Resultly Blog

What the Words "I'm Out" on Shark Tank Have Taught Me About Busines

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:30:58 -0600

Shark Tank is a popular ABC TV program where an entrepreneur pitches a group of millionaire/billionaire investors seeking investment for a new product or service. Aside from being extremely entertaining the show teaches a lot about building a solid business. One of the lessons taught is found in the reoccurring reasons why a Shark says, “I’m Out.” after listening to a pitch; because theres absolutely something important to take away when a successful businessman/woman walks away from a deal (assuming the business revolves around a good and quality product/service).

I’m Out Because…

1. Incorrect Valuation

Nothing seems to irritate a shark more than someone coming into the tank and asking 300k for 5%; because in most cases the entrepreneur has greatly over valued his/her business. The most stated reason for over valuation by the sharks is because of sales, if a business has low sales, it absolutely can’t have high valuation, hard sales seem to trump anything else. Now, occasionally a person will get away with a high valuation without sales but it is usually because the idea is extremely good and it’s proprietary and locked up in patents and trademarks.

2. Target Market Too Niche

If a product is designed for left handed elementary school teachers that are allergic to chalk; it has no possibility of sizable growth. The sharks hate products that are too niche, they tend to think big and wonder how the investment can be scaled to reach a maximum return. The product may indeed solve a problem, but if it’s only a problem that exists for a small handful of people, theres no real money in it.

3. Target Market Too Broad w/o Growth Strategy

Having a “something for everyone” business seems fine to the sharks but not a pitch goes by that the Sharks don’t ask the pitcher what they will do with the money to grow the business if they get it. And if the entrepreneur doesn’t have a good answer, the deal never goes through. It is very easy to aimlessly shoot in marketing efforts and burn through a lot of money when trying to tackle a broad target market. The sharks want to know the exact steps that will be taken, they hate when the entrepreneur just keeps saying, “Everybody is going to want to buy this”.

Companies that are successful at building a product or service that is for everybody; usually grow by tackling incremental niches before going after everyone. Facebook is a good example, everyone is on Facebook now, but when starting off, their growth strategy was to tackle smaller niche markets one at a time. Starting with Harvard students, then expanding to more and more universities in the US, then moving to other international countries, then moving to non-students.

Time Spent Shopping Is In Perpetual Decline

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:17:07 -0600

According to data from the Time Use Survey put on by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; time spent shopping has been in steady decline since 2003, the first year of the survey was introduced.

In 2003, Americans spent on an average of 48.6 minutes/day shopping; compared to 43.2 minutes/day in 2011 (11% decrease). However, in that same time frame theres only been a 7% decrease in the number of days a consumer shops. So while the actual time spent shopping has decreased, the number of days which a consumer shops has decreased by less. Keep in mind also that the survey takes into account travel time.

So what’s happening? Either people are buying less things or the process of shopping is starting to fundamentally change.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey documents a trend that people are spending more and more; from food products to clothes to electronics. Even if adjusted for inflation, we’d still have to safely think that people are generally buying the same amount of things today as they did in 2003.

So, if it’s not people buying less, it must be a change to the actual shopping process thats causing the time spent shopping to decrease. Here are some of the time consuming parts of shopping that have changed and helped consumers to be more efficient.

1. Travel Time

Customers are driving and traveling to brick and mortar stores less; using online websites (Amazon boasted 306 items sold per second this past 2012 holiday season), which thanks to mobile smart phones, now require zero travel time to make a purchase.

2. Product Reviews

Online communities have helped customers more quickly examine a product category and determine the correct choice for them. Scanning through hundreds of ratings and reviews in just a couple minutes gives customers more confidence in making a decision in a shorter amount of time.

3. Price Comparisons and Matching

There are literally hundreds of tools available to consumers now to compare prices of products. Even if a purchase is made and a couple weeks later there’s a price drop, the merchant usually matches and refunds the difference. Consumers have less fear that they aren’t getting a good price when making a purchase; thus they buy with less hesitation.

4. Shopping Alerts

Shoppers can now use online and mobile alert tools to get notified of a new product listing becoming available or a price drop; instead of continually checking themselves for such information.

5. Personalized Recommendations

Websites and apps are getting better and better at putting relevant products in front of their users i.e. “Other people that bought this also bought these…”. And its resulted in more items sold in shorter amount of time.

The time spent shopping looks to continue its downward trend. The companies that will capitalize are those that provide the time saving tools to their customers to make their purchases faster.

