browser411

► SigFig -- San Francisco (HQ), Tucson, Singapore

SigFig tracks over $315 billion in assets for everyday investors like you. We recently launched personalized, software-based asset management that anyone can afford for $10 per month, flat.

We're backed by Union Square Ventures, Bain, and Doll Capital Management.

Lead SRE / DevOps: https://www.sigfig.com/l/jobs/Engineering/4

Full-Stack Engineer: https://www.sigfig.com/l/jobs/Engineering/1

Lead QA Engineer: https://www.sigfig.com/l/jobs/Engineering/3

Growth Engineer: If you're obsessed with growth, love scientific experimentation and think that the most exciting code is what impacts the business the most, email jay@sigfig.com so I can accelerate the process for you

Full list of opportunities for engineers, designers and product managers here: https://www.sigfig.com/l/jobs

SigFig | San Francisco | http://sigfig.com

== Sr Software Engineer, Data ==

We're looking for an engineer to lead one of the the world's biggest portfolio tracking platforms! We currently sync $75 billion with over 80 brokerages.

The ideal candidate will have deep experience in web scraping and web service APIs to build out and expand our platform. If you have a knack for scraping websites with challenges such as requiring authenticated sessions and relying heavily on AJAX to render content — and have a strong interest in finance — let's talk.

= Responsibilities = * Develop and expand our technology for importing data from brokerages and other data providers * Build systems and monitors to ensure the imported data is reliable and accurate * Lead other engineers who are fanatical about web scraping challenges

= Ideal Qualifications = * Relentless resourcefulness (of course!) * 5+ years experience in software development, and in particular web scraping technologies * Expert in developing (PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, or C++) * Extensive experience building scalable, reliable distributed services * Knowledge of Amazon Web Services, NoSQL, or Statistics is a plus * Interest in investing a huge plus

Please contact jay@sigfig.com with your LinkedIn profile or resume.

Guessing a large portion of that funding go towards marketing. They've likely proven that their acquisition costs can scale profitably. They should grab customers before others come along with a similar offering.

We've surveyed over 1600 Groupon merchants, and 75% say they would like to use Groupon again. In general, it seems they are pretty satisfied.

We did a text analysis of over 150,000 words of open-ended responses:

* Fewer than 2% of all these merchants even mentioned "cash upfront" as a benefit of running a deal. Not a single one mentioned it as a primary benefit/drawback.

* A few merchants did in fact complain that Groupon sometimes held on to the cash a little TOO long before funding their accounts

* FYI, the top stated benefits were "New Customers" and "Advertising Effect".

Groupon is in no way perfect, but its characterization as a check casher is pretty silly. I'm sure if you hunt hard enough, you can find an unhappy Groupon merchant and put words in their mouth.

We're compiling a list of vendors to add. Is it possible to provide a list of companies that use MiraPost? I didn't see a "customers" page on your site. You can email jay at our domain

My co-founder told me that he was actually inspired by a HN post you started--thanks for that!

It's about 75% automated.

Self-reported, vendors' own websites, and a variety of other sources.

Thanks for the constructive criticism. We definitely want to flesh out the content, and accounting is a category that several folks have asked for (i.e., software, human accountants, etc).

Got it. Thanks for the frank feedback.

Thanks for the feedback! We are trying to condense a lot of data into a small amount of space, which can be trying... Anything in particular that could use some design love?

Our goal is to make it easier to choose products/services for your business based on the companies that actually use them: What analytics do YC companies use? What do small non-profits use for CRM?

This product is pre-beta, and we definitely plan to add more features/data, including reviews. We'd really appreciate feedback on what would make it more useful for you!

Our goal is to make it easier to choose products/services for your business based on the companies that actually use them: What analytics do YC companies use? What do small non-profits use for CRM?

This product is pre-beta, and we definitely plan to add more features/data, including reviews. We'd really appreciate feedback on what would make it more useful for you!

We (B2brev.com, a YC company) surveyed 2500 merchants that used Groupon, LivingSocial and 18 other daily deal sites. Our data shows that overall, 75%+ would use Groupon and LivingSocial again. This is a decent indications that there are a large number of success stories out there (to magsafe's point).

