
Former Facebooker Scoops Up $1.4 Million for Freshplum (YC S11) - Sam_Odio
http://allthingsd.com/20120626/former-facebooker-scoops-up-1-4-million-for-freshplum-sales-analytics-for-the-little-guy/?refcat=news
======
Sam_Odio
I started this company with two other friends from YC companies: Nick
Alexander and Michael Yuan. It was really to scratch a personal itch: online
pricing. When you're selling something online (especially a virtual good)
choosing a fair price is hard. Most people (including me) seem to guess.

I felt like there must be a better way, where econ & math is used instead of
intuition.

Freshplum grew out of that. After building the company to solve that need we
realized that analytics can help online businesses in several different ways -
not just pricing. We now how a more holistic focus on helping companies
understand their online business through analytics.

~~~
vlad
Congrats Sam. Sam and Nick have generously hosted me during previous Startup
Schools, including during crunch-time of their first Y Combinator startups
years ago, even though we barely knew each other, so I'm forever grateful.

Are you guys going to post some visual or marketing on the product? When
DropBox 'launched' on Hacker News, Drew posted just a video. Even though it
didn't have any actual pictures of the product, it got me excited.

Unrelated, I notice we have the same top color of abcdef. I read your user
profile because I'm launching a Google Chrome extension for Hacker News (later
today) that shows profiles via a popup inside the story. I'm currently working
on my own demo video for it before I post the link, but maybe I should just
launch now, too!

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hassy
So what does it do exactly? Is it something like automated A/B testing on
prices/segments of customers? ("let's see if we can charge visitors on Macs a
dollar more?" type of stuff?)

Love the design of the site.

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ktrgardiner
Freshplum sounds very interesting and like something I may find useful in the
near future, but I fear that this may be because of how vaguely it is
described. "Virtual goods" isn't specific enough (in my opinion). I think
everyone would be better served with some sort of concrete example of a good
that was priced or even a list of the most common goods that Freshplum works
with.

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goodweeds
Man this guy's writing style is incredibly unclear and annoying.

~~~
SnowLprd
Glad I wasn't the only one to notice that. How many annoying euphemisms for
"receive" can an author use in one article? "Scooping up," "nabs,"
"snagging"... And then there's the outright spelling error: "Who is wiling to
pay for it?"

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huhtenberg
Not to take away from the funding news, but you have a rather eclectic mix of
three different faux-3D visual styles on your web page - the logo, the
form/buttons and the map at the bottom. At the very least I would consider
fixing the glossy stuff on the logo, it stands out the most and not in a good
way. Something like this -
<http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3535/freshplum.jpg>

(edit) I would also reconsider the use of Futura as your primary branding
font. It's way off the mark. You are not a romantic movie subtitles :)

~~~
Sam_Odio
Noted, thanks.

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ssebro
Clickable link to actual freshplum site : <http://www.freshplum.com/>

~~~
timjahn
Always amazes me when I read an article online that's 100% about a website and
there's no link to said website found in the article.

~~~
rhizome
Somewhat ironically, "selflinks-only" seems to be a common policy with news
republishers.

------
volkk
"not looking for ninjas, samurais, pirates or rockstars." i like this company
already.

~~~
dredmorbius
So ... by extension, there _might_ just be a spot for a philologist on a
distant world.

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aditiyaa1
Just being curious. What type of companies use your service. The example the
article gives "a pair of jeans" is still a physical good and is priced taking
labor cost into account.

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brianbreslin
Congrats Sam as a fellow UVA alum, always like to see these stories. Wahoo-wa!

------
alrondy
You know what's cool? The only news about your company is that someone wrote
it a check. Your website has fuck-all about what you're doing. Apparently I
can sign myself up for some unspecified email content at some random point in
the future, because I don't get enough email.

Now it's on hn with some crap about how you've "since expanded"... great. Get
back to me when you're in business.

~~~
Sam_Odio
I'm sorry you feel this way and I can understand where it's coming from.
Raising money isn't an extraordinary event and probably doesn't mean much to
you (though it does mean I can pay everyone's salaries for a little longer -
and that means something to me).

That said, we'd love more than anyone to make this available to as many people
as possible. The team is pulling long hours to make that happen. We're just
trying to do it in a responsible, methodical way.

I'd love to see you or any other HNer try us out. If you sell stuff online and
are interested in an analytics tool to help you understand your business, feel
free to drop me a line. My email is in my HN profile. After I understand your
needs I'll tell you honestly whether we can help.

~~~
rhizome
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if someone gives you market
research in hopes of exchanging it for access, there's a chance that they'll
be giving it away for free?

------
eps
Who the hell changed the submission title? It was clearly stating that it was
submitted by the founder. And now it has some ex-facebooker BS in it. Who
cares he was with Facebook. The fact that he's on HN is what matters.

Please stop. You are not helping. Keep it human.

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jc4p
Did the title of this post really just get changed? Was what the head of the
company (and much more than just a "Former Facebooker") posted to announce his
company coming out of stealth not a good enough title?

Until there's some public announcement about things like this or some
accountability, every front page post on this site is going to have a comment
chain like this. This is ridiculous.

~~~
cobrien
It was changed, yes -- and there was already a previous comment to this
submission discussing it (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4163318>) ...
and it was killed. I'm disappointed in the continued editing of submission
titles as well.

[Edit] And now the referenced comment has been un-killed. :-)

~~~
jc4p
If comments like mine are being killed just for pointing out flaws, I guess I
should turn on showdead before I start blabbing!

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omi
I was thinking that there should be a plugin LevelII stack for each good, say
used computer hardware. you can hit someone's bid or put your offer away from
last traded price.

[http://www.yourtradingjournal.com/images/nt/NinjaTrader_clip...](http://www.yourtradingjournal.com/images/nt/NinjaTrader_clip_image002.jpg)

I'm sure that for virtual goods, delivery is more fluid and there would be
less of difference say for an identical configuration of a server, but one
server with 8GB vs 16GB ram.

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dataisfun
Congrats Sam. I think this is an important and super cool venture.

