How a 19-Year-Old Raised $5 Million to Revolutionize Search

http://www.inc.com/articles/2011/03/how-19-year-old-daniel-gross-is-taking-on-google-with-greplin.html

by culturebeat • 15 years ago

139 64 15 years ago

inc.com

pchristensen• 15 years ago

Did Andrew Warner write that headline?

mkramlich• 15 years ago

probably not, but this will save him the effort when he inevitably interviews him :)

mjh8136• 15 years ago

Do startup founders in Israel tend to be relatively younger than US-born founders, and if so, why do you think that is?

rudiger• 15 years ago

Jewish men and women are a precocious bunch :) I'm sure you'd find that US-born Jewish founders are relatively younger too.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

military draft at 18.

iworkforthem2• 15 years ago

easy to click Greplin Programming Challenge: http://challenge.greplin.com/

Anyone managed to pass level 1? I am stuck at level 1. Please share the logic.

erwanb• 15 years ago

here is a naive but working way to do it in ruby : https://gist.github.com/849625

iworkforthem2• 15 years ago

Thank you. 0.upto(string.length - password_length) do |index| that's the line of logic I didn't it get correct.

ntoshev• 15 years ago

Python:

max((s[start:end] for start in xrange(len(s)) for end in xrange(start, len(s)) if s[start:end]==s[start:end][::-1]), key=len)

RiderOfGiraffes2• 15 years ago

What a crock - the second challenge requires calling a USA phone number.

Color me unimpressed.

Natsu2• 15 years ago

The last time it was posted, they had an alternative. I don't know if it's still up, though. I'd check the previous story, though.

lysium• 15 years ago

There's an alternative, just click the provided link: http://challenge.greplin.com/static/nophone.html

nandemo• 15 years ago

Well, do you want to work there? It's a challenge used for hiring. They might as well restrict it to people living in the US.

parfe• 15 years ago

If you finish you're prompted to submit your code along with your resume for employment consideration. Keep that in mind as you move on to each next step. Had to piece together one of my solutions into a single solution.

https://www.greplin.com/jobs Here is the source of the challenge link which gives you a heads up it's for a job contest.

ashish_0x90• 15 years ago

I did manage to solve all three problems and I really liked the way the problems were put up on the website.

Anyway, I would still suggest trying for some more time before looking at the solution that that I have provided here - https://gist.github.com/849813 .

The first problem itself took me most of the time. All this time I was trying to come up with a optimal approach (and was stuck in some boundary condition in implementation for Approach 1) until I realized that even a brute force solution will work in this case because of the smaller text input.

Natsu2• 15 years ago

It was posted to HN ages ago. Several people, myself included, passed it. Brute force is sufficient; you don't really need any clever algorithms.

Just spend a few minutes thinking about what you know about palindromes and what they look like and it shouldn't be too hard to code.

blhack• 15 years ago

Holy crap this is fun.

I'm stuck on level 3 right now. The way I'm doing it is probably very very stupid, but I think it will work :)

(I'm trying to brute force it. I may look back at this as very very stupid, but we'll see).

This could get filed under: "Ways to denial-of-service Ryan".

Love it. Thanks to whoever set up the challenge.

silverlake• 15 years ago

I solved all of them in 30 min. using Python. Since it's brute force it's not that hard.

brich• 15 years ago

I think this would work (but I haven't tested it):

Convert the string to an array of integers called FORWARD. Copy and flip the array into REVERSE. Subtract the values of REVERSE, offset by (0..length), pairwise from FORWARD. Then, just keep track of the longest block of zeros (index in FORWARD and length)

corpus: ilikeracecarstoo FORWARD: (8,11,8,10,4,17,0,2,4,2,0,17,19,14,14) REVERSE: (14,14,19,17,0,2,4,2,0,17,4,10,8,11,8)

In this case, the password appears at an offset of 2 REVERSE(2): (0,0,14,14,19,17,0,2,4,2,0,17,4,10,8) SUBTRACTED: (-8,-11,6,4,15,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,-15,-4,-6)

The longest zero block occurs at FORWARD[5] and ends at FORWARD[11]... in other words, racecar.

