I'm not sure if I agree with this valuation (it seems very high), but Squarespace has a smart founding team.
They used to provide videos where they would re-create popular blogs (Scoble's, for instance) in less than an hour using the Squarespace platform. At the end of the videos, the original blogs and the Squarespace creations would be virtually indistinguishable. I always thought that was one of the most creative ways I've seen a Web publishing company demonstrate the functionality of its product while hard selling it at the same time, and it doesn't surprise me that Accel would be interested in this team.
I think I may have seen that. Still - aren't they focusing more on real world "events" (conferences, demo days, etc.) than on more "trivial" things like product releases?
“We shy away from using the term “events” because we don’t feel it’s very appropriate for the scope of activity we’re trying to capture. While our users may be interested in posting more formal, organized parties and whatnot to Plancast (and we certainly encourage them to), we want them to also feel completely comfortable sharing more informal plans (getting drinks, seeing a movie, going to the zoo, traveling to new york for a week, attending a conference, etc)."
I wouldn't be surprised if you had read that TechCrunch article. I once woke up with what I thought was a great original idea only to realize after some searching that it was exactly like startup I had read about on TechCrunch a couple months earlier.
letseat.at - are you worried about this competitor? pretty high-profile company, offering both a desktop and mobile site design for roughly the same monthly price point.
We're not the first company in this space...there have been quite a few over the years...we're worried about all of them :)
The challenge for us, I think, is not in the existence of competitors, but the ability to convince a meaningful amount of restaurants that their existing websites are difficult to use on phones, and that they need to do something about it. After all, there are still tons of poorly designed restaurant websites out there.
A problem with this service's model just occurred to me: The way that you get users onto your "new mobile" version of the restaurant is by re-directing them when they go to the restaurant's home page from a phone browser.
What if the users are like me, though, and just avoid going to the restaurant Web site from the phone because we are aware how bad the "usual" experience is.
I'm not expressing this clearly, but consider this analogy: If for ten years a neighborhood in town is "bad", has a high crime rate, routinely plays host to gang wars, et cetera, building a state-of-the-art gated community and community playground in that area won't attract new visitors for a LONG time until that old reputation runs its course.
One of your selling points is that there's "no marketing required." I don't know how you feel about this, but I think that's a losing strategy for a project like this.
I think the key word here is "required". Most of the restaurants we've spoken to are averse to the idea of having to promote a new piece of technology because of the time and effort that involves. This gives them the opportunity to make the decision about promoting it--restaurant websites deemed "bad neighborhoods" might choose otherwise :)
I'm not sure if there's any way around that, though. Part of the point of the service is that you don't give up your branding by making customers go through an external site. They go to your site, and if they're on a mobile phone, they get shown a mobile friendly version.
I'm working on a similar project, and one thing I'd like to point out is that menus are not always simple databases. There are several menus that have paragraphs of information that relates to several menu items rather than just one. How are you planning on translating that information to a mobile application, if at all? I'm trying to find a good example of this "paragraph of extraneous info" from menus in a Google Search - I'll get back to you when I can.
Interesting observation. Do you have any examples of this?
In my experience, most restaurant menus do fit into a simple database format. After all, most major point of sale systems do use relational databases to store and track menu items. The menu item databases are usually highly configurable but I've usually seen them break down into:
1) Major categories: Entrees, Appetizers
2) Menu items: Cheeseburger, Grilled Salmon
3) Modifier categories: Steak Temperature, Salad Dressing
4) Modifiers: Rare, Medium, Well-Done, etc.
Of course you usually don't display the modifiers on the menu itself, that is a back end implementation detail. :)
I know what you're talking about, but do you think mobile sites could possibly get away with not displaying that 'extra' information? Especially considering screen real estate on mobile devices is fairly limited.
If it is absolutely necessary, it seems like it would be fairly easy to have that show up when you select a section. That could get complicated if there are multiple paragraphs within a section (i.e. one for burgers and one for chicken sandwiches, but both of those are under "sandwiches"). You could just limit it to one description per category, though.
This is one menu that presents the type of problem I'm talking about. The line that worries me is "All entrees come with salad bar," which reflects on every entree. From my perspective, the easiest way to incorporate data like this would be to include it underneath the extended explanation of the menu item.
PS Steven - I want to set up a phone call with you or something. I'm working on something that is literally one step away from what you are. follow me on Twitter (@nate) or e-mail me at nchastain at gmail.com and let me know if you've got some time free some time next week. I'm still in the development stage and won't have a product out for at least a month.
noted. I wasn't trying to abuse HN with this post, just trying to get an idea about whether any type of a dynamic site can be created for under 2k. I'll refrain from this type of speculative posting in the future.
The first thing I did after reading this comment was check your profile creation date and your karma. To each his own, but I was totally unimpressed with this site.
I judge "start-ups" (really a Web app) in this case by a few metrics, but the first test is always this: does this start-up solve a problem? I don't think it does. Anyone who wants to create a top ten list can do it from any blogging platform and several other sites that do exactly what this one does.
To me, Twitter did not really seem to solve an existing problem at first, but people liked it, and it caught on. Same with Farmville. Personally I think the site has a good foundation as far as look and feel for a site aimed at the general public. This is just a new out of the box site. Let's see where they iterate to in 6 to 9 months. I think they have a good foundation to build on.
I can't believe I was such a dick in that comment above. Must have been a bad day. I still don't like the service, but I shouldn't have taken that karma police tone on.
