NewMonarch

You’re a few steps ahead of the person who asked that question.

Just landed on this page from googling for this very thing.

Context Engineering > Prompt Engineering

Oh hai. Jon Crawford here (Storenvy founder). Glad to see this post getting some love again. Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

Neither gives you a store. Every band, designer, boutique I've ever talked to wants their own store at their own URL that looks like their own brand. Storenvy let's you edit all the HTML and CSS to make your store look however you want. Example: http://cherrysauceclothing.com

The other ones you mention just gives you a marketplace where you're essentially a classified ad without your own brand experience.

Hey Hacker News!

Thanks for the thoughts. Actually, here's how we're thinking about it:

Storenvy is a custom store platform first and a marketplace second. Every merchant gets her own fully customizable storefront. We make it easier than anyone else by getting up and running with your own store in minutes.

But after you get online, you immediately have the problem of figuring out how to drive customers to your store. The next generation of merchants relies solely on social media for this. Buying advertising typically isn't even considered. So we created the first online store platform with a social network built on top. When you create your store, you're immediately connected with the rapidly-growing Storenvy marketplace where people are discovering and buying your awesome stuff.

In short, we are the only online store platform that actually makes you more sales. And "more sales" is the killer feature of a store platform.

Soon we'll start charging a commission on sales that happen in the marketplace. You still keep all of the sales through your storefront.

We'll get better at things like seller ratings and reviews as we grow. That's why we're hiring so many engineers. http://www.storenvy.com/jobs

Hi, Jon here! Actually, I'm the technical founder. I'm a Ruby on Rails developer originally (have commits in Rails itself). The other founders were graphic design and sales. For about 6 months (post YC incident), I was doing design, engineering, customer support, and fundraising for our seed round with just the help of my wife helping out with Community and writing.

Sometimes I miss those days. :)

I much prefer Flow by Metalab (http://getflow.com). It's virtually the same product only much more fleshed out including a Mac app, an iOS app and more. I tried Asana several months ago but Flow is just miles ahead of where Asansa is today. Not to mention constant iteration in all of their apps (web, Mac, and iOS). Big A+ for the Metalab team.

San Francisco - Frontend Engineer or Ruby Hacker

Storenvy, an awesome online storefront builder and social shopping marketplace is hiring Ruby hackers and a front-end engineer.

Think of us as "Tumblr for online stores". We're building all kinds of amazing tools that make selling cool stuff on the Internet way more awesome -- from sick drag & drop online store builder interfaces to mobile apps. And we're a small team so you'll have loads of responsibility, autonomy, and big impact on the final product.We have lots of fun, pay well, and are making a meaningful impact in people's lives.

For those interested, we were funded be a dream team of investors (First Round, Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, CRV, David Cohen (TechStars), John Maloney (Prez of Tumblr) and more. Just closed a $1.5m financing and growing!

http://www.storenvy.com/jobs

Thanks! - Jon

http://www.storenvy.com/help/articles/can-i-use-any-payment-...

That's a battle I just don't care about winning.

Times were crazy, and missteps and miscommunications may or may not have happened. But I've got nothing but love for these people. Going forward, I'm way more interested in being "a guy with $1.5m looking for top people to build an amazing company with" than "the guy that got kicked out of YC".

Thank for going to bat for me, though! :)

Couldn't agree more.

This is about the future! We could sit around and dissect events from the past all day long, but I'm way more interested in building a team and destroying the e-commerce space together. If you're a UI designer or Ruby hacker, please get in touch! :) http://www.storenvy.com/jobs

Incidentally, the other 2 guys are running a successful t-shirt printing company. You should totally order your swag from them. http://threadbird.com/

Yeah it wasn't really like that. The guys were willing to move if they had to. They were willing to make the move and I had no idea they were going to be out until they were. But after getting swept up in everything for a few days preparing to move, it just became clear it wasn't going to work. There was no intentional omission of facts. When I accepted, I expected us all to be there.

And to clarify, I don't blame YC at all. I love those guys. I really admire Paul and sometimes even quote the few interactions we've had. I think he's a genius and seriously hope we can work together on something one day. (Hi, Paul!)

In my comment above, I was actually just trying to explain that everything happened very fast. I tried to update people as best as I could. It was just a very crazy week.

A big life decision like that takes at least a few days to process and decide. We had 7. Things got pretty crazy in that week, understandably.

FYI, we were all full-time, the business was already profitable and we were all living off of the income it was generating. The startup clearly had legs then and still does.

This is covered. We'll be releasing loads of new stuff involving $$ in the coming year. But it's still free!

She's amazing.

The smiley face/close parenthesis move is completely valid. (Otherwise you get double lips. :))

Yeah, but my wife's cute. ;)

It was more an issue of timing. The conversations started with my cofounders about 72 hours before the first YC dinner. I was already scheduled to move out of my apartment and had airfare booked. It wasn't until I was literally heading to the airport the night before the first dinner that I found out that things might be in trouble. I'd already spent the last couple days moving all of my stuff into a storage unit.

I talked to Paul on the phone as I was boarding the plane and he told me, "I don't know if I'd come out here just yet." But I didn't want to miss the first dinner (still naïvely thinking things will work out). He definitely gave me fair warning and I knew the risks, but it seemed silly to turn around at that point. I knew I could always fly back home in a few days, if I needed to. It was worth the risk. And in hindsight, I'm insanely thankful I got on that plane.

I came to SF the first time by myself because I was the hustler in the group. I talked to my team members every day. They knew I was in SF talking to investors and they knew I was interviewing for YC. They just hadn't heard of it until I was already doing the interview.

As to how I was able to continue, as I explain in the article, they spun off a t-shirt printing business that we had been running. It was a more predictable business. Less risky for them. More of a 9-5 thing with a steady income.

To be fair, they still believed in the business. They just didn't want to tattoo it across their face and sell their first born son like I want to.

It's hard to say. To be fair, YC never met the rest of my cofounders. I was the only one they'd ever spoken with.

- Jon (The guy who wrote this story. :)

I look at a YC investment (and most investments made by good angels) as less about the money and more about improving your chances of not dying. When you've got an early company, even if you're as far along as ColourLovers was, the biggest risk isn't that you will give up too much equity. The biggest risk is that you will die. And there are million reasons that you will die -- even for companies with great early traction. Things just happen.

But with backers like YC, you suddenly have a team of proven badasses that have a vested interest in making sure you succeed. So ask yourself, will YC _improve your chances of success_ by more than X%? If the answer is yes, take the deal. (Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.)