
FundersClub Unveils Venture News - susanam
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/27/fundersclub-unveils-venture-news-a-community-news-site-for-investors-exclusive/
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minimaxir
Not only is there a chicken-and-egg effect in creating a successful Hacker
News spinoff, but looking at the sample content on Venture News, it seems that
all the content on VN is redundant with content that generally hits the Top 5
on Hacker News. (Are people who use FundersClub and Hacker News different
demographics?)

Compare with the launch of [http://www.usv.com](http://www.usv.com) which
nowadays appears to consist of mostly stories and comments by USV
employees/partners, with a low volume of posts in general.

~~~
argumentum
> which nowadays appears to consist of mostly stories and comments by USV
> employees/partners

At its inception, Hacker News (then called startup news) was intended
primarily to share stories amongst the y-combinator network. Reddit was used
for this purpose earlier, but due to its rise in the mainstream consciousness,
most stories were no longer geared towards hacker/founder-focused YC.

If you view HN's early days on the internet archive, you'll see that a large
portion of content came from yc-affiliated folks. So clearly, a news site for
a small community can have value _for that community_ , irrespective of
mainstream adoption.

FundersClub's community (though it shares a lot of YC dna for obvious reasons)
is distinct from HN in that investors & founders of _funded_ startups are the
largest component. Of course there are many of these people on HN as well, but
they are a small minority. A glance at "venture news" demonstrates that the
focus is much more startup/industry focused than HN.

The difference is also clear from the name: "hacker" news vs "venture" news.

~~~
ecesena
On the chicken&egg problem, imho a front page with the 1st news having 2
comments and all others with just the button "discuss" is a first evidence of
missing community.

I'd consider hiding that at the very beginning in favor of other signals that
actually show the presence of the initial community.

At Theneeds.com, where we aim to create a HN-like for "normal" people, i.e. no
hackers (and no ventures :), we started with a facepile that generically
represents users that interacted with the content, wether they simply upvoted
or actually discussed it. I understand that the style here is less graphical,
but I think the idea can be elaborated to reduce the "sense of desolation".

Well, it's actually Monday night... good luck for tomorrow morning ;)

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bliti
Hard to read. The colors for the fonts are just too light. Its pretty, but not
very readable. At least for my old, tired eyes.

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wbradley
This is Will from FundersClub. Thanks for the feedback. We will consider ways
to improve contrast and legibility.

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bliti
All you need to do is darken the font to the content-related links. If you
want to keep it stylish and a dark gray will match with the gray-ish blue you
currently have. It will be a nice contrast, and will improve readability while
keeping the style intact. #222 is what I'd suggest.

I made the changes to show what I mean. Please refer to:
[http://imgur.com/6ombpd7,IdjJn6x#0](http://imgur.com/6ombpd7,IdjJn6x#0)

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ksikka
"People who are interested in angel investing often do not have the time to
source deals and conduct due diligence on their own."

^ That's a shame. IMO if you're gonna do it, you should do it right.

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lancewiggs
I'd really like to see less FundersClub header/footer/sidebar spam on the
page. HN itself has very little from yCombinator on the site, but subtle is
powerful.

~~~
mittal
Alex from FC here. Good feedback, we'll work on this.

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andygcook
Here is the link in case anyone is interested in checking out the site:

[https://fundersclub.com/venture-news](https://fundersclub.com/venture-news)

~~~
fvwjniour
The chat box give the impression that it might be a spammy hard-sell feature.

What am I going to get from a one-on-one chat with [faceless website]?

A sales pitch? What headless collective entity will I be conversing with? How
many people can see the message queue I'm dumping chat messages into?

~~~
mittal
Haha, nice catch, that's not supposed to be there (it's for other parts of our
site). Our dev team is removing.

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neverland
If FundersClub reads this, please consider adding a full RSS

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wbradley
This is Will from FundersClub. We're considering that. Thank you!

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mindcrime
Consider this another "vote" for an RSS feed. RSS is essential!

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ameister14
Why not just partner with SeekingAlpha or the Motley Fool?

