

How we restarted our company in two weeks during Y Combinator - tgoldberg
http://blog.eventjoy.com/post/79387694078/how-we-restarted-our-company-in-two-weeks-during-y

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callmeed
_> we had to announce our name change in an upcoming edition of a local
newspaper. Yes, it’s exactly like it sounds. _

I don't think this is out of the ordinary (in the US). My understanding is
that printed fictitious name filings are required in most places when you do
business as a name other than your personal name or corporate entity name.

If your town has a weekly alt newspaper, it's usually pretty easy to go
through them (and usually < $100).

~~~
seancoleman
It is very common (I've filed over a dozen articles of organization and
incorporation across 3 states) but clearly an archaic, inefficient means of
announcing a business name establishment. There are "newspapers" in Arizona
dedicated entirely to publishing these announcements. It seems like a racket,
becoming a recommended vendor to provide a service for a legal requirement in
an obsolete way.

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joelrunyon
Is it me or is every YC company coming out with "joy" as the second part of
their name?

* ridejoy

* homejoy

* eventjoy

~~~
jonnybgood
A startup culture meme. There'll be another hip suffix (or prefix) in due
time.

Honest question, does this meme provide any actual benefits? Wouldn't it cause
confusion of your brand?

~~~
joelrunyon
I don't know - I always think it's funny choice of words. I like homejoy a lot
actually - but I don't know if they've caused me to feel "joy."

That said - nicely done on such a fast turnaround.

~~~
tgoldberg
The response to the name has been overwhelmingly positive. We still have a ton
of people come up to us just to say how much they love the name. Thanks!

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bdcravens
Nice writeup, but what's up with that bottom photo? I'm looking at the
redchair in front of the unoccupied MacBook. If I had to work like that, I'd
quit so fast I'd create a Superman 1 style reversal of the space time
continuum and bump into myself on the way out the door.

~~~
tgoldberg
We had three team members working on this and only two good chairs, so we
rotated. What you can't see is that we have two couches around the work area.

~~~
bdcravens
I'm thinking a $100 chair from Office Depot would be a good idea. (I'm an
independent working from home, and I recently bought an Aeron, out of my own
pocket) I get the whole long hours, bare bones startup incubator thing, but
just like we often use MacBooks instead of $249 WalMart specials, seating
isn't an area to skimp on! :-) (as for the couch, I think I couldn't do that
for long as an alternative - my MBP Retina gets way too hot for that)

~~~
karlhwhite
Hey this is Karl, the other Eventjoy founder. I actually spend a lot of time
working on couches, so I was actually pretty happy :) Besides... we didn't
have time to fetch another chair

~~~
levosmetalo
Order it online, 10min max.oryou are too busy reading hn?

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AdamFernandez
I'm just curious about the reason for this, but I notice a lot of startup's
(especially from Y Combinator) tagline is 'The easiest/best/fastest way to x'.
Should there be more originality here, or has it tested so successfully that
it is recommended for everyone? (I am genuinely asking if there is data to
support this, and am not being critical of eventjoy)

~~~
larrys
While there could very well be something to back this up it could also be
similar to the "Netscape Now" button that was very common back in the mid to
late 90's. People doing it in other words because they are merely copying what
others do. I think this is probably more common with startups because young
people who do startups aren't aware of anything fresh out of school and are
certainly more likely to mimic what they see others do. "Oh ok so we get a
ping pong table".

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ghc
Non sequitur, but...

Seeing that whiteboard, after constantly feeling ashamed of my whiteboard
writing next to that of my team members, I am just overjoyed to see whiteboard
writing that looks as messy as mine. In fact it looks exactly like mine,
letter shapes and all.

~~~
karlhwhite
Other Eventjoy founder here... I have no shame about my whiteboard writing. I
try not to spend time worrying about my cursive handwriting these days :D

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sthatipamala
I expected some minor design tweaks but everything changed. Amazing work for 2
weeks.

I like how you guys offloaded as much unnecessary work as possible (e.g. blog
hosting, Tumblr theme, email template).