Using Resultly to Fulfill Every Guilty Pleasure (Adding Book Interests)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:52:23 -0600

The Mission:

Indulge in reading the occasional guilty pleasure book series; from Twilight to Fifty Shades of Grey. And call me old fashioned but I like books more than ebooks, so I’ll be needing to get real books. Theres just something about actually holding that paper and physically turning that page that intensifies the experience.

Obstacles:

While I’m willing to indulge a little on reading teenie bopper nonsense, I don’t however want to spend that much money to obtain it.

Consequences of Failure:

If I fail to acquire and read these literary masterpieces, I may have a chance of leading a more normal life. But who wants to be normal, weird is the new cool.

The Executed Plan:

I go to Resultly and create an interest in the category “Book”. I use the keywords “Complete Twilight Saga” this will keep Resultly on the lookout for a listing of someone selling the four book set. I then set the price range from 0-15 dollars. That would get me the Twilight Saga for roughly $3.50/book. Thats not bad.

A couple days pass and I get a result notification. Its for a posting on Amazon Books, a seller listed the box set for $14.78. I click the Buy button and they are on the way.

Aftermath:

For the most part my life goes on unaffected by the reading of the books…Oh except I now have this crazy and unrealistic expectation of how true love works. It ultimately taints my marriage. Three divorces later, I decide to write my own book, it sells more than Stephanie Meyers books. I become rich and famous; but still alone.

Ways to Use Resultly: Media (Video and Music)

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:20:00 -0600

Currently, a “Media” interest on Resultly is for following any music or video that is posted on sites like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, iTunes and more. A media interest on Resultly can be a great tool to stay up to date with new episodes of your favorite shows or tracks from your favorite musical groups without having to continually check yourself.

Lets walk through a couple of examples:

Full TV Episodes and Movies

A lot of times, because of licensing agreements, TV series and movies will appear and disappear randomly on Netflix and Hulu; so knowing when something you are interested in is available to view, can be helpful. Lets say that you were really into Modern Family and wanted to watch full episodes on Hulu.

You’d type “Modern Family” as the keywords and select the category “Media”. Then select “Video” as the type of media results you want to receive, this will eliminate any potential audio only results (perhaps podcast interviews or something of the cast). Then select Hulu from the channel list. You then would select the media length, a good one would be 9-60 minutes. Creating a minute minimum length is helpful to filter out all the short clips that sometimes appear on Hulu.

You’re all set, every new episode that hits Hulu, you’ll be notified in real time.

Music Tracks

Lets assume you are a DJ Kaskade fan and you want to know anytime his music hits the web.

Create an interest with the keywords “Kaskade” and select the “Media” category. Then click follow.

You’ll see results stream like “Kaskade album debuts on iTunes” or “YouTube video of Kaskades latest set at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas”.

These are just a couple examples, there are many ways to follow any type of media interest on Resultly.

Stream On!

Ways to Use Resultly: Advanced Tricks for Product Interests

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:31:00 -0600

A product interest is an interest in anything tangible that is bought and sold. Could be a smart phone, laptop, coffee table, or even a wedding dress. Resultly helps you get notified the minute one is listed for sale that matches the price, make, model, color or size of what you were thinking for. And just like using google search or any other website on the internet for discovery, there are some good tips to get the best results on Resultly. Lets take the example of adding iPhone 4 to my Resultly interests to help illustrate some of these tricks.

It will always depend on what you want. If you’re interested in receiving results for iPhone 4 cases and bumpers, you’ll add the interest and its filters totally different than if you wanted results for just actual iPhone 4’s.

For this example, lets say you wanted just the phone, no accessories. So the question becomes how do you setup the interest so that you receive results for actual iPhone 4’s and nothing else. And there are a couple ways to accomplish it.

1. Adjust Price Slider (set a high price as well as a low)

Most phone accessories are generally less than 50 dollars, while most iPhone 4’s are more than 100 or 200 dollars. By simply adjusting the price slider while creating the interest so that it only shows results for $50-400; I ensure that I will be delivered results that are a good deal and also not accessories or broken iPhones that are being sold for cheap.

2. Add Parentheses to Retrieve Exact Phrasing

If you simply add iPhone 4, a listing for 4 iPhone 5’s technically matches your criteria. By adding parentheses to parts of your interest you help guarantee better results. When you add “iPhone 4” to your interests, only listings around the web that contain that exact phrasing will return results.

3. Negative Keywords (words that shouldn’t be in results)

By adding a minus sign in front of a word in your interest, you tell Resultly to not deliver results that contain that word. The interest, “iPhone 4” -case -charger, tells Resultly to look out for listings/posting for the exact phrasing “iPhone 4” but to not deliver results if the listings or postings contain the word case or charge. Thus we filter out any results for accessories when were only interested in results for the actual phone.

