

Priceonomics Raises $1.5 MM, Users Unfazed - omarish
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/22394531080/priceonomics-raises-1-5-mm-users-unfazed

======
ajju
This is probably the best funding announcement I have ever seen: self
deprecating, funny and actually useful to the reader.

Congrats guys, rock on!

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mitchellh
Congrats.

I'm sure they're aware, but for others here: decide.com does a fantastic job
at price predicting products, and is founded by the same person behind the
price prediction algorithm purchased by Bing ("Farecast") and he is also a
tenured professor at the University of Washington specializing in machine
learning. Pretty steep competition both from an engineering and business
standpoint.

~~~
redorb
The difference I see is priceonmics give me a real answer $200 for a iphone
3gs

see here: <http://priceonomics.com/phones/apple/iphone-3gs/>

While decide.com give me a .99 cent option and no other real value ideas of
that phone

[https://www.decide.com/search/iphone%25203gs/1/22818276/RELE...](https://www.decide.com/search/iphone%25203gs/1/22818276/RELEVANCE/)

~~~
kruipen
For anything from long tail priceonomics seems to show pretty much random
data, e.g. this is the most most popular amplifier:
<http://priceonomics.com/amplifiers/eagle/>

(I tried amplifiers because I was curious to compare data with a toy site (500
lines of haskell for crawler+site) I built for audio equipment price trends:
<http://kruipen.com>)

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wensing
I'm pretty sure my reaction to this is due to being outside YC & SV, but ...

 _We raised $1.5 million in 10 days and pretty much the whole time we didn’t
feel very good._

Ten days? Didn't feel very good? That's fundraising? Wow. What can I even say
to that? Congrats guys.

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mixonic
<https://skitch.com/matthewbeale/82y5t/car-used-price-850>

Admittedly, searching for "car" is vague, but this is just too funny of a
result to not share :-)

Exciting!

~~~
midas
Ha!

How did you get that result? The javascript should autocomplete to our cars
guide if you type in "car": <http://cl.ly/0x0z2F393U20383s3b2G>

You can manually override if you want to, but if it's not doing it by default
that's a bug.

~~~
nknight
Just hit enter fast enough:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14571816/pricenomics%20car.mov>

~~~
midas
Thanks! I had an intentional 100ms delay between keystrokes, but I just
lowered it to 25ms on my local and it's looking much better.

~~~
nknight
I'm still able to reliably bypass the autocompletion just hitting enter, any
reasonably fast typist would. It's not even just the 25ms, it's the actual
time to execute the autocompletion code.

Hitting the search button with the mouse also bypasses it entirely, no matter
how long you wait, as does hitting tab then space or enter to activate the
search button.

~~~
olalonde
Perhaps when searching for "car" they could display a notice a la Google: "Did
you mean to view our Car guide?".

~~~
midas
@nknight and @olalonde thanks for the feedback guys, genuinely helpful. It's
nice to see that on HN.

Feel free to email me directly anytime: michael [at] priceonomics [dot] com.

------
budu3
Apparently a wive is really affordable
[http://priceonomics.com/search/?q=wife&fs=1](http://priceonomics.com/search/?q=wife&fs=1)

~~~
theunixbeard
At prices like that, I might just pick up 2 or 3! But seriously, it'll be
interesting to see how in the future their algorithms improve to deal low-
information queries like that.

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neilwillgettoit
<http://search.priceonomics.com> I lol'ed

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DTrejo
Price comparison makes you unhappy!

[http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WIL...](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%20\(2011\).pdf)

~~~
jasonshen
Did you read the article? Here's the important point:

From this perspective, comparison shopping may focus consumers' attention on
differences between available options, leading them to overestimate the
hedonic impact of selecting a more versus less desirable option. To the extent
that the process of comparison shopping focuses attention on hedonically
irrelevant attributes, comparison shopping may even lead people to choose a
less desirable option over a more desirable option.

