

Ask YC: What would it take to create a viable alternative to Evite.com - raghus

Evite's been around forever and has hardly seen any serious competition. There's renkoo and mypunchbowl etc but nobody's made a dent in Evite. I am wondering what ingredients a compelling alternative will need.<p>I am tempted to give it a go myself but wanted to ask to see what others think...
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pchristensen
The brand awareness evite has is something I wouldn't want to compete with.
Making something technologically superior wouldn't be hard. Making people
aware of it and trust it would.

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wehriam
There are a number of well funded and executed takes on the idea in addition
to the ones you listed:

<http://www.socializr.com/> <http://going.com/> <http://eventbrite.com/>

Perhaps the problem is that none of them are a 10x improvement over Evite.
Perhaps MySpace/Facebook are diminishing the space's potential. Maybe this is
just one of those things that will take years.

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rrival
It's part of the vernacular: "Did you get the evite?" - "Send me the Evite!"
"Did you get the upcoming link for the event?" "Did you get the 'going'... "
are both awkward. Renkoo is another. With all respect, if I'm having a party,
what am I going to do, Renkoo you? Granted, they just got another $6m - let's
hope they figure that out ;)

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pg
A few more features added to Wufoo.

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alaskamiller
this was our yc app idea for quite awhile. we spent months on analyzing
competitors, trends, current practices, drafted up use cases, wireframed an
entire site, programmed out some functionality, made a screencast demo, and
got denied. i have a 1 Gb folder of due diligence for this but ultimately the
conclusion was this probably isn't worth pursuing. the dynamics involved
requires more than just better technology.

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mrtron
Not a bad process to go through regardless of whether you pursued the idea.

I am actually working on something similar-ish, but since I am in stealth mode
I won't say what the differences are, and I am definitely aware that it is a
difficult area to get into. You need a recognizable brand and a certain
starting size to get it snowballing.

I have the luxury of doing it for my own personal enjoyment, so I don't have
any concerns :)

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alaskamiller
well i've rejected from yc 5 times in a row now. my project folder just grows
bigger and bigger. but i guess it goes with the territory of thinking i'm an
entrepreneur.

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thorax
Dude, if you've been rejected from YC five times, you absolutely just need to
bootstrap and get going. Take one of those projects and just keep coding in
your spare time, etc.

Try maybe Prosper? Or ask your friend engineers? The money at YC's levels can
be found just about anywhere. The YC 'bump' with expertise, connections, etc,
is likely of very high value, but zillions of people get by without it.

It sounds like your ideas may not align with YC-- maybe it's them and not you?

If you've proposed 5 times, you've got more gumption than a lot of
entrepreneurs-- just keep moving.

