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Tell HN: Catch.com raises 7m. Didn't get in as solo founder (S08), kept pushing

116 points by aschobel ↗ HN
It's been such an incredible journey, HN has been such a huge source of inspiration.

I still vividly recall some my of earliest conversation on HN and what a transformative effect they've had on me (thank you Paul Buchheit!) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=157432

It was early 2008 and I had just moved to San Francisco. I was working on Catch.com with the idea of making it easy for people to capture what matters to them and let them recall the interesting ideas, notes, places, images that they had captured. I had a basic web and Android app with a fairly goofy name (3banana), but it worked.

I applied as a solo founder to Y Combinator for the Summer '08 class with high hopes. Then I get this email:

  Date: 10 Apr 2008 03:13:28 -0000
  Subject: YC Funding Application (aschobel)
  
  We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally.  ...
Ugh. I was pretty devastated, but fortunately had enough money to bootstrap my baby for a bit longer. I knew in my heart that the time for Catch.com was right, folks we moving to smartphones in droves and that enabled a huge part of the vision.

A few weeks later I hit uninteresting roadblock, a recruiter for a hot startup contacted me. I ended up interviewing and getting a job offer for a role where I could impact millions of users.

Should I keep burning money and follow my dream or join this startup with a ton of traction? To the dismay of my parents I turned down the job and pushed forward with a renewed sense of purpose.

Later that summer I met my co-founder Steve. We connected right away and I knew this was something special.

The Catch.com story continues, we raised a bit of money and made a bet on Android. We grew pretty quickly with Android and everything transformed when we change the name to Catch.com in Fall of last year.

It's humbling to see how far we've come and the huge opportunity in front of us.

It would have been so much harder to get to this point without the HN community, you are a beacon of hope.

Be determined and trust your gut.

Thank you HN & PG,

Andreas

Oh, and a bit of celebration: http://mashable.com/2011/02/15/evernote-competitor-catch-com-raises-7-million/

Yay! :P

44 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 97.3 ms ] thread
staunch
Congrats.

How much did you pay for the domain Catch.com?

aschobel
Danke!

Sorry, I can't give the exact details but it wasn't that much.

What was really cool is the seller of Catch.com could have sold it to a much bigger company and chose us instead.

These acts of kindness are so touching, it is incredibly how people go out their way to help startups.

samatman
I hope you've at least sent him a really excellent bottle of champagne now that you've hit on some traction!
qeorge
These acts of kindness are so touching, it is incredibly how people go out their way to help startups.

You reached out when my friend suddenly and unfortunately became famous over the theft of a certain phone, offering him a job if needed and any other help you could give.

I haven't forgotten it. Good things happen for good people, and many good things are sure to come your way. Thank you.

darwinGod
Ahh...Looks like Apple/Gawker. If so, really cool of you! All the best @ Catch!
zeedotme
great stuff, congratulations.
[dead] vandalizeit
Poorly designed Evernote clone raises 7 million.

Bubble.

hackernews
Your favicon says it all. Congrats!
[dead] what-to-do
Great DOMAIN NAME, and great story!
timmins
Hi Andreas! Congratulations!

I'd say this is amazing but I know the amount of work you and your team have done. It's well deserved.

Dan (from Chicago)

noig3
This is super inspiring. I am still working on finding a co-founder and I have not started looking for funding.

Do your thing my friend. This is great news for you!

dmix
Funny I just downloaded Catch on my android over the weekend and thought it was a great app. Well designed and more straight-forward than Evernote.

Good to see you're HN'ers. Congrats on raising capital.

greydream
Thanks for the kind words, dmix.

I was the first engineer aschobel brought on board after he founded. Now I'm heading up Catch's mobile dev efforts.

The Catch Android client is my baby, so I'm glad you're finding it compelling. Please don't hesitate to use the built-in feedback links to send us comments or criticisms!

tomjen3
I just signed up when i saw this posting. The android client would definitely make this a more useful service, but you seem to have several different clients available. I am guessing that it is the node application i should use, but it requires permission to access my location. What does it need that for?
vaksel
I wish HN would enable links in self posts.

http://catch.com (yes it was easier to type it out here, than in the browser)

mindcrime
Congratulations! That's a very inspiring story... thanks for sharing.
jam 

  A few weeks later I hit uninteresting roadblock
Did you use speech-to-text to write this post, or is that just an odd mental slip?
aschobel
s/uninteresting/unexpected/

Mental slip.

