Can anyone that has submitted their site to Killer Startups quantify the number of solicitations they received from vendors? I ask since I almost submitted my site a couple weeks back but was turned off by these lines in the Killer Startups' Terms of Service:
"You herein consent that The Company will disclose to any third party your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number (you may opt out of this by not submitting your startup), except to the extent necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws or in legal proceedings where such information is relevant. The Company reserves the right to offer third party services and products to you based on the preferences that you identify in your registration and at any time thereafter; such offers may be made by the Company or by third parties."
I didn't submit my info on their site. They actually just picked up my site from somewhere else. Looking at my analytics I realized they were the ones responsible for the sudden spike in traffic.
But now that you mention solicitations, I was contacted by three PR companies in that same traffic spike. It appears to be a hot-bed for PR companies scouring for new clients. I just wonder if the site isn't run by one of these companies.
As an owner of a site wanting to get my name and info out there, this part of the ToS doesnt read to bad.
I certainly understand where your displeasure comes from, yet I do feel it needs to be kept in perspective. As in this would not be acceptable on your personal email. But on your generic site email. ( Which should still have a touch of personal, of course for your users! )
As mentioned in many places, if you are using email via google, you could always "+killerstartups" in your email.
I just tested it myself and it worked great. Not with "+killerstartups" just "+test".
I received less than 10 emails from people offering to review my site and/or interview me on their blog/site for prices ranging from $10 to around $50. About a week after my review on killerstartups I stopped getting them.
Most were really generic and irritating. I could tell I was just being spammed. However, a couple were well-written and polite. I emailed them back thanking them and letting them know I'd consider their service in the future and they were very nice about things.
I'm going to build the features you suggested very soon. Another HNer suggested something like: http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener and I will enable that type of view to filter by industry, date, and size.
Regarding historical data, digital filings only exist after March 2009. Before that the SEC used a paper form that the SEC would scan and put online. The scanned PDFs would need to be injested via OCR and humans. Thomson Reuters already does this and I'm sure it's expensive.
When I have the beta of your suggestions up, I'll try contacting you via Twitter since I don't know how to contact you otherwise. If you'd prefer to email me your contact info, I can be reached at robert@#{website_from_this_post}.com
Investment funds are generally subject to Form D filings since they don't do "public" offerings as defined by the SEC. So yes, billion dollar hedge funds do file for raising massive amounts of money.
One more note, "Amended Filings" will show the highest amount of money raised to date. To determine how much money was raised recently, you need to subtract the underlying "New" filing and any subsequent amended filings. The SEC's data structure makes it difficult to get amounts of all the referenced filings to do this automatically (basically to 'diff' the filings) so I leave it to readers to do. Example: http://www.formds.com/issuers/mount-vernon-securities-lendin...
Thanks for the feedback. I have another set of visualizations coming soon I think will address your suggestion regarding comparables over time. Your suggestion is spot on.
As to stealthmodewatch.com, I thought the creator (you?) did a great job of getting launch coverage in TechCrunch. A very, very good job. I got a link in TechCrunch the second day my site went up (for breaking the Dave McClure 500 startups launch) but stealthmodewatch.com got a whole article. Well played!
Yes, the 'recent' and 'by industry' listings are nice. The data set seems small enough, though -- by either day or even last few months -- that it'd be nice to have a longer page, with more details, and 'instant' filtering by amounts, regions, industries, terms, etc. Something like Google Finance stock screener on the last year of Reg-D filings would be awesome:
That stockscreener idea is genius. I was planning a more basic version but your suggestion is even better since people are already used to that format. I'll start building this this weekend - Do you mind if I email you a beta version for feedback before I put it live next week?
Form Ds are filed with the SEC by startups, hedge funds, and growing companies to announce the completion of fundings (equity and debt) but there's no way to search for companies near you. I built a Google maps visualizer that takes the daily SEC filings and overlays them on Google maps.
For example of a Form D, here's SeatGeek's (current top story on HN) Form D filings:
I'd love feedback on my Google Maps visualization.
Things I know I need to add:
Ability to zoom in on an area and see filings from the last week or month.
Ability to save the areas you're interested in (instead of the whole US loading every time)
Tech thing to change:
I'm writing out the javascript using Rails' erb instead of a javascript function pulling from a JSON object. I just saw the SeatGeek guys use a JSON object + function for their raphael visualization and realized that that's what I should be doing...
I use Embed.ly for a side-project site I hacked together quickly (www.senioritis.com) and I love it.
The beauty of Embed.ly is that users can submit a link, my site calls out to Embed.ly, and Embed.ly returns HTML for embedding in the page. In my quick hack I don't even check whether Embed.ly can handle the link, etc. but just embed the HTML if the response isn't nil (though I understand the XSS risks and need to fix it).
One thing re Embed.ly, their server sometimes takes some time to respond and so I recommend using DelayedJob. Right now my horrible hack just uses an after_create hook in rails to call the Embed.ly server in the same thread but sometimes that times out or has a noticeable delay.
I submit that there's more to this story than "pharmaceutical companies weren’t interested in developing the therapy".
The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation http://www.jdrf.org/ funded $100 million dollars of research last year alone into research for juvenile diabetes (type I). Link: http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&p... Funding is predominantly from individuals and families searching for a cure for diabetes. That includes people like myself and my family. We could care less what mechanism or what business model cures diabetes.
Lastly, the head of JDRF is a tech star. http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=113971 He founded Citysearch and Overture (the originator of keyword marketing. Bought by Yahoo).
I'm a big JDRF supporter since my sister has Type 1 diabetes. For any of you that are passionate about curing Type 1 diabetes, look into JDRF. Link: http://www.jdrf.org/
"You herein consent that The Company will disclose to any third party your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number (you may opt out of this by not submitting your startup), except to the extent necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws or in legal proceedings where such information is relevant. The Company reserves the right to offer third party services and products to you based on the preferences that you identify in your registration and at any time thereafter; such offers may be made by the Company or by third parties."