Last week, we flew down to meet the partners for our YC interview:
11:45 am — 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View
YC Partner: So you guys are making a link shortener?
Me: Yes.
YC Partner: Like Bit.ly?
Me: Let’s dive into why Bit.ly is not as good. We built the only link shortener that drives conversion. Bit.ly just shortens your link. We actually allow you to add a call to action to the page that you’re sharing.
YC Partner: So what would be an example use case?
Me: Let’s say I’m running a charity. I can share a CNN article on the Japanese earthquake, and I can actually add a message inside that says “support these victims - donate now” and include a link to my charity.
YC Partner: So you frame the article?
Me: Right.
YC Partner: They don’t do frame breakers anymore?
Of the top 1000 sites, 89% of them have no limitations around iframes. Typically the ones that block it are secured sites like banks, and those are not the typical sites that people share.
Me: Do you have customers? How far along are you?
We launched 7 weeks ago, as of today we have around 700 users, and we’ve been tracking 13% week over week growth.
(due to character limit) Read the rest at https://medium.com/p/187312cd2cf5
If it were me (caveat: I have no credibility whatsoever) I would be concerned about the long-term viability of this as a moneymaker, given that the more popular snip.ly theoretically becomes, the more animosity it's likely to create from linked sites, and the more sites (particularly popular sites) are likely to just break out of the frameset entirely, rather than have their own SEO and analytics tampered with.