To address 3 additional points with some data:

* REPEAT CUSTOMERS: We asked a 5-scale question of "How many repeat customers did you get?" with answers being None / Few / Moderate / Many / Tons / Not sure. About 15% of respondent said that Groupon and LivingSocial provided "Many" or "Tons". Anecdotally, many mentioned that a repeat rate of over 10% was very good compared to their expectations. About 18% were "Not sure"

* BARGAIN HUNTING CUSTOMERS: We read and categorized every single open-ended comment (160k words!), and 14% of respondents complained about Groupon/L.S. drawing the bargain hunters. In our opinion, this was lower than expected

* ADVERTISING BENEFIT: Local businesses definitely see a benefit to the daily deals beyond the direct sales. Again, based on the open-ended responses, it was the #2 most mentioned benefit. Anecdotally, many mentioned that they spend money to generate awareness anyway and that it was a very acceptable marketing cost

There is one caveat that many commenters here touched upon, which is that running a successful daily deal really depends on the type of business. For instance, of Restaurants and Shopping businesses, only about 50% would do the daily deal again--and there are wide ranges of satisfaction even within these category buckets.

In a nutshell, there are millions of local businesses and a lot of nuanced marketing needs (i.e., lots of nice opportunities to be addressed).

Link to our blog here to see some charts/tables: http://blog.b2brev.com/daily-deals-the-merchant-perspective

You can also buy our research report to get a the most comprehensive picture :).

Angie's List is more B2C (like Yelp).

B2Brev responding here. The target market is aimed more at daily deal companies and investors in daily deal sites.

Awesome detailed write-up. Any chance I could ask you a question about this offline? My email is browser411 at yahoo. Thanks!

Vegas has very high occupancy rates. Even in the down economy, it's around 80%. http://cber.unlv.edu/tour.html

Groupon has a great network effect. They have 25MM users and tens of thousands of local businesses. It's not as good of a moat as FB but still damn nice.

Also, I'd argue that FB has a very obvious monetization: advertising. They supposedly generate $1B+ in ad rev.

Braintree is one of the most forward thinking payment providers out there. A good number of startups on HN have integrated with them (we have, too). They have an excellent policy about porting customer data (e.g., stored credit card numbers) when moving to a different provider. Amazing customer service overall.

The title of this blog post is sensationalistic. As described by the author himself, Yelp's actions seem completely justified. A burst of 15 positive reviews from new users in a short period would make a user like me suspicious.

And assuming that the 15 reviews garnered an average score of 4.5 stars, it would have placed the business in the top 3-5 ranked business in all of Bedford, MA (its hometown). If Yelp allowed such rankings, it'd be a slippery slope into spamville.

Great production quality and content--it really humanizes the listing.

Goog's 60% market share is understated, too. Yahoo and Bing often point search results back to their own networks (Yahoo & MSN respectively). So third parties like Mahalo probably see Google driving much more than 60% of their search traffic on average.

It may be out of necessity. Many merchant gateways that sites use to process credit cards require phone numbers to be published.

If possible, meet your prospects in person. Go to industry events, shows, etc. Have a 20 sec pitch NAILED. Practice it incessantly on friends and family--anyone should be able to "get it" no matter how technical the product. Tailor it to their needs, not features. Make your goal to get an actual meeting with someone. Prepare a very short written "pitch" presentation. Make it look good.

Rinse and repeat. As others said, let rejection fuel--not discourage--you.

nice article on a yc company. the part i like best: airbnb is a startup that helps other entrepreneurs starting up by letting them monetize their space, albeit indirectly. nice!

in general, simplify.

my 2 cents. take or leave:

* severely cut down the copy up top. e.g.: Athenian Marble has specialized in cultured marble since 1969. We have 50 employees in a 67,000 sq ft facility to serve your needs!

* add the A+ BBB rating as a very simple graphic--instant credibility (even I know what that is!)

* 3 calls to action below:

1) Call (phone number only)

2) Visit (address only; map seems extraneous; maybe include the photo form the "About us" with the building facade so people can find it easily when they drive there)

3) Email (deprioritize this--I assume most people pick up the phone for info on marble; maybe even get rid of the form and just have an email address)

I would refrain from using phrases like "Are You Ready?" and "Let us help you." In particular, "Are You Ready" could turn off someone who's just looking for info.

BTW, the "see all photos" page should feature photos more prominently. It has a ton of text up top. I imagine photos are very important for engaging customers.

there are so many stories like this that i've read about zappos... and i've enjoyed every one of them. the link to the video in the post was fascinating (learning about their order fulfillment tech).

Shipping has gotten to be very efficient. There are studies that show that someone driving to a store (~15 miles roundtrip) produces a lot more carbon emissions than UPS delivering a package to their door.

We're beta users of Cloudkick too and these guys are great. The most impressive thing is that they constantly ask feedback and act on it too--the hallmark of a company that's going to succeed.

You may want to check out wikinvest.com. They also annotate stock charts but are taking a crowd-sourcing approach to it (they are a wiki after all).