Felicis Ventures Blog

Finally An Awesome Music Search: Songza

Clan of Xymox, Nena, Front 242, Sezen Aksu - no matter how obscure or ethnic the band or artist, Songza, a new music search (just covered by GigaOm) swiftly returns most of their songs. It then takes merely a click to play, share, rate or add any song to your playlist. What's even more intriguing is that all the songs seem to stream from Youtube. While I can't comment on the legality of the site, I can definitely say the user experience and response time are excellent. While the audio quality varies dramatically from song to song, you can really find pretty much any song or band (as far as I can tell). Songza demonstrates that even in an area as competitive as search, excellent/simple UI, fast response time and solid functionality makes for a great site.

Pictures More Viral Than Words

Imagini, which first shot up to the top ranks of Digg two weeks ago, works by using a personality test based on a series of cool images to then match you to other people or allow you to find cool gifts for your friends. According to their homepage, they were able to sign up 750,000 people from around the world in 2 weeks (!). They also managed to enter the top 5 Alexa Movers & Shakers just recently which bodes extremely well for the company. The UI and the images are impressive. Just try it...

Highlights from D Day @ Y Combinator

12 start-ups presented at Y Combinator yesterday - majority of them built their concepts in less than 10 weeks. It was an impressive group of founders who collectively did a tremendous job of demonstrating their companies. While the development level differed among the presenters, all companies could show at least a private beta or some relevant proof of concept. Kudos to Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston and the rest of the Y Combinator team for an awesome job on selecting these companies and the wonderful organization.

My personal favorites are:

Zenter
Online presentation site that actually works smoothly and *fast*. They added super cool features like being able to add graphics, use *any* font from the web for any text in the presentation, or easily insert images from the web without leaving the online draft. It also allows people to collaborate on a presentation. Needless to say it works with existing powerpoint presentations. Unlike powerpoint, interactivity with the audience is possible via real-time surveys that can measure the listeners response to a multiple choice question in real-time and add it to the current slide. The competition from the established players is not to be underestimated but Zenter seems to be ahead of anyone else in this space.

Weebly
If you have ever wished for a really easy-to-use WYSIWYG website creator/editor that works online, fast, isn't limited to dumbed-down templates with just a handful of pages, look no further: Weebly has done it. They've also really streamlined the code, so the action looks swift. Their site includes neat features like integrating Google Maps to a website, which can be updated easily. While one can argue that the price for such convenience is zero - I disagree - I think in combination with some nice ISP/hosting features bundled in - this could be an unbeatable service, users might happily pay for.

Octopart

If you ever tried searching for electronics parts, you probably realize it can be incredibly difficult to sort between suppliers, while trying to keep track of the part numbers, prices, etc. Enter Octopart's vertical search engine which makes searching for parts a breeze. Results include major suppliers, prices,  available stock, product specs and more. It's fast, it's targeting an under-served niche, it focuses on search terms that are virtually all commercial and it's fast.

Other notables included:

• Virtualmin (Web based virtual hosting)
• Writewith (Collaborative online word processing)
• Auctomatic (online selling utility for eBay power sellers)

More detailed reviews of all the participants can be found on TechCrunch.