Should be quicker than brute force.

asr• 15 years ago

Nice piece. I have a question that comes up every time I read a "we came up with our Y-Combinator demo in the last weekend and got funded" story--is this rare? It seems like I hear it all the time, but maybe most of the "last 24 hour" demos don't get mentioned.

It's surprising to me to think it might be common, because my gut reaction is that this means the founders don't actually have a viable product, but because they got funded before they could figure that out, it will now take months or years for the founders to move on (or pivot significantly). I'd love to hear why that's not what's going on, though.

gooberdlx• 15 years ago

Met this guy sitting outside of Facebook a few months ago. Nice kid, smart, savvy. We chatted about Greplin and it sounded like he was making good progress... Let's hope he keeps it going...

jhuckestein• 15 years ago

Daniel, if you're on HN, I'd love to know how the visa/immigration situation worked out for you in this case (if you can publicly talk about it, I know that this is not always the case).

charlesdm• 15 years ago

I actually emailed him for this about a year ago and he told me that he was an American citizen.

acconrad2• 15 years ago

I thought this was a cool article until I read this line:

"But regardless of how successful Greplin is, say, even if we go public someday, my parents won't be satisfied unless I get a degree. They won't speak to me."

That's pretty sad, actually :(

m_myers• 15 years ago

I came here to say the same thing (even worded the same way in my head).

Why are people so fixated on college degrees -- even if they've already built a profitable company from scratch? Is it to prove something? If so, what?

dkl• 15 years ago

Because they are an obvious measure of worth for some people. Shallow, yes, but that's the short of it.

mannicken• 15 years ago

It's a status thing. Same reason why people buy expensive cars.

yason• 15 years ago

It used to mean something. Fifty years ago fewer people had degrees and it was likely to mean good life and secure career.

Not so much any longer but the old tricks of the trade of life from 1-2 generations back keep living on. It'll take some time to change.

mixmastamyk2• 15 years ago

They're nice in that they force you to learn some subjects you wouldn't normally ... that and the college chicks.

Agree that the idea in that you have little worth without one is a bit absurd.

stretchwithme2• 15 years ago

A great many people rely on social proof if there is any when deciding to trust someone rather than taking the time to find out for themselves. In fact, we all probably do that to some degree. You can't have firsthand knowledge of everything.

mayank2• 15 years ago

I don't think it's sad at all. People seem to forget that college can be about more than career advancement.

In this case, he clearly doesn't need a degree to be gainfully employed. Chances are that he's a pretty intelligent kid with other interests. If he puts 3-4 years into startups, not only will he probably be able to pay his own way through college, but will be at a point in life to appreciate the learning options a lot more (I can attest to this having taught many "older" undergraduates).

Maybe he'll develop an interest in advanced algorithms, or number theory, or neuroscience, or literature. At 19, there are a lot of possibilities in life, and college is a great way to be exposed to them, as well as people with passions in other fields.

ryanwaggoner2• 15 years ago

Sorry, but it's definitely sad if your parents are more hung up on some external arbitrary stamp of approval than on your own true achievements and passion for how you spend your time. Especially if it's to the point that they won't speak to you? That's pathetic.

How ridiculous would it be if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs parents still refused to speak to them because they had dropped out of school, despite creating two of the world's most powerful companies, employing hundreds of thousands of professionals, and making hundreds of millions of lives better every single day?

acconrad2• 15 years ago

It's sad because his parents won't talk to him guys, c'mon.

danicgross• 15 years ago

I think I came across slightly more seriously then I indented - as much as they'd prefer me to have a degree, I'm sure they're quite proud.

auxbuss• 15 years ago

indented -> intended

paulnelligan• 15 years ago

Hey Daniel,

congratulations, fantastic idea, well done!

I'm really curious, is it a 'personal search engine' where you just give your login details to greplin and you can then search all of your online docs/profiles?

cheers

elvirs• 15 years ago

Traditional media and established blogs have sympathy for small startups that take on giants like Google, etc. especially if they are founded by someone under 20. btw, where is cuil now?

kouiskas4• 15 years ago

My thoughts exactly, also that of story reminds me of many articles published in the bubble era, as do many valuation and funding stories lately.

kouiskas4• 15 years ago

It looks like he's using APIs, which means that he can only index as much data as the services are willing to provide. They can squeeze him out of business by shutting down or reducing access to the data whenever they please. Or just add to their API TOS that keeping a cached copy of the data is a no go.

