

Startups of 2014 - keesj
http://blog.betalist.com/post/68998889858/startups-of-2014

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liamgooding
Whoop, awesome to see Trak.io in there! Cheers Marc, good roundup.

For the record, we did launch private Beta but we've had to start limiting
again as we pretty much had enough, and found we weren't managing support
tickets as well with more and more joining.

When we launch paid plans in the new year, we'll be opening up out of Beta.
But yeah, there's a very real and very functioning product behind that signup
page :-)

~~~
keesj
Yeah it's good practice to take your private beta slow and invite early
adopters in small batches. Seeing your service is all about understanding your
users, how did you decide which users to give access to the private beta
first? Or was it just chronologically?

~~~
liamgooding
At first chronological for the first few hundred, and then when server bills
(and SaaS monitoring, backups etc.) stopped been insignificant, we switched
to:

1) only honouring the promotions we had out there 2) the paid priority access
people (Paying $19, then $29, to get access) 3) people from startups who could
offer us a good PR boost by association on launch

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rohamg
Awesome roundup, thanks for the shoutout :)

We soft-launched ZenHub.io [1] on Betalist in early November and have been
very happy with the results so far. Several hundred high quality users who are
engaged, providing feedback [2], and inviting their team members. The tweet-
storm whipped up by Betalist was cool too :)

[1] [http://www.zenhub.io](http://www.zenhub.io) [2]
[http://github.com/axiomzen/zenhub-
now/issues](http://github.com/axiomzen/zenhub-now/issues)

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normloman
What the heck is August?

[http://www.agst.co/](http://www.agst.co/)

I can't figure out what it is. Is it a social network? An iphone app? A
subscription service?

The website tells me it's where the worlds most talented artists forge
relationships with their fans. But it neglects to say how this is
accomplished.

~~~
Ryanmf
Links at the very bottom of the page reveal a launch post[0] and their
deck[1].

There's definitely an app, and it's definitely a social network—though perhaps
if this or something like it catches on we'll require new terminology, as this
model where every user gets categorized 'artist', 'curator', 'listener',
'tastemaker', 'consumer', etc. doesn't map very well to the one-size-fits-all
peer networks we're used to.

As far as the sales channel is concerned, it's difficult to say. Somewhere
between "we'll figure it out as we go" and "as long as we're taking down
Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud, Tumblr, G+/YouTube, Vimeo and
Myspace, we might as well also go after iTunes, Ticketmaster, Goldenvoice,
Behance, content licensing, booking, event management…"

[0] [https://medium.com/p/fe08d1925c7f](https://medium.com/p/fe08d1925c7f)

[1] [http://www.agst.co/investors/](http://www.agst.co/investors/)

~~~
seanwing
Ryan, there are no specific categories of users on August. There is one user
account for everyone. However, if you are invited as an artist, you receive an
additional distribution channel reserved for the quality content of true
artists.

The view of August is that the world of media will change when an artist is
able to sale 100 million copies of their work, all by themselves. This is the
future, and we are building the platform that will make it happen.

~~~
normloman
"This is the future, and we are building the platform that will make it
happen."

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I know investors like to see confidence, but
if you seriously believe your own hype, you'll be unprepared for failure.
Chances are, you'll fail. Nothing to do with talent or how good your product
is. Just luck. Learn humility. It will keep you from letting your guard down,
and getting trampled on. And it will come in handy in case you fail.

