
RFC: Rejected YC concept built as an integrated Facebook app - jward
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=239903829
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jward
First off I apologize because you need to be on Facebook to use this.

Our YC app was rejected and my founder stayed at his job and I decided to go
on ahead and see if I could make our idea work. The gist of what we submitted
to YC was a platform where you could review anything like books, movies, cars,
whatever. You could take these reviews and embed them into myspace, your blog,
or just directly build off your profile on the site. The business model was to
find affiliates, like amazon for books, and build revenues from there. I'd
hazard a guess and say the business model was what sunk us more than anything
else. Great for a lifestyle business but not really for growing something
huge.

When Facebook announced that it was opening its platform up to integrated
webapps I jumped on the chance. Building on top of Facebook limits my long
term growth potential but gives the platform provides a lot. I really believe
in what Facebook is doing here. In the future all apps will be social and
building a community is really hard. Facebook solves this problem for you.
There are downsides but I think in my case it is a win. If this really takes
off it will take some work, but not be impossible, to spin it out into the
original idea and have the facebook aspect just be a widget.

I've been working on it for a little over a week solid. There's a lot missing
from what I'd like to have as a finished product, but I got the core done and
decided I should put it out there and iterate on feedback. It's written in
Django and uses python bindings for both the facebook and amazon APIs. I'd
appreciate any advice or feedback, especially from this crowd. You can message
me on facebook or email me directly at: jay at wardtek dot ca

There's more I'd like to write on this whole bit but I'll have to write a blog
post later. Right now I'm just dead tired. I look forward to some interesting
/ useful feedback :)

~~~
natrius
The link doesn't work. Did you change your API settings to make the app
public?

~~~
jward
Well crap ;) That'll teach me for writing stuff when I'm too tired to double
check. I have no idea where I got that URL from....

<http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=3724b1a0743578308ce28e934c600377>

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ced
Startups should probably wait until they are successful before saying "And YC
_rejected_ us". Saying it early doesn't really mean anything.

