
Startupindex.ca - Free our data, free the community - jmacd
http://www.startupnorth.ca/2008/04/29/startupindexca-free-our-data-free-the-community/
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9oliYQjP
I'm not quite sure why stuff like this bothers me, but it does. Why would I,
as a startup, want to attract this much attention for something that offers so
little in return? Part of the competitive advantage of being a startup is that
you're only known to the people that really matter: your customers. By the
time any competitors figure out who you are, you are a little bit bigger, a
little bit stronger, and a lot wiser.

If you want media exposure, you're much better off picking up the telephone
and calling up a newspaper. But this; this is just an easy way for VCs and
competitors to keep a close eye on you. That makes me a bit paranoid.

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hwork
One thing we (CrunchBase) offer is search engine rankings. We rank pretty high
on startup keywords (try 'facebook' or 'scribd'), and so we find it's worth 5
minutes a month to keep the data relevant.

StartupIndex has some good stuff going on, particularly the geography
features.

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jmacd
We want to create really useful regional pages. That is one of the things
about Canada. People don't just pick up and move to one particular city (ie:
the valley for tech) -- we tend to stay in our own towns and cities and make a
go of it from there., so we want to support that in some cool ways.

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dawie
I really like the idea, but you have some work to do.

Your filter to lookup by region is not working correctly. If I select Calgary
and Edmonton company comes up. Also Cambrian house that is located in Calgary
and is in the Database, does not show up.

Also the filter usability is a bit strange. You add a filter and you can see
all the pretty AJAX do it's thing, but the fucking thing does not change the
results until you click filter...

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jmacd
Yeah,. we are going to work on getting the filters right in our next
iteration. They even confuse me ;)

It might have been smarter to leave them off alltogether, but we didn't..
we'll get to it quickly.

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truebosko
Pretty cool and great for Canada. Good work guys

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artaak
The idea is neat! Do you think you would eventually extend it and create a
listing with relevant startup jobs?

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jmacd
Yeah,. We are going to add some form of job postings. At a minimum, we will
let startups add an RSS feed of their job listings. What we don't want is job
listings from big companies that are just aimed to pick people out of the
startup community.

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tom_rath
Your 'Regions' list ends at Montreal.

You're missing out on an odd 750-1000 miles of geography (and a lot of
Canadian startups).

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jmacd
I am from the East Coast,. Atlantic Canada wasn't left out, there just aren't
any entries in that region yet. It is available to be added to however.

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paulgb
Out of curiosity (as an East Coaster and StartupNorth reader), where on the
East Coast are you originally from?

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jmacd
Charlottetown -- Grew up and started my first startups there.

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lux
This is a great idea! We'll be adding our startup on there soon enough too :)