4. Descriptive Keywords (color, size, make)

The more descriptive keywords you put in your interest the more exact and precise the results will be. You don’t want to over do it though; because you may not get any results. If you know that you want the black iPhone 4 and also prefer to get the larger storage size. Adding the words Black and 32GB can help narrow down the results.

These four things will help deliver more useful results. Already have some interests created that you wish you would have done this with? No worries, it’s possible to edit the filters on an existing interest (just click on the edit wheel next to your interest).

Stream On!

Ways to Use Resultly: Socially

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:11:00 -0600

Currently, a “Social” interest on Resultly is any information that is posted by friends on facebook or twitter users that you follow. A social interest on Resultly can be a great tool to stay up to date with important social news without having to continually check yourself and reading and sorting through all the unimportant posts about weather or politics and focusing on the good stuff like baby pictures, major events or stalking your ex (whatever your thing is).

Lets walk through a couple of examples:

1. GooGoo GaGa (baby pictures)

Getting notified of your friends cute baby pictures on Resultly is easy. Lets say your friend has a baby and names her Emma. I would simply create an interest called “Emma” and select the category “Social”. Then you would select the filters “Photos” from the network “Facebook”. Now, only photos, not status updates or comments, that contain the tag “Emma” will be streamed to you.

2. Here Comes the Bride (major life events)

Major life events are one of the best parts of social networks. Everyone wants to know when a friend from high school gets engaged or married. Or if So n’ So gets a divorce from what’s his face. Keeping up with major events is a breeze with Resultly. Simply add a life event name like “Engaged” and choose the category “Social”. Thats it, no need for filters on this one. Now anytime a friend publishes an engagement (Adam got engaged to Marissa!) on facebook, you’ll be the first to know.

3. Stalker Binoculars (keeping up with someone)

Occasionally you’ll want to follow the activity of someone. It may be that the person always post the funniest or witty things. Could be that you used to date the person and haven’t gotten over them yet. Whatever the case may be, Resultly makes following every social media move the person a piece of cake, piece of crumb cake.

Just type the name of the person, lets say, “Dave Ackerman” and select the category “Social”. And thats it. Anytime Dave now does anything on facebook or twitter, you’ll know about it. Whether it be him commenting on someone else’s status or creating a status himself. Posting a picture or video. Sending a tweet. Doesn’t matter. This Resultly interest will keep you notified of all his activity.

These three examples are great use cases for following social interests on Resultly; but of course aren’t the only ways it can be used. Make sure to connect your facebook and twitter accounts to Resultly to utilize this social interest tool.

Stream On!

Using Resultly to Track Down a Crazy Daily Deal

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:28:30 -0600

The Mission:

Its a new year and I have a huge bucket list of stuff that I want to do in 2013. Sky diving, scuba diving, cliff diving, any type of diving really. I’m the type of guy that loves to be able to say that, “I’ve been there, done that.” I really want to get out there and be as outgoing as possible and meet new people.

Obstacles:

Unfortunately, while my bucket list is very big, my bucket of money to accomplish all that I want to do is not so big. Pretty much everything I do will have to be done at a discounted rate or else it may not be possible to fund the fun.

Consequences of Failure:

If I never bungee jump in a Spider-Man suit, base jump in a Batman suit, scuba dive in an Aqua-Man suit, fly a plane in a James Bond suit; I’ll probably just wind up in an old bathing suit, sitting in an inflatable pool near a van down by the river. And thats no bueno.

The Executed Plan:

I go to Resultly and add multiple interests in the category “Deal”. This way I won’t have to be continually looking for and checking a ton of websites everyday looking for the deals myself; I’ll be too busy living. And the minute a deal I’m interested in gets posted, I’ll know about it.

I create an interest with the keywords “Scuba Certification” and add a price filter for $0-$250. Normally it costs about 500 dollars to get scuba diving certified, so 250 or less would be a great deal. I then create the interests, “Sky Diving”, “Flight School”, “Bungee Jumping” and “Gym Membership”. Oh since I’ll be doing a lot of physical things I also added “Massage” for under $30.

A day passes and Resultly tips me off to a massage deal running on Groupon. Snatch it up and hold onto it for later. A week passes and I get a result for a sky diving deal on LivingSocial. A month later, a result for Amazon Local runs a Scuba diving offer. It’s all coming together, cheaply might I add.

Aftermath:

I need to find a new pen due to the fact that I have been checking off so many things from my bucket list. I am now cool, outgoing and gosh darn it, people like me.

Using Resultly to Track Down My Dream Job

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:58:00 -0600

The Mission:

I’m the stereotypical early 20 year old that couldn’t find a good job after graduating college. I ended up taking a job that is a total labyrinth of lameness. I need to find a better job. One that is more related to finance; which is what I went to school for and am interested in and what I excel at.

