

Startup School Radio: How Optimizely Knew It Was on to Something Big - loyalelectron
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-startup-school-radio-how-optimizely-knew-it-was-on-to-something-big

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lubos
People who paid them up-front were basically companies they've done some
business with before.

It's good to work your network to get first customers but every startup can do
that. It's just common sense.

And nowhere in the article Optimizely claims this was how they knew they were
onto "something big". So the title is misleading.

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loyalelectron
Fair point on the title -- perhaps I should have left it at "on to something."
Will keep in mind for next time.

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duncanawoods
Thanks for these I will give it a listen.

Even "on to something" is a click-bait title which HN guidelines say should be
neutered. IMHO you don't need to force it, just be classy and straight-forward
e.g. "YC Startup School Radio Ep. 3 - Optimizely & Lawn Love" or something.

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jak1192
Really been enjoying these podcasts. Very cool to hear these first-hand
stories

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diego
I know companies that did the same thing, only they were not onto something
big. Having customers pre-product is a good signal. I'm sure that the class of
companies for which this happens have a much higher success rates than a
typical startup. However, that's far from knowing you've hit something big.
That's something you can only say in hindsight.

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marktangotango
Serious question; what is the deal with the something-ly.com names? It just
seems really odd and me-too-ish to my ear.

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timdorr
Because of the .ly TLD. Many companies employed a play on words to have a
single-word domain for any word ending in -ly. Bit.ly is probably the most
well-known.

The problem is that .ly is managed by Libya, and they tend to have restrictive
laws and government practices that many people take issue with. So, many
companies just got the -ly.com versions of their domains and made the switch.

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beambot
To expand upon your comment.... those startups used something.ly domains when
they were small and just starting out -- i.e. before they could afford to buy
something-ly.com. Once they had traction and raised money, they purchased the
proper domain. It's the same reason TheFacebook later dropped "The".

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faithfone
When the guys at Optimizely asked for money upfront for their new software
idea, were they already backed by YC?

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tarr11
I wonder if they collected the check up front. Big difference there too...

