Andrew,

What a great pick-me-up after a long week to read your take on our site. I’m glad you like it and I’m flattered you chose us as one of the sites you review. I understand your suggestions, and will take a look at those elements with a fresh eye. We’re continuing to improve the site as each day passes, so please stop by again in the future. Thanks again for the vote of confidence. If you ever want to consider making that virtual investment a real one, let me know. Your bio would suggest you’d be a great person to have giving us additional counsel. All the best!

Doug Worple
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Doug

Thanks for your comment…I have just about resurfaced from banging my head on the desk after seeing 3Luxe…it was one of those moments that happens all too often ~ ‘Why didn’t I think of a highly demographically segmented product search engine?”.  I mean really!  It’s so obvious when you think about it.  So come on folks, before 3Luxe – who can really lay claim to creating a product search engine that specifically and tightly targeted a specific demographic of consumer?  And No, tech geek is not a demographic before folks start jumping up and down about CNet and that ilk.

Again, good luck to 3Luxe! Stay in touch and let me know if there is any way at all I or the Advisor Garage site can support you as you take the discriminating consumer market by storm!

Andrew

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Our Million Dollar Startup Game blog covered ‘Amie Street’ back in February.  I hate to say “I told You So” but Amie Street has just finalized it’s Series A funding round and the interesting piece of information is that Amazon.com lead this funding round.  Our blog gave Amie Street one of the highest ‘virtual’ investments to date.  I’m sure Amazon invested more than $750K and this should be the sign of an interesting relationship between Amie and Amazon.  Great news but don’t sell out to quickly guys.  Good Luck!

Andrew
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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 Aime Street recently responded to the recent post ‘Aime Street: A $750K Virtual Investment’ with the following important point:

” Lucas Feb 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am Edit

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for the 750K. Guess we’ll have to see what happens when that situation pops up. An important point along those lines is that we don’t tie down artists who upload their music with any sort of exclusivity agreement. The more people that hear the music, the better.

Lucas”

Thanks for the clarification and update Lucas.  The fact that Aime Street is focused on the good of all sides of the customer equation is clear.  Its great that a company is putting its customers first and this should ultimately ‘pay off’ for everyone.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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The creative guys behind the recently reviewed ‘HireThings’ were kind enough to answer some of the questions that came up and give us a sneeky peek into how they will be moving their already exciting business foreward…Thanks HireThings!

“Nahum Wild | hirethings.com | IP: 131.203.101.14

Hi Andrew, great article.

You’ve obviously done your research and flicked around our website. To answer some of your dislikes/questions:

We are in the process of pushing out the charging functionality in the next week or so which includes a couple of changes to our documentation on the site. The main change being that success fees for bookings will only be created two days after the booking has been completed. This gives the supplier time to update the booking with what actually happened – if it differs from the original agreement. For longer bookings we’ll actually charge a success fee two weeks into the booking and with longer terms we are investigating either a fixed rate or staggered success fees over the booking’s duration. We’ll be watching for people that always cancel their bookings too )

The administrative side is going to be a challenge, but I believe that we’re up to that and have the right people for the job. Controlling what is and isn’t on the site will set the mood for the whole concept, it’s a delicate balance of professionalism / business and community. Do we allow hugs or not? We’re still pondering that one.

Yes, obviously repeat customers bypassing the system once they and a supplier have made the initial contact could be a problem for us. Same type of issues that auction sites undoubtedly have. We plan to learn from them and offer a service with awesome value and features that keeps people coming back to and using the site.

Recently a fantastic User Interaction expert joined the team which we are very excited about as this allows the experience to jump up a notch, including tidying up some of the obvious clutter etc…

We’ve got heaps of cool additions planned, so watch this space!

Regards,

Nahum Wild
Development Manager
www.hirethings.co.nz“

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If you would like to have your say or ask any questions, come along to the “Have Your Say” forum above.

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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Quintura just responded to yesterday’s post “Quintura: A $Zero Virtual Investent”.

” Yakov Mar 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 am Edit

Hello Andrew! Very interesting post as well as the other reviews! Don’t you know that Quintura stands for quintessence or pure essence of searching. Try to make Quintura your homepage for a week and then give us your views!”

Yakov, I did not understand that this is the definition of Quintura, when I searched through the dictionary it had no definitions for Quintura.

As I reconsidered my review, I wondered if I had been too harsh with the zero virtual investment especially as this is a beta site at this point.  Seeing today’s functionality, even with the ‘invite a friend’ element which could drive adoption, I would still not put my virtual cash in Quintura but I could be wrong. I will go back often and see how the functionality and the company develops.  It would be great if Quintura becomes the next hot company with significant revenues…but I just don’t see it today.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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Just after the last post ‘Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment’, Geni were kind enough to respond with the following:

“Geni JoAnne Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm Edit

Hi Andrew. Excellent blog. We are considering adding premium services to our site in the future–the basic service will remain free.”

JoAnne – Thank you for letting us know. It would be great to understand what Premium services Geni will be offering – but I’m sure they will be as value add and innovative as the core site itself.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Great job Geni!

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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