Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?
When we started Octopart, we were sure that within 6 months, we would have all the major distributors signed up and we would be overwhelmed with users. In fact everything takes longer than we expect it to. That includes building technology, building relationships and getting users. On the surface, it seems like the problems involved in part search are straigtforward: get the data, build a system to keep track of it, and build an intuitive frontend interface. But each of those problems have subproblems, and each subproblem needs to be iterated on quite a bit.
Octopart is the YC website I use the most. In addition to current revenues, I'd suggest there's an opportunity to build a marketplace for parts too. I'm often looking for parts online to buy that simply are not available or require custom manufacturing. An alternative to eBay and other consumer marketplaces for parts, components etc. Generally anything B2B/B2B2C is under-served in comparison to B2C.
Comments
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?
When we started Octopart, we were sure that within 6 months, we would have all the major distributors signed up and we would be overwhelmed with users. In fact everything takes longer than we expect it to. That includes building technology, building relationships and getting users. On the surface, it seems like the problems involved in part search are straigtforward: get the data, build a system to keep track of it, and build an intuitive frontend interface. But each of those problems have subproblems, and each subproblem needs to be iterated on quite a bit.
Octopart is the YC website I use the most. In addition to current revenues, I'd suggest there's an opportunity to build a marketplace for parts too. I'm often looking for parts online to buy that simply are not available or require custom manufacturing. An alternative to eBay and other consumer marketplaces for parts, components etc. Generally anything B2B/B2B2C is under-served in comparison to B2C.
"Digikey" :)