Pricenomics helps you get the best/fair price for an existing thing you were
already going to buy. It is purely about making a more informed decision about
one item, not comparing between somewhat different products and making the
wrong decision.

~~~
natep
Exactly. After looking at the results of some generic terms (netbook,
ultrabook), they're really not equipped for general-purpose feature
comparison. But when you narrow it down to a specific model, it seems like it
would help you avoid ripoff craigslist/ebay deals.

------
jabiko
Raising venture capital seems not to require building a secure product:

<http://tinyurl.com/7pad22b> (Click the search bar to execute the code)

~~~
omarish
Good catch -- fixing now.

~~~
jabiko
Wow, you are really quick!

Just another hint: Your elasticsearch server is public accessible. Maybe you
want to fix this too.

~~~
omarish
Good eye :). Fixed as well.

~~~
jabiko
By the way: The search is still vulnerable: <http://tinyurl.com/7wj9qoh>

But I think this is the last one ;-)

~~~
omarish
Fixed. Keep them coming :).

------
adamclayman
With the new financing, could/would you build medical pricing into your
practice areas?

It's about-time for more transparency in the medical world.

<http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1100041>

~~~
joshu
This seems like a fun project. Has any of the data actually been released?

------
evanm
Omar, Priceonomics should have a price page for itself

~~~
ajju
<http://priceonomics.com/priceless/>

~~~
aero142
It doesn't show up when you actually search for it though:( I think this is a
sev1 defect and you should fix it immediately:)

~~~
midas
Haha, thanks!

What are you typing in? If you enter "priceonomics" (no quotes) it should
redirect to /priceless.

~~~
aero142
I can't get the same result now. I might have just fat fingered it. Really
like the site btw!

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Destroyer661
It would be nice if they tailored the searches a bit more to geo-location. I
search for things and end up getting craigslist results for SF even though I'm
in Canada.

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sherm8n
Congrats! I just gave about 30 electronic items to someone on TaskRabbit to
sell for me. Used ebay to correctly price them, but priceonomics was spot on
when verifying them!

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galfarragem
I hope it will work someday cause it doesn't for now..
<http://priceonomics.com/cars/ford/mondeo/>

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jansen
Congrats on the round and really great post, guys!

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sova
<http://priceonomics.com/search/?q=human+being>

tldr: $37

------
fscof
Big congrats guys! I feel assured knowing we won't be eating top ramen all
summer.

~~~
midas
Thanks Forrest! We'll now be upgrading to pasta and red sauce.

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zacharyvoase
I'd love to see this for salaries.

~~~
jdc
<http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries>

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joshu
Misspelled my last name. :(

~~~
rohin
My bad:(

Fixed:)

~~~
joshu
Better. Congrats!!

------
bguthrie
Congrats, guys! Well done.

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michaelmwu
Blog is down?

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bengl3rt
Hiring??? :D

~~~
omarish
Yes! <http://priceonomics.com/jobs/>

~~~
ddt
"Recruiters, rockstars, and ninjas need not apply."

You're doing the Lord's work.

------
blantonl
I suppose this a positive, but I'm skeptical when companies use marketing
events and cheeky blog posts to trumpet funding events. Especially when they
don't disclose the reason why they needed to source funding the first place.
Or they never mention how the capital will help the idea move forward.

The other reason why I am skeptical is that feels like startups these days are
more focused on raising money than shipping product. Is the referenced blog
post an example?

This is what I hear from this post: "hey, everyone! (waving hands) - we raised
a round!"

I'd rather see: "hey, everyone! check out what we rolled out today!"

And If what you rolled out today is successful, innovative, _generates net
income_ , and is backed by 500 trillion in venture capital. Fantastic!

Otherwise, why should I be concerned that you got some people to invest in
your idea?

~~~
nedwin
I actually thought the blog post was the opposite of how you read it.

They're basically saying "it doesn't matter that we got funding - our users
don't care" (which they don't) but they also know this will raise their
profile in terms of finding talented engineers.

The message being "we're hiring and investors believe in us - you should too".

I thought it was refreshing.

