I'm a co-founder of Recent (https://recent.io), and we've created an iOS/Android app and recommendation engine that we describe as news powered by artificial intelligence. We have technical backgrounds; one of us also worked as a journalist for Wired, Time, and CNET. We're seed-funded, on the SF peninsula, and incorporated in Delaware. You were kind enough to invite us to attend YC's Startup School last October.
Coincidentally we started sending out beta invitations last night to the first group of people on our list before a planned public launch next month. Our recommendation engine is built on Google App Engine, which should (we hope) allow us to scale. My office-hour question for Sam and Kevin would be: What advice do you have for us at this stage?
Get out of beta. You're artificially constraining growth.
For example, I wanted to try it out. Couldn't. 1 user lost. You will struggle your entire startup's life trying to get as many people to use you as possible. It's not like you don't have bugs after you launch. If you're a decent startup, you will be agile and you will change and fix things as they come in.
Since this is a news recommendation engine, no one is going to die or lose a ton of money if your app isn't perfect out of the gate. So make it easy for people to try it out, recommend it to others, and get as much feedback as possible so you can make it better.
If you're worried about growing too fast...well, you should consider that winning the startup lottery. Chances are that's not going to happen and you should be so lucky.
Kevin: Thanks much for the excellent advice! My fears were finding serious bugs in the app or problems with the recommendation engine that would come to light with more users. But in retrospect my fears seem to have been launch anxiety: The response so far has primarily been folks saying: It's good, it's fast, and please can I have these additional features too!
Again, thanks for the advice, and I plan to follow it as quickly as possible.
Coincidentally we started sending out beta invitations last night to the first group of people on our list before a planned public launch next month. Our recommendation engine is built on Google App Engine, which should (we hope) allow us to scale. My office-hour question for Sam and Kevin would be: What advice do you have for us at this stage?