Four Month Old Wize Gets $4 Million

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1. awesome
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 12:06 am

   It seems a great service to easily identify good products from bad products.
   But the service is nothing more.

   Even though the display of multiple review sources and expert review entries successfully managed to give some degree of credibility on its recommendation based on what they call “powerful metric”, wyze rank, it would be just a baised result of a tiny set of active users if it actually amassed and processed the user reviews.

   For that practical reason, the service is just focusing on giving “credible impression” on visitors by its sleek design and a highly managed display of censored user and expert user reviews.

   In bottom line, it’s just a magazine recommendation section disguised as a complicated intelligent system to process an amazing amount of user responses to calculate “apparently credible” metrics.

2. Christopher Sisk
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 12:08 am

   I assume “found” is supposed to be “round” … other than that… A+ on the prediction. Let’s hope it holds up.

3. Michael Arrington
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 12:12 am

   fixed typo, thanks. It was Marshall’s prediction, looked like it may have been a good one.

4. security
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 1:18 am

   This site has potential - and if successful, will spawn imitators.

   Take the theories behind Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Download.com and Consumer Reports.

   Add them all together - and you have this concept.

   Users and Experts Opinions Combined to form One Score

   The only improvement would be the option to seperate the Users and Experts Mean Scores for futher analysis.

5. Adam Benayoun
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 am

   Seems to be a great service, I’d like to see more places where i can buy the products in question and maybe some kind of coupons digging.
   I would also like to not only see the top products but the top low products, that way i can know what not to buy. (sounds silly but believe me, this is useful).

6. Daniel
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 1:45 am

   Well, nothing really new, such a service is already launched a while ago….

   http://www.alatest.com

7. Daniel
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 1:46 am

   was….;)

8. Chris
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 2:28 am

   Amazing they ask for $4million and get it. I’d find it really useful if there could be examples or case studies on how startups typically spend the millions they are given. Of the $4 million what ratio is spent on existing staff/hiring new staff/technology/infrastructure?

   Perhaps also how the whole funding mechanism works - how the money is physically made available to the company, who needs to agree to the spending to make it happen etc.

   I think a lot of people might also be interested to learn more about the way funding rounds work in practice.

   Thanks, Chris

9. amiz
   

   January 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 am

   http://www.viewscore.com was the first to launch this service so i agree with daniel nothing new here…

10. Enkaedu
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 am

    I really wish questionable businesses were not getting the silly bucks again. Makes it so much harder when the hangover comes in the morning. Nothing less fun than bringing a good business to a grumpy VC with a hangover.

11. Sam Newman
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 4:47 am

    There is a UK-based startup called Reevoo which also operates in this space. They provide trusted reviews for companies like Orange and Dixons, and recently secured $5 million in second round funding.

    They are not a review aggregate - rather they collect reviews directly from people who have purchased the products.

12. Kula bácsi
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 am

    I’d spend the $4M on booze and hookers then ask for more.

13. Paul Freet
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 am

    That’s actually a very reasonable amount of money for a company like this. Extremely well done site. Short, easy to remeber name. And they have a CEO who has experience from P&G - nothing like that to get a VC excited.

    Looks like they mined other sites for their 1,000,000 reviews. Someone had to sit through and figure out if they were positive or negative - they must have some algorithm for doing that. That would take quite a while to do manually.

14. Rick
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 am

    There are a ton of non-obvious partnership opportunities for the site that does this well.

15. Dave G.
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 8:15 am

    @ Rick…exactly.

    Michael, I thought wize was based out of Minneapolis.

16. Rajeev Vashisht
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 8:57 am

    The user generates content and my business gets paid, cool man,
    There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

17. Rajeev Vashisht
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 8:59 am

    Its a good idea, Users create content and the companies gets paid,
    There after all seems to be a difference between wisdom and knowledge.

    http://blogs.ibibo.com/TechnicalJournal

18. Lee
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Lee from Wize here — Dave G., you’re right. Although we’ve recently moved our headquarters to San Mateo, Wize was started in Minneapolis and we still have offices there. Good catch.

19. Jon
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am

    i know cameras and the best camera has a GARBAGE rating. The WORST camera has a great 100 rating. The only difference is the number of units sold. I would say they will fail based on 5 minutes of looking at the site. Simply a game of playing buzz word bingo… I would prefer to use the best shopping site out there at FROOGLE

20. Philip
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 10:58 am

    I believe that fuzzy algorithms to determine rankings that aren’t immediately clear to the user, lose the trust factor immediately. And trust is all you got when your primary service is ratings.

    Amazon SalesRank and the Tomatometer are clear metrics. There’s no voodoo, and they are therefore loved.

    Alexa is in a grey area.

21. Samir
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 11:45 am

    “www.viewscore.com was the first to launch this service so i agree with daniel nothing new here…”

    Who cares? There were sites before you doing the same thing, I’m sure you looked to them for ideas. All of the players in this space are interesting, and I wish them all the best of luck.

22. Enkaedu
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    Paul,

    That’s just the thinking I’m worried about. As one of those “guys with a pedigree” from a big company, I’m too well aware that nobody really has any magic. Investment money runs hot and cold, and when $4m (and more) starts chasing automated web sites with a cute name and a flash CEO, I start to worry. We’ve been to this movie before. It’s a shame. And of course it isn’t just this Wize deal alone. There has been a rash of ridiculous funding announcements in the past year. “Too much money chasing too few ideas.” When have we heard that before? I think just before Abby Cohen started dumping tech stocks in April 2000.

    Even if - and I believe this - the new wave has more legs than the 90’s, the plain fact is that when VCs find themselves feeling like schmucks for dumping millions on houses-of-cards trying to win the Google lotto, they take their ball and go home.

    What we ought to be seeing - particularly as most of these businesses are incredibly cheap to start and run today - is small money followed by more small money.

23. Dave
    

    January 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 pm

    When did Viewscore’s service become available? I seem to remember Wize being available in August, 2006.

24. Chris Harris
    

    January 23rd, 2007 at 12:16 am

    I’m also looking for the typical “starutp pie chart” of expenses. I’m convinced a lt of it is consumed in hiring people - not their salaries - but the actual process of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, firing, and training people. This all happens at lightning speed in a startup - and more of them should use incubators, outsourcing companies, and contractors to help them not waste the money this way!

25. Scott
    

    January 25th, 2007 at 9:06 am

    These sites are fairly similar but View score only has 11 products? Wize has hundreds. I am pretty impressed with the fact that you can find pretty much anything on this site.

26. Joel
    

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    Looks like a bunch of comments from jealous wannabe entrepreneurs jealous that this site received $4M….and others “conveniently” leaving their website address in their comment. If Bessemer opens their pocket, Wize.com will be something…..something BIG!

27. Joel
    

    January 31st, 2007 at 11:24 pm

    Jon just wishes he had $4M for his camera collection…hehe