My friends and family were the ones who were most excited about that job, it seemed a bit boring and confining to be engineer #80.

I love the uncertainty and possibilities that I face with Catch.com

I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

edit

combiclickwise
I am in a similar position. recently quit my job and I am loving the uncertainty and the possibilities.

I am happy for you

rodh257
Congrats and thanks for sharing - out of interest, how did you meet your co-founder?
aschobel
Via a wine club via a car club. =)

A good friend of mine from AudiWorld / Way0t introduced me to one his friends from one of his wine clubs. Funny how that works.

axiom
98% of companies that apply to YC get rejected. Around 10% of startups succeed. Given this, YC rejects about 3 out of 4 successful startups even if their selection method is absolutely perfect.

YC is in an amazing position where hundreds (thousands?) of great entrepreneurs come to them, and they get to pick and choose the cream of the crop. So please, don't their their rejection too seriously.

bearwithclaws
I would say take their rejection seriously, and let it motivate you even more (now that there's an added incentive to prove them wrong).

At least that's what I've been seeing here in HN recently.

aschobel
I dislike the word rejection, YC didn't accept my application for funding.

The odds were against me as a solo founder, but why not go for it?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=159549

It would have been incredible to learn and grow with YC, but I don't regret the path I took.

sudonim
Congratulations Andreas! I don't think that getting passed on by YC invalidates an idea and means it's no good. You clearly had a vision you knew was great and kept pushing. An inspiration to us all.
stevenrace
Great to hear Andreas.

I recall following your 3banana posts on lurking about on AWOT/WayOT years ago. Again, best of luck.

timmins
Woah, fellow awot/wayoter here, too.

Small world, it is.

aschobel
Danke Sir.

First post on way0t mentioning 3banana was on 2006-07-27, jeebus that is a long time ago.

mathrawka
I used to use 3banana, thought it was great. One day after updating, the 3banana icon disappeared and was something called Catch. I had no idea what was going on, so quit using it and started using evernote.

But glad to hear the story behind the change and see that are you doing well!

aschobel
I'm really sorry, we could have handled the name change a lot better.

Feel free to email me at aschobel [at] catch.com to share your thoughts.

norova
Glad to see Catch thriving. It has become an app that I cannot live without.

A question though. Catch has no ads in the mobile apps or on the web site, so there isn't any revenue generated there as far as I can tell. The entire product is completely free, the API is free to use, etc. How does a product like this generate revenue?

aschobel
We are rolling out a premium service in the next few weeks that will give you the ability to attach PDFs and Office docs.

Working on that blog post now, lots of cool new stuff (non-premium) coming.

Lucadg
As Graham says determination is what makes a difference. Congratulations.
svrs
Hey-- Could you remove the javascript alert from delete and change it so the question appears on page? I think it's much more user-friendly to keep the confirmation in the same area as the delete button instead of popping open in the middle of the page.
atiw
Wow that's some story... It is so awesome to know that you (one of us) actualy made his dream come true in such a short period of time... I am sure we all get to hear "do the logical/right thing and take that job" strategy from their family/friends.

I know I do a lot.....

It's great to see you were in the same situation and chose otherwise....it's really hard to make that choice and stick with it....Kudos to you brother....

About me, I am still having to make this part time, since I felt lost after getting rejected twice for investments...and decided to take a job to stay in US and continue building my dream part time.... It is really really tought to do this part time....but I sure hope I won't give up, and come across stories like yours to keep me going, since I too feel my product's gonna touch many thousands, if not millions of lives (just like yours did?)

Thanks a lot for sharing your success story Sir, these are few and far between....

P.S. - just FYI, I was also not accepted October 2009, and have been trying to make my product....wow it;s been too long but I was really sick in between, so meh....another month might actually get my prototype going....

Multiplayer
What an interesting update for me. I met you (or your cofounder I would guess) at TED a few years ago, and installed your app. I didn't "get" it at the time. I used to look at it on my iphone all the time, but never used it. I would have thought that was the end of the story.

Great to see that you persisted. Keep after it!

Ripst
I have been working for more than 3 years on a similar thing. I have to admit that you nailed it focusing on a simple interface with just the essential features. I still like mine better of course ;) but I am overloading mine (notepub.com) with features very few people use, just because I am having fun at it. And I do not have the capacity to expand to mobile apps, so I am kind of stuck. Congratulations! I hope you the best for you.