The service would lose a lot of relevance if suddenly one of the main players like Facebook decided that they don't want to be indexed by Greplin anymore. Without long-term partnerships or contracts with all the stakeholders, I wouldn't bet on that horse.

pbiggar4• 15 years ago

Why would they do that? That's what the APIs are for.

kouiskas4• 15 years ago

Facebook already updates their API and policies very regularly, nothing they give an application access to can be given for granted in the long term. Especially when it deals with private content.

When your service is dependent on another, you're always at the mercy of an update that can shut down the API feature you were using, whether the intention is to kill your service or not.

In this case it seems like the goal of the website is to become a starting point for a person's browsing/searching experience, facebook and google want the same thing. If they feel threatened they could cut just stop Greplin in particular from accessing their API. It's not hard for them to update their API terms of service to make that kind of use forbidden, for instance. That kind of tactic has been used in the past.

That's why I see a lot of uncertainty in the future of that service. I'm not worried about the founder and the company, though, their most likely exit is a talent acquisition by Facebook or Google.

djahng2• 15 years ago

It happened to Facebook Breakup Notifier recently. Facebook revoked API access without notification.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

But my mistake...was not listening to my own intuition enough

devindotcom• 15 years ago

It's troubling how little of this article is about the actual service. I'm left wondering why this is worth $5m? Isn't this basically HotBot for signup services?

hnfwerr• 15 years ago

Raising money is not hard, what is hard is make money :/

jasonwilk• 15 years ago

Your comment is flawed

yewweitan2• 15 years ago

From the article, on going to college: "The way it works in Israel, you have to go to the army first"

I wonder how much this impacts the entrepreneurial mindset in male youth. I grew up mostly in Singapore, and they too have conscription upon reaching the age of 18 (with some exceptions, eg: for medicine and for national scholarship holders). From what I see from my friends' facebook channels, it's definitely a draining experience indeed, one that takes months to recover from once its done.

But Kudos to this guy! Greplin is pretty awesome and I've already put it to use.

edanm• 15 years ago

I'm Israeli, so I thought I'd share on how the Army has a huge positive impact on entrepreneurship.

For a lot of Israelis who are smart, the army is a great experience that really helps them. For example, there is a very respected Programming Course in the Israeli army, which trains programmers for half a year. These programmers then go on to work on all the Armies' systems for the next 5 1/2 years. This course is called Mamram (I was in it).

This means that programmers in Israel are not only trained in a very intensive course for half a year, but they then go on to work on real-world (and often critical) systems, for 5 1/2 years. Which means there are many Israeli programmers who, at age 24, have 6 years of professional experience working on big, important systems.

Add to this that the Mamram course is very famous (most Israeli companies require programmers to either have a degree or be a graduate of Mamra). Also, serving 6 years in the army (and being in a course with 100 peers) means you get an incredible network of connections. I'm a good example - I'm working on my own startup with two people I served with in the army, and I know many people who either work at or run a lot of Israeli startups, just because I served with them at some point. I'm probably 2 hops from most startups in Israel, just because almost all of them hire programmers from the Mamram course.

OK that came out long. I only focused on the Mamram course since that's what I know best, but there are a lot of other fields the army is great for that have nothing to do with programming.

yewweitan2• 15 years ago

That sounds great! It seems like the Israeli military system brings with it an integrated approach to pathways in life.

That's far better than the picture that has been painted in front of my eyes (South-East Asian context) with places like Singapore and Vietnam. With the former, it's 2 years of physical grunt work. With the latter, one of my friend's cousins had to serve in the Army for 2 years as a Private after having graduated with an Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. =(

108• 15 years ago

didnt anybody notice that you cannot use greplin without signing up. #fail

EastSmith• 15 years ago

I just linked my Twitter account and have to say Greplin is scary fast on searches. I am not sure I would like another 3rd party indexing my emails, but will keep an eye on Greplin because of the twitter searches. I always wanted to search just my twitter stream, but I have never found, until now, such an easy and fast way to do it.

How a 19-Year-Old Raised $5 Million to Revolutionize Search

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