

Yext Scores a $25M Round from IVP - riffer
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/01/the-25-million-demo-yext-scores-a-big-round-from-ivp-after-techcrunch50-debut/

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10ren
Let me try to understand this:

1\. "pay per action" is paying for a qualified lead, as opposed to a raw lead
(which could be anything, e.g. even a wrong number).

2\. Doing it with phone calls (as opposed to clicks on online ads, or emails
etc), because that is how many businesses and their customers contact each
other. e.g. gyms, vets, car repairs.

3\. Doing it for local businesses.

The technical achievement of speech recognition is significant. I like his
point that because the speech is interpreted relative to a specific business
type, the domain is highly specialized, and so the task of recognizing the
particular terms of that domain is much easier. I've been impressed by
automatic speech recognition for telephone directory lookup - for me, it works
90% of the time; and that's out of the whole phone book, not restricted to a
domain. I guess this is an example of "speech recognition" is still not good
enough in general, but it's good enough in specific roles.

The next step after "pay per action" would be "pay per sale", which Google can
do when you use both their adwords and their payment facility (I don't know
how well that's working).

Anyone care to correct my misunderstandings, or elaborate on these points?

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pchristensen
That's pretty much correct.

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pchristensen
I was at TC50 and it's impossible to overstate how dominant this guy's
presence was during his demo. No one could believe their eyes or ears that
here was this amazing, large, profitable company doing something everyone
wants and _no one had ever heard of them_. I would have offered them money on
the spot.

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mahmud
You weren't kidding, just saw it and they killed:

<http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2163590>

~~~
shard
I don't watch TC50 videos, so maybe it's just that I am unaware of the typical
presentation quality there, or maybe it doesn't come through on video for me.
His presentation was confident and well-rehearsed, and his startup was pretty
cool, but I wasn't incredibly impressed by his presence.

~~~
pchristensen
I doubt the video would be impressive. It was the feeling of everyone in the
room going through this process simultaneously:

I don't get it - neat - holy crap - is this real? - Holy Crap!! This is
real!?!?! - Wait, did he just say $20 million in revenues? - Why have I never
heard of this before? - $20M?!?!

There's a feeling in the air when 500 people all have the same amazed reaction
that doesn't come through video.

Particularly fun was watching Marissa Mayer's reaction when he started talking
about Pay Per Useful Call.

~~~
riffer
What was her reaction? (that part doesn't come through on the video at all)

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brandnewlow
Interesting article on a veterinary site in which one person accuses Yext of
ripping her off while a few others tout pretty impressive ROI from using it.

<http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=13851>

"Dr. Randy Wiltshire reported in a VIN discussion that he’d used YextVets for
six months, and during that time, was directed 67 new clients from the site,
for which he paid Yext a total $2,345 in advertising fees. Those clients, in
turn, spent $9,100 in his practice."

So if he paid $2,345 for 67 calls, Yext was charging him $35/call. That's a
pretty nifty digit.

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moe
The real news here seems to be that a company with $20M in revenue (yext) was
allowed to pitch at TC50.

~~~
sachinag
Well, they got in on the merits. It certainly wasn't like HP demoing a new
product (like we saw at DEMO); it was a company coming out for the first time.
It certainly qualifies as a startup in my mind. It may be a $20M company, but
still, _no one had ever heard of them before_. The look of astonishment on the
panelists' faces was awesome.

It may very well have been the greatest gambit to create a competitive bidding
process for VC investment in history. Seriously. They presented at TC50, and
in less than a month, had a VC firm who they had absolutely no prior
relationship with wire $25 million to their account. (Sure, they had
previously raised $3.5 million, which marked the IP as safe and the revenues
as real, _but still_.)

Hats off to Yext, as far as I'm concerned.

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seldo
I get that they are still a startup, but they are a _funded_ startup. It was a
great demo, but still it seems like TC50 should be restricted to companies who
have yet to do a series A round.

~~~
pchristensen
Lots of companies had already raised funds - Clasemovil raised half a million,
Clicker has 8 million, lots were self-funded by people with exits under their
belt, etc. The only requirement was you had to do your first public release at
TC50. The judging criteria were useful demo, attractive, professional,
polished design, and useful business, and the first three favor those with
funding.

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albertsun
I'm really surprised that they managed to grow so big and stay so low profile
for so long.

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bootload
nice to see they treat their engineers well (open plan offices) ~
<http://www.yext.com/recruiting/engineers/>

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hernan7
Is that an eMachines under the engineer's desk?

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trin_
i dont get it ... how do they help the businesses with the junk calls with
transcribing and categorizing them? it seems to me that those junk-callers
call anyway.

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10ren
The purpose is to get customers for the businesses. The startup supplies phone
calls to the local business (i.e. potential customers). The local business
pays for the calls, but they don't have to pay for junk calls.

The purpose of recognizing the nature of the call is to determine whether they
need to be paid for; not to protect the business from junk phone calls.

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trin_
ah okay. so instead of paying a fixed price for a yellowpages listing they pay
per actual customer calling. thank you.

