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ztay

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Founder of PrintFriendly.com and Govit.com.

http://www.hackernewsers.com/users/ztay.html

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I'm the solo founder of PrintFriendly.com

Two years ago I applied to YC, and was turned down in the interview process. They asked, "how is PrintFriendly going to make a billion dollars"? I'm still trying to answer that (or at least a more modest version of the question).

Today PrintFriendly revenue is about $10k/mo, 1.2M visits/mo, and slow but steady growth.

I'm happy with the results, delighted actually. However, I'm not travelling the world, or working from a beach. I work hard everyday and reinveste the capital, to try and build a stable/strong/significant organization.

Thanks, glad you like.

My motivations were fairly pure, wanted to build a platform that gave citizens more power. Also thought there could be a way to monetize (ethically) with traction.

Got some press in the early days, and believe the problem is other than exposure. The site just isn't filling a need. Need to come up with something people really want.

Yes, currently getting 3K-15k visits/mo. About 20% repeat visits.

Agree that giving people a way to "be heard" has value, just need to get the process right.

Polarizing would be a good tactic. Not sure I want to go there though. I've still got some idealism ;)

Steps to gain traction were focused on making the product viral (send to friends, embed vote on site/facebook, etc).

Also partnerships with other organizations, for example, democracyinaction.org had an email your reps widget (powered by govit).

I like the idea, but think I'd need more users before I could attract the attention of senators/aides/other.

Congress members have their websites, email list of their supporters, would need to offer something they didn't have.

A nice actionable insight, "You can't directly control where your thoughts drift. If you're controlling them, they're not drifting. But can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into."