I could talk about the SEO behind it for days but:
We did use the reset to our advantage to pick up rankings, but I don't think it mitigates the authority of bigger players much. The reset tends to wash out small-time players in the space and bigger players who can't niche effectively more so than it does committed players. Now that I have traffic, I don't worry too much that we are going to get bounced in the reset. I am much more worried that someone will beat us with better content for the next year. Everfest is another startup that I have seen that appears to have pretty much conquered the reset at this point.
Funtober had a very hard time displacing a couple mid-sized players in some of our seasonal niches that were established. Even with the reset, it can take years for their information to become truly out of date and people to look for alternatives. There are also a few things that they can do to keep their information current with little effort. We're just about even now with two in particular that I have in mind, but it took 5 years to get there.
Black Friday would be an obvious example of an area where the reset should be biggest if your theory is true. I think the players there have been pretty consistent and my internal estimate is that even with the reset it will take 5+ years to crack it.
Basically a one-stop shop for fall festivals, Oktoberfest, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, etc. Still have a long way to go to make it what I would like but traffic last year was roughly 1 million in the month of October. Anticipate it will double to 2 million/October this year. Still working on the right revenue model.
Some scammers on Facebook have seized on to my aunt's name and image as the front for their operations. As family, they friend us from fake accounts on at least a weekly basis. Despite reporting these fake accounts more than 100 times, I got a new one today. They ask me for feedback every time I report an account. They are not getting positive reviews.
Based on this experience, I'm not optimistic in their abilities.
Attorney here. Frequently do case evaluations for my firm. I prototyped this last year. It was not as hard as you would think if you have some experience in the area of law.
I think affiliate relationships will be our next test but haven't pursued because our visitors value experiences over merchandise. I was hoping an entrepreneur would setup a ticketing affiliate in our niche area but alas I may have to do it myself.
These sorts of mistakes happened when I was trading options more than a decade ago. In most transactions, such a confirmation would have cost money on every transaction since speed matters.
Back in the old days, I feel the broker would have gone to the market makers, said there was an error, and gotten out of the trade.
Hi. Nights & weekends startup founder with a day job at a whistleblower law firm here. [1]. The following comes with all of the standard caveats about this not being legal advice. [2]. I'm going to talk generally and you can draw your own conclusions. But my advice is to call an employment attorney tomorrow so they can give you specific advice. Most will do a free initial consultation, and anyone good would take a look at whether you should be reporting this to the government under one of the whistleblower programs.
Quitting is almost always a bad idea unless you have enough savings to last a ridiculously long time. If someone quits, they forfeit unemployment in most situations. Future employers will ask you why you quit, and you will be in essentially the same position as if you were let go.
Interviewing: Everyone should always be interviewing. Most employment is at-will and you can be fired for almost any reason. It's easier to find a job while you still have a job.
Internal Reporting: Frequently doesn't end well for the person reporting compliance issues. Be especially sure that the violation is a real issue before continuing to report it.
Retaliation Lawsuit: There is no catch-all law protecting people from retaliation. There are piecemeal statutes that cover a number of popular situations, but they also depend on your state and the specific issue that you reported. If you are covered, you are looking at several years of litigation in order to receive a maximum of what is usually 1-2 times your lost compensation while they attempt to prove that they fired you for a legitimate reason. If the company is legit, they would probably offer you severance that eliminates this possibility.
Whistleblower Rewards: There are a number of federal programs that offer rewards for bringing information to the government. The two that would be most applicable to a data scientist I think are the False Claims Act (health care, etc) and the Dodd Frank Act programs (SEC & CFTC for violations of securities laws). If you take information to the government and they fine the company as a result (greatly simplified as there are lots of other terms and conditions), then they offer between 10 and 30 percent to the whistleblower.
Sorry this has happened to you.
[1] Feel free to track me down if you want to chat. For those considering downvoting this as solicitation, I will say up front that it's unlikely that my firm would be interested in the situation as described.
[2] This is general information that you can find elsewhere on the internet. It isn't specific advice to your situation. This answer does not form an attorney-client relationship. We would only have one if you signed a written retainer agreement with my firm. Each state has its own laws/rules and I'm only licensed in one state, which is likely not yours. So you should seek legal advice from an employment attorney in your state immediately. Sorry that this is even necessary to say.
Build consumer demand on the site first and you'll be able to sell something in the long term. At least that's what I'm hoping works with my current project.
I am curious if anyone knows the answer to this or has tried it. If you had a judgment against them, couldn't you attach the judgment to their app store earnings and have apple send you their check?
I suspect they would just start publishing under a new user? Just thinking out loud as my law grad self is intrigued by this question.
My friend and I kicked around putting some effort into building an app a few years back when people started publishing the "how to make money on the app store" posts. So thank you for posting this.
My suggestion is to find a website with an established niche (outside of the traditional app review websites) and audience who will promote your product ... and build something for that audience.
For example, my website has a ton of traffic in September and October. It's new though, so we are still working out monetization. There's a couple games in the market that would appeal to my visitors. I could probably give one a significant bump. And not one of them has ever contacted me about a review, provided a promo code, etc ... let alone a revenue share.
I didn't spend much time looking at Letters, but maybe it would do well on the blog of a english teacher?
Agree on the last sentence (although it might be better to just say eCommerce and drop the "social") so I figured I would comment.
The site definitely reminds me of PG advice about made up startup ideas not solving an actual problem. Social networking sites helped users connect with their friends online easily. Not sure as a user why I should signup to your site and start building lists of knowledge unless I am getting something (business, revenue cut, etc).
