I wonder how scary it is to develop a product that relies entirely on having access to other companies API's? As developer unfriendly as Facebook and Twitter have been lately, is it possible that they could ever cut off access to Greplin?
"The third reason we took Sequoia’s money, specifically Sequoia and not another VC, was we deal with a lot of these different API providers. It’s very important to us to maintain very good relationships with a lot of these companies because we have a higher than average volume of requests that we have to make to them. And finally, we thought Sequoia was the best place to go for this because they’ve had their hand in or know someone at almost every interesting tech company in the world, and that network is super important to us."
Jamie -- I look forward to coming back to this comment in 12 months and seeing what the world looks like for Greplin. I think they are awesome, but the world will have to get more silo'd before it can be more open -- hopefully greplin isn't the victim in that process. :-)
I agree with that, but I also don't really see the current incarnation of Greplin as a threat to any open vs. closed battle the big players want to fight.
It's not too scary when you're relying on APIs from several different companies, as is the case with Greplin. Startups that are reliant on a single API (or other single closed platform) seem much scarier.
Losing one or two of the big ones (fb or twitter) would be a glaring hole in their offering and it also seems like the same thing would trigger companies to cut them off; namely, too much success.
I know they're smart guys (by proxy of YC) so they must have some answer to what happens should one of the handful of social networks that matter cut them off, but being on the outside looking in, it sure does look like a precarious position.
I don't disagree, but in a world where so many startups are reliant on just one API/platform (startups making Twitter clients, Facebook apps, and even iOS apps to some extent), Greplin seems to be relatively safe.
As you said, they are likely to be only cut off if they meet "success". If that happens, they will have leverage.
Any way, at this point, they must have their blinders on. If they got preoccupied with figuring out solutions to tentative risk, they'll never take the first step (i.e., to be successful enough to be blocked).
This is almost never the case with Facebook. If you're successful and Facebook doesn't like what you're building then they shut you off without notice. No application depending on their API ever has any 'leverage'.
As a single founder I found this post very inspiring. I too am trying desperately to get a working prototype of my idea ready, hopefully in time for this YC round on the 20th.
I'd encourage you to apply whether or not you have a working prototype by the 20th. In fact, apply today. You can update your application later if you have a demo or something to add to it.
