
Apply HN: Startup Timelines - bakztfuture
Currently in private beta:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.startuptimelines.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.startuptimelines.org&#x2F;</a><p>We&#x27;re building a wikipedia-like platform for startup founders to help them study the success of other companies.<p>Right now, our site shows screenshots of successful startups and how they evolved over time but we&#x27;re working on adding new kinds of publicly available information such as SEC filings, press coverage, founder interviews, and growth&#x2F;traffic metrics.<p>To see a sample preview of what this could look like check out the Airbnb timeline:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;startuptimelines.org&#x2F;startup-timelines&#x2F;airbnb" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;startuptimelines.org&#x2F;startup-timelines&#x2F;airbnb</a><p>this is just a fraction of the total amount of information out there on this company.  We think with more money we could get the runway we need to more comprehensively profile companies like Airbnb.  We&#x27;re also working closely with 4 entrepreneurs to learn more about what kind of information would help them out most in their background research.<p>Our goal is to give founders a single timeline with as many data points as possible so they have a dedicated resource when doing background research before starting their own ventures.  Eventually, we&#x27;d love to open up the platform so anyone can contribute content to Startup Timelines.<p>Some success we&#x27;ve experienced so far is that we&#x27;ve added companies to our site at a 20% weekly rate in the first quarter of this year, we&#x27;ve also had 60,000+ visits, and 2-3K shares on social media.  We&#x27;ve also been featured in TechCrunch, Product Hunt, and Entrepreneur magazine.<p>YCF will give us the runway we need to keep the lights on and continue executing on our ambitious mission.  We&#x27;ve been working on this project for about a year now, so, please consider upvoting&#x2F;commenting as we could use any support we can get!  Thanks for reading :)
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rememberlenny
Hey!

I dont know if this would get funded, but its a great idea. I did something
like this, but it was a little bit deeper into individual experiences. ie.
instead of getting public information, interviewing individuals who worked at
these companies/with the founders, then compile for others. Something like
Founders at Work as a website.

If you are looking for collaborators, shoot me an email!

rememberlenny at gmail

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bakztfuture
Reaching out to you right now!! Would love to hear about how it went for you
:)

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solve
Really, really like this. Been promising myself I'd build something like this
eventually, other projects always got in the way. Glad you did it.

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brudgers
Curious as to the size of the market and the ways it might be monetized.

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bakztfuture
We're focused right now on building an audience - ideally founders and
employees at startups who are looking up information everyday on Startup
Timelines (funding rounds, screenshots, news snippets etc).

With enough data points and a daily community looking up stuff everyday, we
actually think it'd be cool to help unknown startups raise money (equity
crowdfunding) through our platform. Ie. we track information about them and
changes to their product (not just the homepage) from the day they launch.

I found a few market size numbers around the crowdfunding market floating
around [0] but it is already multi billion dollar market

At the moment though, we're just focused on helping founders research startups
better and getting them the information they need to be successful.

[0]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2015/06/09/trends-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2015/06/09/trends-
show-crowdfunding-to-surpass-vc-in-2016/#17ff3e5c444b)

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bakztfuture
Feel free to ask any questions!! Would be happy to answer

