Archive for the ‘Website News’ Category

25Dec

Why did Yelp turn down a $550 million + Google Deal?

By Chris in Website News with 0 Comments

yelp

Last week various news and startup blogs were speculating about the news of yet another possible Google acquisition – This time of Yelp, the local review site which it turns out, has turned down an offer of $550 million plus earnouts according to TechCrunch at the last minute of signing a deal.

Why would CEO of Yelp Jeremy Stoppleman drop the deal, especially this late in the game after what must have been months of talks between them and Google. I’m sure the details will surface, but until then here are some thoughts which I find interesting:

-Google were about to offer nearly half a billion to be able to take over Yelp and most probably integrate this data into their SERPS. This would have been their second biggest acquisition after YouTube.

-Yelp must have either had a moment of clarity (maybe under valued their business or saw implications which they didn’t want),  had a counter offer from another party (other search engine or social network), wanted a PR stunt to boost their visibility, or wanted to see how much Google valued their turf?

To me this says a lot about where Google wants to be, and how it will want to differentiate itself from its competitors. From a data centric perspective, being able to get real world feedback on offline business brings them one more facet of information which they can use to bring the best search experience. By integrating offline shopping, entertainment and restaurant information / reviews they would have seriously boosted the reach of Google Local, and grabbed even more online real estate.

There are still many areas including local which Google and the other search engines would like to be involved with including social networks, real time social search, mobile, cashback and loyalty shopping, voucher codes, travel, finance and I think it is simply a matter of time until the likes of Bing, Yahoo, Google and Facebook, Twitter all try and integrate into these areas one way or another.

What we have seen in the past, and is still true today is that Google is very much interested in not only being a search engine sending users to their destination, but they want to be the destination too. Actually, they want to be with you throughout the journey from the browser to the call!

With Yelp turning down this deal, we should all keep an eye on whats happening in the local space – Should make for interesting viewing in the next couple weeks or months!

10Jan

Looking Ahead To 2009 – Lets Make More Entrepreneurs

By Chris in Website News with 2 Comments

Hello Entrepreneurs, and Happy New Year! 2008 was has seen radical changes in the world, many friends, contacts, companies have had to cut down their operations, and many have had to face difficult situations. But with change comes opportunity, and I have seen some great examples laid off staff building their own projects and startups, and finaly starting what they always wanted to do in the first place!

With the economy in crisis, and a new year ahead of us its time for reflection, new resolutions, as well as planning for the year ahead.

So what is Indie Startups going to be doing in 2009?

Well, first off we are back from holiday, therefore will be able to blog more frequently about the latest bootstrapped startups, and inspirational projects going around. Also I am very keen on helping startups take their projects to the next level, so will be publishing a series of guides covering important topics from finding good JV partners, to building your audience, and ensuring that your project either generates revenue or looks attractive to investors.

Also this blog is very much about your startup projects – Therefore use our contact form to let us know about your projects so that we can feature the best ones and get you added coverage.

28Mar

A more elaborative introduction…

By Julian in Elaborations, Website News with 7 Comments

So we’ve outlined our main goals and ideas we’d like to cover here on IndieStartups, but to be clear on what everything means, I’d like to take this post and be a little more specific. Let’s start with bootstrapping – we’ve used this word everywhere, but what does it really mean?

According to Wikipedia, “Financial bootstrapping is a term used to cover different methods for avoiding using the financial resources of external investors. Bootstrapping can be defined as “a collection of methods used to minimize the amount of outside debt and equity financing needed from banks and investors” (Ebben and Johnsen, 2006:853).”

We’ve mish-mashed this word with others like ‘independent’, and ‘self-funded’… And this is what we will be covering. Ambitious new start-ups that don’t have millions of dollars worth of venture capital and investments to blow off. We’re also here to enlighten the start-up society that raising this kind of capital is not always necessary, and more importantly we’ll do our best to share methods; stories, ideas, opportunities and much more to help our readers get their start-up off the ground successfully.

To be more effective, and credible, the team here will also be performing a few ‘Case Studies’ alongside IndieStartups. In layman’s terms, we’ll be launching some of our own start-ups with heavy documentation just to show our readers what can be done (hopefully). We have a few ideas to explore, but we’re very open to suggestions. If you’d like to suggest something you would like to see us do, a comment using the form below would be lovely. Money made from these case-studies will be invested back into IndieStartups and further case-studies.

If you have any ideas on what you’d like to see done, covered, or tested on IndieStartups, please do let us know. We do read each comment and, so far, each e-mail we receive. If you do not wish to leave a public comment, or would like to get in-touch with us for a different purpose, feel free to do so using our contact form (or if you prefer, shoot something to [email protected]).

I’ll finish this post saying we’re also on the lookout for new (and existing) start-ups to cover, so if you’ve got one or know someone who does feel free to e-mail us.

Enjoy! (P.S. – Don’t let an update go unread, subscribe to our feed)

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25Mar

Welcome to IndieStartups

By Jon in Website News with 8 Comments

A concept coined by 3 entrepreneurs on 24th of March, 2008. Designed, developed and launched the following evening for under $200. I introduce to you, indiestartups.com.

There are some wonderful blogs in the blogosphere, covering every topic imaginable. After some discussion we felt that there was a gap in the (arguably saturated) web startup niché that could really do with some coverage. Everyone knows about techcrunch, mashable, venturebeat and all the other “big boys” covering the big, funded startups. While these blogs offer some great coverage and a wealth of information they generally miss stories about “the little guy”.

That is where we come in. IndieStartups.com targets “the little guy”. Startups that are going it alone and bootstrapping it themselves. What can you expect to see from IndieStartups.com?

  • Coverage of bootstrapped startups trying to make it big.
  • More focus on the development process of startups.
  • Cost outlines for some of the larger startups.
  • Interviews with fellow bootstrappers.
  • Articles, tutorials and reviews.
  • And at a risk of sounding cliché, loads, loads more.

We invite you to subscribe to the RSS feed.

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