

Octopart helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month - skmurphy
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4213736/Octopart-helps-nearly-a-half-a-million-people-find-the-part-they-need-every-month

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skmurphy
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made,
perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?

When we started Octopart, we were sure that within 6 months, we would have all
the major distributors signed up and we would be overwhelmed with users. In
fact everything takes longer than we expect it to. That includes building
technology, building relationships and getting users. On the surface, it seems
like the problems involved in part search are straigtforward: get the data,
build a system to keep track of it, and build an intuitive frontend interface.
But each of those problems have subproblems, and each subproblem needs to be
iterated on quite a bit.

~~~
amac
Octopart is the YC website I use the most. In addition to current revenues,
I'd suggest there's an opportunity to build a marketplace for parts too. I'm
often looking for parts online to buy that simply are not available or require
custom manufacturing. An alternative to eBay and other consumer marketplaces
for parts, components etc. Generally anything B2B/B2B2C is under-served in
comparison to B2C.

