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PriceAdvance Beta Launch (priceadvance.com)

23 points by rrival ↗ HN
We submitted our app in October not expecting anything and got asked to come talk to YC. We put together a tight demo, couldn't sleep the night before, waited until late Saturday night after the interview to hear they'd decided to pass (it's ok, we still heart YC), and pressed on. We've been cranking ever since returning from Cambridge to roll out the PriceAdvance FireFox addon for the holidays.

We've just launched our beta! And we just landed on the front page of LifeHacker.com (woohoo).

Anyway, we'd love to get some more feedback, comments, suggestions. Thanks!

http://www.priceadvance.com/

25 comments

[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 75.7 ms ] thread
zach
Congrats! That's awesome, although I did get a download error (-228) on the xpi when I tried to install it just now.

Obviously, there's substantial overlap between you and Bountii, although that may have nothing to do with why you were not funded. I do tend to wonder how quickly these sort of strategic interference issues are increasing for YC, though. It's a lot easier to turn someone down than to risk an insult (or worse) to an previous company.

rrival
Definitely something we'd wondered about (re: bountii =) ). Even more entertaining was that one of the guys from Bountii was at YC prior to our interview answering questions for pre-interviewees =)

What OS / FireFox version are you getting an error on?

zach
Heh. Awkward!

Here's my version string from the About box:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11

Running on Tiger. No proxy server.

I can wget/curl it just fine, and it works just fine on my Intel/Leopard MacBook, so no emergency.

zach
P.S. Works today (one day later). Well done.
nreece
Hmmm I thought I saw a Greasemonkey script do just that.

An IE version will help you guys attract a wider user-base. Good luck!

agotterer
We will definitely be making an IE version in the near future
nickb
I saw a FF plug for book comparison shopping but you guys did it for everything... congrats on launching!
ALee
So, I put myself in impatient person who just wants a cheaper price on stuff mode.

I went to your site and quickly downloaded it. Then, I was confused by where PriceAdvance was installed. Then I noticed it was on the bottom right, but when I tried to access it, I could only disable it. So, I went back to your site.

1) Your demo has no sound. I had no idea what was going on. 2) When I went to Best Buy, like the demo, Price Advance was still loading (understandable because you just launched and the server calls have got to be pretty high. 3) I still have no idea what you guys do. Perhaps a short and sweet little phrase could help out. 4) I think your server just crashed because neither PriceAdvance or your website are working.

For the brief amount of time, I think you need to spell it out to me what I'm downloading and how it works.

rrival
Thanks! This is exactly what we need to hear. I'll make a point of updating copy and getting a new video in place shortly (we're definitely experiencing some temp slowdowns due to traffic).
agotterer
Thank you for your suggestions, they are really helpful. Our servers have been getting hit pretty hard for the last few hours. We are doing what we can to optimize and scale with the traffic.

Our extension lets you browse/search e-commerce sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, etc. and get comparison prices inline from other merchants. The results displayed are done through perfect product matching, so you will never get a macbook while searching for an ipod.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask. Thanks again for the comments.

copenja
I disagree...

I only glanced at their website for about 10-15 seconds and I understood what the product was...

ALee
Okay, I think it's working now. I'm guessing you're waiting for the network effects to build up, so I can get many many more price selections as other users shop on the web.

Useful product for my holiday shopping needs though. Once it worked, I got it.

henryw
wow that's awesome. keep it up and get to a production version with ie support fast.
henning
You're definitely on to something, but let's be realistic here. You're no Pollground.
thomasswift
Pretty badass guys. Big ups on the chicago front!
nailer
I only spent one seconds on your site before commenting.

In that time I knew what the product, why it's useful for me, and how it worked.

Most 'check out my idea' posts on new.yc never get to two seconds. You're ahead of all of them.

blader
This is one I think YC is going to regret passing on. Good job guys.
axod
The comparison shopping sector is a madly crowded one. What you have is an interesting innovation, but it depends how you're going to get users and steal market share from the other gazillion comparison sites out there.
plusbryan
Love the concept. I currently use retailmenot's firefox plugin for finding coupons for the site I'm already on; I probably am more likely to use something like that because 1) I almost always order from 3 or 4 main sites (amazon, newegg, thinkgeek, and grudgingly dell.com), and 2) price comparison shopping never seems to be as accurate or rewarding as that $10 off coupon you never knew about
rrival
Nothing like surprise savings, indeed - I'll put that on the future features list - thanks for the feedback!
rrival
Apparently we've upset ze censors - would love to know what's off limits wrt mentioning that this was an idea we interviewed with for YC this fall =)
webwright
I imagine it's because you referred to yourself as "YC Company X" and then qualified it with the interview info.
rrival
Gotcha! Sorry about that!
emfle
I went like this: Hmm, might be useful as I am looking for a new monitor. Click. Download plugin? Are you kidding me? I don't have the attention span for that.