You might look at instructables. People want to show off the things they build so they create tutorials about it. Pretty good community. There's probably room to sell the supplies in an e-commerce store and maybe give the authors a cut of the revenue. Seems much less forced than "build a list and share it with your friends!"
My own shot at this is in Halloween/Fall/Events. I envisioned some sort of way to find events, meet people and get the knowledge/stuff you need to attend. We are still in Facebook's "adding the course catalogs" stage though. Add dot com to my username and then let your imagination really run. We've spent around 10K but have put in a lot of sweat equity.
If social eCommerce becomes huge, I think it will transform Halloween costume sales online and we will be better positioned than a traditional costume shop. Can you say the same about listnerd? If no, then you need to pick a different area to start building a community.
If you swap my big players and niche for your big players and niche, I could have written your reply here.
Specifically:
1. We've been called a one stop shop by multiple people.
2. We're self-funded by my day job with a trivial burn rate.
3. I've probably read "How Not to Die" > 100 times.
Before my current project, I tried to create small niche websites that would eek out enough to get me out of my day job. They never did. Some success, but not enough. So I decided to go big or go home. I like this approach way better.
I think grabbing a beachhead is crucial in a competitive space. I'm in year two. I pursued 5 or 6 different niches my first year, following the philosophy that you should release a minimum version one. And if you are going to be a one stop shop, the minimum has to thinly cover several niches/sub-niches. I was definitely embarrassed by some aspects, but people sent me unsolicited emails with feedback and appreciation.
I laughed a bit at the fact that I was trying to outdo the big players as a solo shop, when everyone else is trying to carefully test their lean startup principles. I convinced someone to join me because of the initial traction. And now we're beefing up 2 of the initial niches. Under the theory that we'll hopefully get traction in one of them by the end of the year. And patching holes in the rest will be sufficient until we have time to work on them more. Or find another team member.
If we can get traction in a 2nd sub-niche, we're going to be working on monetization in the highly competitive space (as well as the sub-niches we've got traction) in year three (next year). As it turns out, even when things have gone right, making money in a competitive space is still tough! We were able to grab traction in the first sub-niche because there isn't a clear path to revenue in it. We've got some ideas though; we just don't have enough people to go after both user growth and revenue growth. So we're going after user growth right now, given our infinite runway to learn ... limited only by our ability to stay motivated.
The right thing for me to tell you is that you should give up.
Why is this the right thing? Because a bunch of people are going to tell you that you are crazy over the next few years if you decide to try it. So you may as well hear it now from me and decide that you are going to do it anyway. Or just take my advice and give up now.
I'm currently tackling a multi-billion dollar market. It's pretty scary. I have my doubts every other week. But I think it's on the right side of crazy. We've identified several niches within the market that we think we have a good shot of being able to penetrate. These are $100+ million markets of varying competitiveness that are related to the competitive market. Once we've got a foothold there, we're going to try to start penetrating a few different segments of the competitive market. And then execute like crazy.
So we're not banking on our ability to penetrate the highly competitive market. Our competition has more money, people and better brand recognition.
But you can't step up to the plate and be afraid of the ball. You've got to try to hit a nice solid home run over the fence. You aren't going to build a google, groupon, airbnb or dropbox without competition.
I'm in it for the long haul. I've got a ton of room to pivot because it is a vast market. I've got a few different aspects that might become successful. I like my chances.
Startup school had a presentation last year i think that discussed startups in a land grab situation vs startups with entrenched players. I would start there. Build. And look for the right team.
I hope the idea is good enough to justify the next five years of your life working on it. Because that is what you are looking at doing.
Liquidation: Corporate governance issues are a matter of the country where the defendant is organized. So if the law there allows them to do it, they can. I'm less familiar with the process of chasing the money. Trying to remember back to law school here: In the US, the debt doesn't just disappear. It would either attach to the old entity (which would have to be paid a fair price for the acquisition of its assets) or the new entity (which acquired its assets and liabilities per the acquisition agreement). So if it has no assets to begin with, it's possible. If it has real assets, it's more difficult to do. Not impossible, just more difficult.
The options are to sue them in their foreign country or sue them in the United States. If you sue them in the US, you face jurisdictional issues (do they have sufficient contacts in the US to make a lawsuit here fair?) as well as judgment recognition issues (you would probably have to attach the damage award to a contract they have with someone in the US to collect if the foreign country court system doesn't recognize the US judgment).
Thanks for the link! Very helpful. However, my own searching suggests Google treats /something-about-something/ similar to /somethingaboutsomething/. So it isn't a perfect example. If the same content is on both url's, would one always win?
Our own debate was whether to hyphenate a two word phrase in the directory structure: /kitchensink/whatever/ vs /kitchen-sink/whatever/. So we had to do a similar debate as the domain hyphen analysis. Spam signal/Google treatment vs. User Convenience vs. Does it really matter.
We did use the reset to our advantage to pick up rankings, but I don't think it mitigates the authority of bigger players much. The reset tends to wash out small-time players in the space and bigger players who can't niche effectively more so than it does committed players. Now that I have traffic, I don't worry too much that we are going to get bounced in the reset. I am much more worried that someone will beat us with better content for the next year. Everfest is another startup that I have seen that appears to have pretty much conquered the reset at this point.
Funtober had a very hard time displacing a couple mid-sized players in some of our seasonal niches that were established. Even with the reset, it can take years for their information to become truly out of date and people to look for alternatives. There are also a few things that they can do to keep their information current with little effort. We're just about even now with two in particular that I have in mind, but it took 5 years to get there.
Black Friday would be an obvious example of an area where the reset should be biggest if your theory is true. I think the players there have been pretty consistent and my internal estimate is that even with the reset it will take 5+ years to crack it.