Obstacles:

My school wasn’t very good at providing good connections for internships, thus my painful transition to a real job. My parents don’t know a lot of people in the finance industry either; so no getting a job because my dad knows a guy. I also have trouble keeping up with all the job postings, it always seems that the week I forget to check all my job sites, is the week that Fidelity Investments posts a new Financial Rep position at one of the branches near me. Are you kidding me?

Consequences of Failure:

If I don’t find a better job, I won’t have enough money or positive energy to take a girl on a date. If I don’t date, I won’t get married. If I don’t get married, I won’t have kids. If I don’t have kids, I will have fewer headaches. Wait, there may be chance for happiness in the end after all. Just kidding, I want kids, lots of them, bakers dozen.

The Executed Plan:

Rather than hitting the search button every three seconds on Craigslist, Monster, and CareerBuilder; I go to Resultly. I then create 4 interests in the category “Jobs”. The first interest has the keywords “Fidelity Investments”. This will let me know in realtime when Fidelity posts a job. The second interest is “Charles Schwab”. The third interest is “Edward Jones”. These are the main companies in the in financial industry that I’d like to work for. But I also add a fourth interest, “Trader”. This will bring me results from various companies that have openings for trading, something I’m also really interested in.

I don’t put any salary requirements in the filters of the interests because all these companies offer competitive salaries and I’ll also pretty much take any salary to get my foot in the door.

A couple weeks pass. I get a few results for job postings here and there, mostly for option trader positions. But in the third week, Resultly tips me off to a new opening at Fidelity. And it’s my dream title. A lot of the time they only fill this position with an inside hire, but I apply really quickly and become one of the first responders to the outside posting. I get an interview, then another, then another and I nail them all. Get the job and start in two weeks.

Aftermath:

I’m living my dream of wearing a Mad Men-like suit everyday and climbing corporate ladders while making uber amounts of money. I get married and have 9 kids.

Using Resultly to Track Down an Amazing Apartment

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:43:55 -0600

The Mission:

I hate the neighborhood I currently live in. I moved to Chicago a year ago for a job and was unfamiliar with the city and ended up picking a bad spot to live. Now that I know the area better I want to find a new apartment in a way cooler neighborhood called Lakeview at the end of my current lease.

Obstacles:

Because Lakeview is one of the coolest neighborhoods in Chicago, apartments go fast. When a nice apartment gets posted to craigslist, it gets a lot of responses, usually gets shown and signed that same day.

Consequences of Failure:

If I don’t get into a better apartment I’ll be sad, mildly depressed and possibly lose the capacity to fully enjoy life. Oh and I might get stabbed because my neighborhood is sketch like that.

The Executed Plan:

Rather than hitting the search button every three seconds on Craigslist, Apartments.com or HotPads; I go to Resultly. I then create an interest with the keywords “Lakeview” because all I really care about is the neighborhood. If I cared about stuff like having a washer and dryer I would add something like “W/D” to the keywords also.

I set the price range to $1,000 to $1,700. $1,700 is the absolute max I can spend per month on the new apartment. And I have the floor of $1,000 because the apartments that cost less than that in this area are not very nice or worth looking at.

A couple days pass and I get a result for the perfect apartment. It’s within my price range, in the neighborhood I want. It’s actually only a couple blocks from the CTA brown line, which goes to my work. I send a message to the lady who posted it; i’m one of the first responders. I go check out the apartment that night and sign.

Aftermath:

I have a great apartment now, in a neighborhood that has the coolest restaurants, bars and comedy clubs. I’m walking distance from the train. I feel safer than I did in my old apartment. Aside from a small population of Frat Boy Douches, it’s a perfect situation.

Using Resultly to Track Down News Articles so That You can Sound Smart and Make Friends

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:29:39 -0600

The Mission:

I just started working at a new office. I’ve been trying to socialize and make friends but people don’t seem to talk about normal stuff like sports or movies here, they talk about the fiscal cliff; which I know nothing about. I need to educate myself on the topic and keep in the know of new developments so that I can contribute to conversations around the office.

Obstacles:

I’m super busy so finding time to keep up with the news is harder. The one thing I happen to know about the topic is that there is two sides. So I also want to have an understanding of both sides of the matter.

Consequences of Failure:

I will not be able to contribute to good conversation and thus i’ll sound dumb and no one will be my friend. When layoffs happen in the company I’ll be the first to be let go because no one will miss me.

