flag a great web blog for
writing an article about us.

~~~
pilom
Lets try again and hopefully be better friends. I'm just trying to give some
ideas for improving your conversion rate.

I'm curious why this page exists:
<http://www.rentul.com/spacebuffer?t=breckenridge> Why doesn't clicking on the
image on the front page bring me directly to
<http://www.rentul.com/spacelisting?t=Breckenridge> ?

I would also find more value from the listings if rates are posted with them
so I'm looking forward to when you get that (and the rest of the photos) up.

The copy when you click on "Contact Owner" doesn't seem like it will convert
well. The line "The only good spam is found in Hawaii." seems superfluous and
confusing. The right answer is to run an A/B test with and without that line
and compare. I would be interested in the results.

I'm also curious why you have the "Read full description" link to expand the
listing? On my monitor the whole description fits on one page but maybe a
smaller screen it looks better this way? What is the reasoning for that?

As for the signing in being a problem, I understand that signing in should be
necessary to contact a property owner. I was just letting you know that it was
my bounce point.

Good luck with your site. I'm sorry someone in the HN community wasn't
receptive.

