HN Explorer

4-week old company got YC interview, here's our application

17 points by michaelcheng ↗ HN
Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted YouTube video introducing the founders.

http://youtu.be/Hjtb1n2B7fE

If you have an online demo, what's the url?

http://www.snip.ly 60-second walkthrough: https://vimeo.com/89670092

What is your company going to make?

Snip.ly is a link shortener that drives conversion. It lets you embed messages into every page you share across social media. Here’s an example of my Snip.ly message on Y Combinator’s home page: snip.ly/dBy. It works like a link shortener, but allows you to embed into the page your own call to action, commentary, announcements, and pretty much anything you want. You can promote yourself while sharing articles from TechCrunch, Forbes, Mashable, etc. Every shared link is a lost opportunity if you’re not using Snip.ly.

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

What we understand is that sharing is all about conversion. It’s not just about sharing more consistently (Buffer), it’s not just about managing relationships (HootSuite), it’s not just about having more characters in your tweet (Bit.ly), sharing is meaningless without conversion. It is the underlying motivation behind sharing, and we get that. We also get that the closer we are to the true motivation, the more valuable our product is, and the more likely our users are willing to pay for the service.

(due to character limit) Read the rest at: https://medium.com/p/675f404b3bc8

12 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 36.8 ms ] thread
hoopism
This is the best idea I wish never existed.

It's pretty smart... but I will hate getting these links.

sbarg
Fabulous idea. Good luck and continued success!
staunch
Don't X-Frame-Options and frame-busting Javascript break this idea?
pkinsky
Just tried with facebook, got this message:

Sorry, we don't support facebook.com/ links yet.

rdl
This looks like a very solid YC application -- I can't really think of anything which would easily make it stronger. It seems like a good example for other people to try to emulate.
bking
I do have to say, that is a unique way to bring a consistent message across urls
zachlatta
How difficult would this be to recreate? Isn't it really just a simple link shortener that uses iframes instead of redirecting directly?
semerda
This looks more like a feature than a business. Why wouldn't bitly add this into their product as a feature?

I tried your demo url snip.ly/dBy and it took me few seconds to realize the iframed content in the bottom. Wasn't sure what to do with it and I moved on. I'm sure this is just the beginning but please move away from iframes - its not new and blocked by many social sites.

Congrats on getting a YC interview tho!

fozzieBoston
This is very nicely implemented, and I'm assuming your background will allow this to morph and improve this quickly. My only concern is whether this will be enough to make users switch from existing solutions? i.e, is this 10X better than everything else?

Is there a way to create this as an overlay on the center of the page (sort of like a fade-over splash page)? perhaps you can allow users to add logos/images etc and customize the display of the layover?

Congrats on the YC interview!

coffeecodecouch
From your Medium post:

> no one has pointed out any substitutes or similar services, which leads us to believe we’ve built something that doesn’t exist yet.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this has been done before. I distinctly remember someone launching the exact same product on Warrior Forum because of the intense negative reaction it got. Website owners were very upset and felt it was evil to add your own content onto someone else's site. Sadly I can't remember the name, I assume it didn't go very far because my searches aren't turning up any results.

I hope this doesn't take off, but if it does it will be a great way to instantly recognize non-respectable websites or social media accounts. I've read that YC invests as much in the people as the product, so maybe you'll end up creating something different.