The Executed Plan:

I go to Resultly. I start an interest with the keywords “Fiscal Cliff”. Then I choose the category “News”. I select that I want to receive articles from Fox and CNN. I do this because I want to at least cover my bases with getting information from a more conservative news source and a more liberal news source.

The articles start to stream into my Resultly iPhone app. I quickly learn more about the situation. Get a clearer understanding of the two big schools of thought; raising taxes and spending cuts.

A group of people are talking the next day at work about how the bill that congress passed will effect each of them. I was able to chime in with some thought provoking commentary that was basically regurgitated sentences from an article I had just read (good thing Will Hunting wasn’t there to call me out). The group decides to finish the conversation at lunch and they invite me for the first time.

Aftermath:

Not only did I get smarter by being more in the know of current events. Almost everyone at the office is my friend. I’m marrying one of the girls there and one of the guys is my best man. Thanks Fiscal Cliff!

Using Resultly to Track Down Cheap Airfare to the Sundance Film Festival

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:36:24 -0600

The Mission:

Find two cheap roundtrip flights to Salt Lake City to go to Sundance Film Festival for me and my wife as an anniversary gift. Me and my wife are the biggest fans of Apple and Steve Jobs, and so seeing the movie Jobs premier at the festival would be an amazing experience.

Obstacles:

I have a strict budget, need to leave money for the hotel, rental car and food; so I can’t spend too much on the airfare. I also don’t fly much, so I don’t own any credit cards that rack up frequent flyer miles that I could use.

Consequences of Failure:

I’m probably one bad anniversary gift away from spending the year celibate. For any guy in this world, this means the stakes are high.

The Executed Plan:

The movie premiers January 25th. I want to get there a few days early and leave a couple days after so that I have time to take my wife skiing, hot tubbing, shopping and check out a couple of the other cool attractions in the area. So I choose the dates January 23rd and January 27th as my respective departure and return flights.

Price is my biggest concern when finding the tickets. I want two tickets and I don’t want to spend over 400 roundtrip per person; so I do add that to the filters. I also know that I want to fly out of O’hare instead of Midway; Midway is just a little farther from my house in Chicago. And SLC airport is the closest to Park City, UT where the festival is taking place. I don’t really have a preference on the time of day that the flights leave nor whether or not there is a layover; so I leave those filters untouched.

Now, instead of having to go from Travelocity to Southwest.com to Priceline to Orbitz; I can sit back and as the prices of flights fluctuate on airline sites and deal sites, i’m immediately notified as 2 tickets become available in my price range.

Resultly tips me off to a deal from Southwests site that is exactly what I wanted. I pay for the tickets and were on our way.

Aftermath:

My wife thinks i’m the greatest guy ever. I enjoy a life that is so far from celibate that if the moon was celibacy, I would be three galaxies over. We even ran into Ashton Kutcher (who’s taller than I thought he would be).

Using Resultly to Track Down a Wii U this Christmas

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:43:12 -0600

The mission:

Get my kid a Nintendo Wii U for Christmas without breaking the bank.

Obstacles:

The Wii U is one of the hottest toys this Christmas. Most retailers are sold out. Supplies are low and what inventory is out there is sometimes being sold at a premium on eBay and Craigslist.

Consequences of failing:

My kid will cry. Probably end up hating me. Possibly join a gang later in life. And ultimately refuses to take care of me when I’m old.

The stakes are high.

The executed plan:

There are two models of the Wii U. The one i’m after is the 32GB Deluxe model which normally retails for $349. But things are crazy out there and I may have to pay a little more than that to secure it before Christmas, but hopefully not too much more.

When creating my Resultly interest; I decide to use the keywords (Wii U Deluxe 32 GB Black). The model I want has 32 GB of capacity and also comes in Black as opposed to the White model. So these are good descriptive keywords. But the keywords are a start and will only get me so far in ensuring I get the most relevant listings sent to me.

Next, I adjust the price filter. I choose $320-450. It’s likely that no one will be selling one for under the retail value, but just in case, I set the minimum to a little under retail value. Setting the minimum price also helps to eliminate any listings for games, controllers or accessories (that may contain the same keywords in my interest) which i’m not interested in at this point. And setting the max price helps ensure that I’ll be getting results that are a good deal.

Next, I set the condition filter to (Any). I do this because, while i’m ideally after a brand new one, sometimes you can track down one thats literally been opened and used once and put back in its box and now the person is selling the system and a game or two for a good deal.

I also put a check mark in the box (Show Initial Results). I want to know about all the future created listings and postings-yes, but I also I want to know about some of the already existent ones out there.

