Cuil on Business Week list of most successful companies of 2008

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/29/cuil-on-businessweeks-most-successful-of-2008-list/

by rokhayakebe • 18 years ago

35 25 18 years ago

jcapote• 18 years ago

Is it 4/1/2009 yet?

sh1mmer2• 18 years ago

For once I think Arrington has a valid point. What success criteria do we apply to startups? It seems like Business Week sees VC capital as success. The article TechCrunch points to (http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/106341/Most-Suc...) has the startups listed by order of funding starting at $90m through to $30m.

From the point of view of most people here I think we would regards that much VC not making a good startup in most cases.

I'd be interested to see a good framework for measuring success in startups that could be used by VCs and the media alike.

axod2• 18 years ago

#users/traffic, and if they've had them for a while, revenue.

The only thing cuil were successful at was getting well known. Unfortunately they got well known for returning terrible search results. So now they have twice as much work to do. Or I guess they could just pay some naming company to come up with a 'rebranding' campaign.

mikeryan• 18 years ago

Most on this list aren't websites, so your metric isn't going to fly.

sh1mmer2• 18 years ago

I think that's my point, traffic is great, but when does revenue matter? Youtube still has insane traffic but even Google can't make them close to profitable.

njharman• 18 years ago

> good framework for measuring success in startups

Accounting world is partial to profits as a sane measure. Investors should look at ROI. In other words no startup is successful until it's making money. Which I don't think is an unfair measure.

Now if you want to compare pre-success startups to one another, good luck. A measure doesn't exist. That is why the whole VC system exists and investors are willing to gamble 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 startups will pay off.

mpk• 18 years ago

> I'd be interested to see a good framework for measuring success in startups that could be used by VCs and the media alike.

Breaking even seems like a good starting point to me.

Of course, this is not good from the VC viewpoint. VCs hate it when you break even early and they don't have a controlling interest, because it means they can't grab more shares (in exchange for new funding which you would then need and they can and will leverage that need) because you don't need them for growth.

Also, success is a relative thing. A small firm that doesn't take VC and never reaches the multi-billion dollar heights of Google, but has happy customers, happy employees and founders that enjoy their work is successful in my book.

A company that takes millions in VC money, lets the VC dictate company policy and has the whole thing run into the ground is a failure.

Measuring success does not happen across a single axis.

Unless you define success in the context of what VCs want from your company, the definition becomes blurry very fast.

A framework that will satisfy both VCs and the media isn't that hard to formulate. The media will simply copy the VC parameters, most of which is number games.

But this is neither a media nor a VC board, so the question is - would you want to work for or start a company that is run by VC/media rules?

newmediaclay• 18 years ago

Maybe Business Week just did this to try and cover up the shame of them and other msm relentlessly talking up and covering Cuil before its launch and epic fail?

callmeed• 18 years ago

Did Pownce make the list?

byrneseyeview• 18 years ago

Who is their PR firm? They should -- seriously -- be near the top of this list.

brandonkm• 18 years ago

"The first rule of cuils PR firm is you do not talk about cuils PR firm"

daveambrose• 18 years ago

Just a guess: FutureWorks, Text100, Outcast or Bite.

The last three are the "typical" names for firms in the Internet industry. FutureWorks is Brian Solis' agency.

joao• 18 years ago

This is what spending money on marketing people with connections gets you.

But not saying this how it should be done, I would probably invest that money in getting a better product and thus users - a better strategy in the long haul.

nir• 18 years ago

These lists are always meaningless, whether from Business Week or TechCrunch.

jfornear3• 18 years ago

I don't understand why everyone is whining yet not suggesting an alternative.

I would pick Twitter... :D

All in this year, they moved Evan Williams to CEO (good idea), raised over $20 million in funding (from Union Square Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and others), acquired Summize (easily the hottest app in a while), grew ridiculously popular while stabilizing their service/uptime, and turned down an acquisition offer by Facebook (rumor?). Now that is success.

I can't even think of a close second.

jonknee2• 18 years ago

> I can't even think of a close second.

Perhaps a firm that had even a dollar in revenue? Twitter hasn't actually become a business yet, so it can't be the best one of the year.

jfornear3• 18 years ago

Thanks for your nomination?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company

Regardless of your apparent misunderstanding of what qualifies as a startup, Twitter, in fact, does have a dollar in revenue. Their Japanese version, which also launched this year, serves advertisements. :D

“It’s like the stupidest question in the world: How’s Twitter going to make money?," said Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, another investor. "It’s like 'How was Google going to make money?' http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/twitter-to-get.html

KirinDave3• 18 years ago

And yet Powerset gets no mention. We made a big splash, and got acquired by a company that is one of the few that has any chance of taking on google head-to-head.

But Cuil, with there "scaling is our product" plan, weird name and "search-is-hard" image interface get mention here?

The industry pundits can be strange, unpredictable people.

1gor• 18 years ago

>The industry pundits can be strange, unpredictable people.

Do you think a word 'corrupt' could also be used?

KirinDave3• 18 years ago

In my experience, I've never seen outright examples of corruption. Even fairly powerful folks like Arrington were always very fair with us so long as we were fair with them. Heck, even the mean uncov guys didn't have many mean things to say, so they didn't say much at all.

I think that the list we're discussing here is more of an example of Gross Incompetence. I think we can all agree we've seen examples of that. :)

curiousgeorge• 18 years ago

Once you get bought, you aren't perceived as an independent company. Media focuses on the buyer not seller. Which is one reason to make them pay cash.

KirinDave3• 18 years ago

I suppose you're right...

Although it does seem weird. Cuil has always seemed to be far more of a flip company than Powerset ever was. It seems mighty difficult to sell a customer on "Our search is just like Google's, but we have fewer servers!" The Google name has way too much power for a geek-appeal like that to work.

Calling a flip company successful when it hasn't flipped at all seems weird to me.

Cuil on Business Week list of most successful companies of 2008

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