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cclogg
"the .com was owned by a domain broker in South Korea. Within five minutes we
emailed the broker asking for a price. A few hours later we had a price and
quickly countered, which ultimately resulted in a low four-figure deal we
accepted."

-> On an unrelated note, it seems like buying up a bunch of well-named domains 20 years ago would have been a smart thing to do lol (if you just wanted money). But I guess that's like owning real-estate in a way.

~~~
chrsstrm
Just the other day I emailed the owner of a name I wanted. 17 years registered
and it had never been used, the guy wanted 5 figures for it for no other
reason than that's the price he paid for it. I countered with a more
reasonable offer and didn't hear back from him, so the next day I bought the
same name with a different TLD, for $35. I feel like at one point having that
coveted .com was a priority for any business that wanted to be taken
seriously, but today that just doesn't seem like the case anymore thanks to
marketing mediums that use links instead of catchy names. Did I want the .com?
Sure. Did I absolutely need it? Not at all. If my venture becomes successful
down the road then maybe I'll inquire about the .com again and have more
leverage to negotiate, but I'm not losing sleep over it until then.

~~~
simonw
"If my venture becomes successful down the road then maybe I'll inquire about
the .com again and have more leverage to negotiate."

If you do that, you'll find yourself with a lot LESS leverage. What's to stop
the owner of the .com from saying "Now that you've established a brand on that
name, the price is four times higher"?

~~~
chrsstrm
Same thing as now, needs vs. wants. If I'm already successful without the .com
I'll have shown I don't need it. He's shown no attempt to put the name to use
and he's made no attempt to negotiate a reasonable price. If he increases the
price after I've built the brand then I'd gladly spend $1500 on an ICANN
arbitration hearing.

~~~
larrys
"He's shown no attempt to put the name to use and he's made no attempt to
negotiate a reasonable price. If he increases the price after I've built the
brand then I'd gladly spend $1500 on an ICANN arbitration hearing."

Sorry but you are wrong. (I won't even get into the "made no attempt to
negotiate a reasonable price" and skip right to the action you think you will
file.

That's not what a UDRP (what you call an "ICANN arbitration hearing") is for
or how it is used or what it is intended for. (Sure every now and then pigs
fly just like people sometimes win crappy cases or OJ is acquitted.)

While there are certain circumstances that would allow someone to use a UDRP
to get a domain the _situation you are describing_ is most definitely _not one
of them_. In short he owns it prior to your use of the mark. And if you did
have a case you would not be doing yourself any favors by trying to DIY this
process you'd have to hire an attorney with experience (and not all attorneys
who claim expertise in this area actually have it.) Further if the domain is
owned by someone who is in the business you have even less of a chance even if
you think (or an attorney thinks) you have a case.

(I'm not an attorney but this is most definitely my area of expertise and I am
quite involved in different aspects of this business...)

~~~
chrsstrm
It's been a while since I read all the regs on this stuff, but at one point I
read them enough that I believed I understood them and the definition of fair-
use (at one point I was threatened for squatting on a name I owned).

This section in particular seems related:
[http://www.icann.org/en/help/dndr/udrp/policy#4b](http://www.icann.org/en/help/dndr/udrp/policy#4b)

Obviously the purchase date in relation to any trademarks may be relevant.
Maybe what I should have said originally was that if I felt he was attempting
to extort me, I'd handle it in a manner other than paying what he asked
because he beat me to the purchase.

That being said, this bridge is a long way away from being crossed and the
.com doesn't even warrant an entry on my todo list.

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keithwarren
I am curious why the focus went to ticketing and registration instead of back
office systems, seems ticketing and reg are already _solved_ problems?

~~~
tgoldberg
1) Existing/new organizers loved the idea of going mobile for their events,
but they didn't want to manage another platform. 2) Users were asking us if we
could handle ticketing/reg. as well. 3) We now have an opportunity to make
mobile engagement seamless for attendees the moment they check into an event.

There are other things as well, but these were the top three.

~~~
keithwarren
Do you think the focus positions you better for new smaller scale events or
getting access to larger events? I ask because it seems like the real value in
this space would be taking down active.com and high volume high frequency
events like 5K races etc.