Half a day after creating the interest, someone creates a new listing on eBay; “Buy it Now” Wii U Deluxe model with the game Zombie U (normally $60 alone) for $445. I’m immediately notified and luckily was one of the first people to see it. Clicked buy and its on its way.

Aftermath…Christmas Day…

My kid is super happy. My wife loves me. A statue is constructed at a nearby park honoring my greatness as a father and a tech savvy smart shopper. The statue is later vandalized by a gang, that gladly my kid did not end up joining.

To the Readers of Reader Apps, Read On.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:07:20 -0600

The greatest thing the creation of the internet accomplished was the spread of information. News articles and blog posts could roam free and thats a powerful thing. In the beginning however, all the new information was read on desktop computers; and thus, all the articles, posts and entries were formatted for such. But now, a growing number of people are reading these same articles on smart phones or tablets and not a 13-30 inch computer screen.

The old formatting didn’t cut it anymore. A traditional browser view just looked silly on the smaller screen. The user had to constantly zoom in and out to read and track down the pictures related to the article. And this is where great apps like Pulse and Flipboard found success. They took the necessary information from the article, removed the Ads and other distractions, and formatted it for a small screen. This process is often referred to as “reader mode”.

From the start, we knew that Resultly was going to be popular for staying up to date with News; which is why we incorporated a reader mode into our mobile app for all news results that come to a users profile. The user simply clicks on the result and is brought to the reader mode version of the article. It shows the source of the article, the title of the article, its author, the picture, the text and two buttons (to share or comment); removing all the noise of ads, logo banners and formatting problems.

But we wanted to take it a step further than all the other readers out there. So here are a few things we do that no other mobile reader app currently does:

1. News Delivered Based On Expressed Keyword Interests.

The user can choose the topic, keywords, sources of their interest to be notified of. Most other reader apps, let you choose just the source or topic. The advantage here is that a person may be looking for just articles that mention just Apples Stock Price; so instead of getting articles for all Apple news (like most reader apps), the person only gets one specific to their stock price.

2. Staying Up To Date In Realtime

The user is notified in realtime, hourly, daily, according to their preference as news articles and posts hit the web that match their interests criteria. Most of the competition has significant delays due to their indexing crawling times. Faster is always better.

3. Grouping and Bundling of Similar Articles.

Occasionally, when a big event happens, lots of news sources will create an article that pretty much houses the same information as the others out there. For example, If a building was blown up in the Gaza Strip; there will be a lot of articles written about the tragic event. Most of them however will have all the same info (not offering a lot of opinion or new insight). In which case, we group these articles (lets say its a thousand) and present the user with the most popular and the user can of course click to view the other nine hundred and ninety nine similar articles. But the user benefits from a far more manageable digestion and a cleaner look. This feature has not yet been rolled out, but will very soon.

3, 2, 1, Lift Off

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:03:00 -0600

The Doors are Open!

Today we officially went from private beta to public beta. No longer will a person need an invite to join the site. It is completely open and launched now.

It’s always exciting, but sometimes nerve racking, to open up the doors for the world to use your product. It’s probably worse if you design roller coasters and a mistake in the construction could result in the derailment and death of rider. But it’s still scary for a software product too; worrying about bugs and the servers holding up.

Everything went smooth though, servers held and we were quick to fix a couple bugs that were brought to our attention so far. We got press coverage today at TechCocktail, TechCrunch and TheNextWeb in connection with our launch. We have a running count of some of the stats on a TV in our office now. Stats like new registers, interests added and results delivered. Its fun watching the numbers change.

Quit Playing Games with My Start...(up) - Backstreet Boys

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:15:06 -0600

No doubt the work of building an internet product can be very straining. It’s possible to spend literally hours upon hours fixing a bug that turns out to be a little file out of place or a slightly incorrect line of code (among the 1000s of lines). When the work gets frustrating, its always important to take the brief break here and there; to unwind, relax and ease the tension.

When that break comes; some of us like to grab a coffee or a snack. But all of us love to play a quick game. Now, I feel like there are two types of games out there. Ones that engage and stimulate the brain (like the number game Sudoku or any of the games on Luminosity). And then there are games that are purely for entertainment value (like Mario Brothers or any of the Call of Duty games) and aren’t particularly challenging to the logic or problem solving side of the brain; at best they improve hand coordination. For work breaks, we prefer the former.

Sometimes we’ll walk into Marbles: The Brain Store on Grand Ave and pick out a handful of games and bring them back to the office. And when we have a quick 10 minute break, we’ll learn and play a new game. Recently we discovered a really cool card game called Swish. The cards are completely transparent minus a small design on the card that correlates to other cards. The idea is to identify patterns in the cards faster and more correctly than your opponents.

When not feeling the urge to leave our desks. We play games like Civilization V. Its a turn by turn strategy game. Its available on Mac (a lot of computer games are only available on PC), which is important since every single person in our office has a Mac. It can be more of a time consuming game, but can easily be played in very short time intervals. It invokes the part of the brain that plans and orchestrates.

These games and others like them, are fun and stimulating. The brain is given a boost of problem solving activity. You also get to release some aggression in the form of trash talk with opponents. And when the break is over, we tend to see that we are more effective when getting back to work.

In the Final Stretch, Push It!

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:01:32 -0600

There is a great workout DVD program called P90X (which is the workout of choice among us at Resulty). It’s intense and people that stick to the routine get amazing results. One of the many workouts included in the program is Yoga (actually one of the more intense of all the workouts in the program). During one of the final muscle stretches of the Yoga workout, the instructor Tony Horton gives a little advice. He says, “Fight for every last inch, centimeter, millimeter, anything you can get.”

Now that were in the final stretch before we go into public beta. We’ve applied Tonys advice not only during his workouts but also in our plain work. Placing a focus on fighting for every last minute, second and millisecond in making a faster database with greater server optimization. Every tweak we make at this point during the final push of the product has a great effect on the experience of the users. Which is all we care about. In this final stretch it’s important to not get complacent. Instead we want to know that we are giving it our all and are pushing and fighting to win every possible battle (no matter how great or how small).

Things were focusing on in the “Fight for every last inch… “

-website speed

-database speed

-database tidiness

-increasing load efficiency

-website and mobile app bugs

-better social integration

Use Only As Directed

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:31:14 -0500

Early on when people would ask, “What does Resultly do?”

I’d usually say something like, “It’s a website and mobile app for streaming results. It allows you to follow any interest across the entire internet in real time.”

The person tended to respond back, “Cool. What do people use it for?”

I’d share a simple use case at that point, “Let’s say you were looking for an apartment in Wicker Park, you’d probably type in a search into craigslist or some apartment finder website. If you didn’t find what you were looking for, you may try again later that day or later that week; to see if there was any new listings. Instead of doing the same search over and over, you just add it as an interest into Resultly and the minute that a listing is created that matches your criteria, you get a notification.”

They would then say something like, “Thats awesome. So It’s a housing site?”

“It can be used for housing but it’s for everything! People have been using it for getting notified of:

-an iPhone coming up for sale for $150

-a daily deal site offering a massage under $30

-a round trip flight being available to NYC under $300

-Facebook’s stock hitting $20/share

-a ‘95 Buick LeSabre showing up in the inventory of a nearby dealership

-friends posting a baby picture

-construction job being listed in Schaumburg

-TechCrunch publishing an article about Pinterest

-foreclosure in the 60654 zip code getting processed”

One thing is for sure though, you definitely do not have to use only as directed by the examples listed above. Because Resultly is a tool that is not only for housing, jobs etc. It’s open ended. In the future, the majority of users may tend to use it for a certain purpose, but right now, people use it for anything and everything. And thats the goal, to keep building out functionality so that more and more types and categories of interests can be followed. Part of the fun thus far has been trying to figure out new and exciting ways to use Resultly.

Where Do Chicago River North Startups Eat?

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:13:09 -0500

One of the perks of having an office located in the River North area of Chicago is the food and restaurants nearby. When we first moved in, one of our goals was to eat lunch at a different place every time we ate out. Heres a list of the best places that we and other startups in the building have come across and enjoy the most. And also a few of the not so good places. For the purposes of making the list interesting; I won’t be mentioning fast casual restaurants like Chipotle, Jimmy Johns and Subway. Simply because, while these food chains are good, they are everywhere and not terribly unique to River North. But we definitely attend them when were looking for something that tastes good and only costs 7 bucks.

The BEST places:

Sunda

Located at 110 W Illinois. This modern asian restaurant has awesome ambience, fantastic food and fast service. One of our favorite things about this place is that they bring out fresh shrimp chips when you are seated (similar to how a mexican restaurant brings chips to each table) and they are delicious and light.

Dish of Choice: $18 Sunda Bento Box with NY Steak (served with seaweed salad, miso soup and sushi roll)

Rockit Grill

Located at 22 W Hubbard. This place is just great american food. As far as burgers go, one of the best ones in Chicago is offered here. Occasionally tech events (like technori reunion) are hosted on the second floor, where there is a bar and a pool table.