~~~
tgoldberg
I'd say both. We're seeing smaller events than we used to get signup. On the
flip side, we're seeing large events signup as well. What is interesting is
the variety of events we're now seeing (5Ks included). We're talking to users
in these new verticals to see how we can better serve their needs.

~~~
keithwarren
Good luck. I do some custom dev work for a event management firm because they
could not find something that fit their needs (this was 4 years ago) so I took
an interest in the space. It shocked me how broad the reach of Active.com was
and how they were pretty much universally despised by everyone who had to use
them. Really a sales organization pretending to be an event management system.

~~~
pshin45
I'm impressed by your insight into the industry - A lot of your observations
really resonate with my own experiences. I'd love to talk shop some more
sometime if possible! My email is pshin45@gmail.com. I tried reaching out to
you on Twitter just now as well.

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bitJericho
Why is your blog in all caps. Too hard to read -_-

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tgoldberg
Only the blog title should be in caps. Are you seeing the whole thing in caps?

~~~
jeroen
Your h1 is not closed (the closing tag is in the comment). IE is rendering the
whole page in red caps. It is throwing a bunch of script errors as well.

There are 32 other errors as well:
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.eventjoy...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.eventjoy.com%2Fpost%2F79387694078%2Fhow-
we-restarted-our-company-in-two-weeks-
during-y&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

~~~
tgoldberg
Good find! I closed the tag.

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namenotrequired
Great job on the relaunch and rebranding, and on the blog as well! Thanks for
sharing.

Just so you know, I had a few minor issues on the blog:

\- None of the images are visible.

\- I think a word and period are missing at the end of this line:

> Todd, one of the Eventjoy co-founders, began the design for the new web
> product and necessary updates to our existing

~~~
tgoldberg
Thanks for catching that, turns out I cut off two words :x

Images are working fine on our end. What browser?

~~~
uiri
They're not showing up for me in Firefox 27 on Mac OS X. If I remove the
amazon part of the URL (leaving the domain as cdn.eventjoy.com) and use http
instead of https, the image loads. On HTTPS, an Amazon certificate shows up
and Amazon is sending some weird redirect XML.

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b2themax
Thanks a lot. This helps me think I am on the right track with outsourcing the
non critical(non dev) aspects of my startup. I was under the false impression
before that a startup consisted of doing the all aspects of the work by
myself.

~~~
tgoldberg
We've generally been very resistant to outsourcing anything and this is the
first time we've ever done it. It didn't come out flawlessly (we had to tweak
a lot), but it paid off so we could launch quicker.

~~~
b2themax
It seems like it worked out very well for you.

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lumpypua
Out of curiosity, what CMS did you use for your help center? My startup is
hitting exactly the point where we're getting common questions and need an
FAQ.

~~~
tgoldberg
Zendesk. They even have a startup program where you can get some months for
free. You might have to search around to find it.

~~~
lumpypua
Sick, thanks!

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hol
Great story! Amazing what you can achieve in such a short space of time if
you're focused and dedicated.

~~~
tgoldberg
Agreed. Going through YC helped us remove all distractions. Beyond that, we
just consumed a lot of caffeine.

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jesusx
the like and follow buttons in
[https://www.eventjoy.com/organizing/](https://www.eventjoy.com/organizing/)
overlap each other

Chrome 33 on Mac OS X

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lightyrs
Impressive turnaround. Great job and thanks for the write-up.

~~~
tgoldberg
Thank you!

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pbreit
I guess eventbrite.com wasn't available...

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Pxtl
RED ALLCAPS.

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iancarroll
Thanks.

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Pxtl
Oh, thank goodness. I was worried it was some bizarre stylistic fad and not
just an unclosed tag.

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kimonos
Great post! Keep it up!

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samstave
Automate the setup of all your events!

FB, TWITTER, TICKETS! WALLS!!!

Enter eventomator.com!!

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samstave
I was trying to illustrate that eventomator.com was available....