Dish of Choice: $19 Rockit Burger (kobe beef, melted brie, fried shallots, medjool date aioli, red onion brioche bun and truffle fries)

The WORST places:

Slurping Turtle

Located at 116 W Hubbard. Wait! Isn’t that Resultly’s address? Yes, these guys are located in our building, which makes it a major bummer that they are in the Worst places to eat list. We have been here a handful of times. Each time we have dined, something has gone wrong, from bringing the wrong dish or under cooking grilled salmon to forgetting to bring out soups. The service is what really makes this place bad. The food, when it actually comes to the table correctly tastes fairly good, but nothing special. They also updated their menu not long ago and removed some of the items we liked the best.

Dish of Choice: Anything from Red Violet Modern Chinese across the street (I know he’s cute but try to avoid the turtle altogether)

Star of Siam

Located at 11 E Illinois. When you are in River North there is a very high standard for food and service. This Thai cuisine joint just does not cut it. It is mediocre food compared to very solid Thai places else where in the city (Sticky Rice at Western and Irving Park or Siam Rice on Wells). It does have a fairly unique seating area with carpeted blocks, but that doesn’t make up for the mediocre food and service.

Dish of Choice: $7.75 Mussaman Peanut Curry

So there you have it, from tech foodies that know. Keep in mind also that for the most part our opinions of these locations are based off the lunch menus and day staff (some have different menus and wait staff for dinner); so results could vary.

Caring Enough About the Product to Not Cut Corners

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:05:41 -0500

Theres a great story about Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple; where Steve went above and beyond (almost anal) to ensure that the esthetic of the internal mother board of the Apple II looked a certain way. It had to look very organized and generally beautiful (at least to computer nerds). This would have been a very easy corner to cut, with tons of reason and logic to do so. The majority of users probably never even opened their computer and saw the motherboard. But theres something to be said for people that care so much about their work that they care even about the smallest detail. Such care for the product has resulted in Apple being able to construct motherboards for future laptops that are thinner and more powerful than competitors. To the right is the Apple II motherboard and below the MacBook Retina motherboard. It looks almost like art.

Most the team at Resultly has been heavily influenced by Steve Jobs. We are passionate about what were working on and try to deliver the absolute best product and experience to our users. A few weeks ago we ran into a weird issue with our iOS app as we were building out additional features. The basic functionality worked, but it had a bug that made it slightly annoying to use. There was a moment where we thought that it wasn’t too big of a deal to leave it as it was. It was possible that most people would not even notice the problem. But this thought did not linger long because we definitely would notice the issue, even if no one else did.

We searched all the usual places for an answer; mainly StackOverflow and Apple Developer Forums. We found others having the issue, but no answers to the problem. Others were in the same boat, but seemed to give up on fixing the issue. We began to play around with a few ideas for potential remedies. After a little bit of time, we had cracked it. This annoying bug would never plague our app. The end user will never know about the careful work that took place to make it the process smoother and better.

Yesterday, I downloaded an app. Without saying the name of the app, I will say that it is popular (over 4 million downloads) and its developed by a well funded company. Within 15 seconds of having opened the app, I noticed the feature that we had added to our app and the bug that caused us grief. A strange sense of pride hit me as I realized that this big company let such an annoying bug slide; a corner had been cut. That our team had cared more about our product and out worked them on this particular iOS feature.

“This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use…” -Steve Jobs

Mural Mural On The Wall

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:15:00 -0500

When we moved into our new offices in July, the color scheme from the previous occupiers of the space was Red and Gray. We repainted everything to Blue and Orange to match our brands scheme and it looks great. But we wanted to go a little beyond that. So we looked into a few options to give the office some extra flavor. What we decided on, was a mural for the conference room.

A little bit ago, a girl from Fox College became a graphic design intern here. One of her first tasks was to draw a few concepts for the mural. She came up with two or three. One of them seemed interesting and reflected the brand and product well. Our intern was very good at drawing/sketching but painting on an entire wall is a little different and she had never done it. But she did happen to know a street artist in Chicago named Ricardo Gonzalez.

We brought Ricardo into the office, showed him the conference room wall and the rough concept sketch. He wrote down a list of materials he would need to make the mural and gave the cost (very reasonable) for his time to paint it. We ordered ten acrylic paint colors and five different sized brushes from Blick’s website. Choose Blick because they had super fast shipping and good selection and prices on art supplies. And after a few days of work, Ricardo had finished the mural which ended up being loosely based (with Ricardo’s own vision thrown into the mix) on the original concept.

The mural looks great and the conference room feels complete now. The mural is a reminder to all the team that we aspire to do great things. In the mural the Resultly robot is surrounded by lots of logos. Logos from huge internet companies that are all synonymous with a popular product. Facebook=Social. Groupon=Daily Deal. Orbitz=Travel. And very soon Resultly will be just as big and synonymous for Streaming Results.