Comments on: Terabitz To Expand Beyond Home Searches Today

By: Ah Yer!

Ah Yer! — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:04:10 +0000

Thanks for this post. This is why I’m glad I read TechCrunch. Like so many others, I came with the wild hopes of getting featured, but stayed for the articles.

These guys were off our radar totally. Their product is similar to that of a lot of US-based startups in the real estate market.

Ironic that the Indians are doing a US startup, as we are moving into India next month. That’s the difference between rolling in ten million, and bootstrapping it (we have so far raised just over $1,000, from my ex-wife).

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:21:09 +0000

Micheal-thanks for the post on a great product. I guess the TechCrunch crowd is little cynical and pissy! Anyway, they have raised 10M and spent maybe 4M. The widget world with drag and drop is the ultimate UI vehicle to display unlimited data on a Map and Terabitz has figured it out. Terabitz’s total above the fold view with ability to create unlimited bitz or widgets from unlimited data API’s is genius. There’s alot more to this site then meets the eye.

By: Kristina

Kristina — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:11:10 +0000

Great stuff

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:30:21 +0000

Sounds like none of Erik’s ventures are getting any love………now what are they called again??

By: Chris Jacobson

Chris Jacobson — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:36:03 +0000

theSaint: I couldn’t agree more. It makes me laugh everytime I see something like that.

By: Eric Marcoullier

Eric Marcoullier — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:26:02 +0000

@vanG I think it was more like 40K users at the time of acquisition. I think it was the 200M cookied users that set the valuation.

By: cweeb

cweeb — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:25:48 +0000

Just to clarify, TC40 was a whopping success despite being poorly organized and executed…it just could have been so much more

By: cweeb

cweeb — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:25:08 +0000

Just checked TC40 for videos, nope, looks like Demo will have the videos out before TC, no surprise, the whole event was so poorly organized and executed

By: phenom

phenom — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:55:40 +0000

Concept sounds similar to wikimapia
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

By: lawrence

lawrence — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:39:00 +0000

@3, lol – i agree

but hey, alls fair in love and war.
if it works for them, good for them.

By: Ian Bell

Ian Bell — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:34:14 +0000

Thanks Erik!

By: Mohan

Mohan — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:23:31 +0000

We are working feverishly to go region by region around the country and get property listings so that the site has accurate data. Today’s entry is about a toolkit that allows one to embed all the neighborhood and local information relative to a location on a webpage. By the way, we have licensed a variety of data from our partners.

By: David G from Zillow.com

David G from Zillow.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:13:55 +0000

Ian –

Look closely at the Financing tab; Zestimate values are available via Zillow’s open API. More details on the API here: http://www.zill...APIOverview.htm

Erik –

Word!

By: mr obvious

mr obvious — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:13:16 +0000

so…

By: Startup News

Startup News — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:02:43 +0000

Ashfaq Munshi has a good track record .. infact back in da day he sold SpecialtyMD.com, for $110 million.

Ashfaq Munshi is the CEO of Level5 Networks. Ash brings a unique mix of 20 years of entrepreneurship, engineering, marketing, and management experience to Level 5 Networks. In addition to his current CEO position at Level 5 Networks, Ash has founded four other Silicon Valley companies: Radiance, Vivecon (where he currently serves on the Board), SpecialtyMD (acquired by Ventro), and Commerce Engine (became Ariba).

Earlier in his career, Ash served as a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, where he was responsible for software and automation. Prior to Applied Materials, Ash was Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Business Unit at SGI. Ash began his executive career at Oracle Corporation where he was director of development and marketing.

By: Mark Madsen

Mark Madsen — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:55:38 +0000

I like the d&d interface for different types of businesses along with the homes for sale / rent. I did run into bugs, like one pin on the map for all twenty data points when there should have been twenty, and as someone else mentioned the data quality isn’t that great. Showing 70% of the homes for sale isn’t that useful in a real estate search site. The data sourcing and quality is the part they need to spend time on. Liked the features but wouldn’t use it because of that.

By: John

John — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:54:42 +0000

So they are going to take google’s map data, add their own data (which looks like it gets scraped from someone else as well), and then re-brand it with their name? Sounds a little crooked to me. I like mashups and what they are doing from a user perspective, but when all your data is coming from other sources what do you really have? If I were one of the companies having their data scraped and used I don’t think I’d be too happy with that.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:44:37 +0000

slow news day. Lame product.

By: Erik Hersman

Erik Hersman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:33:00 +0000

I’m not sure how a second-rate real estate app like Terabitz gets written up 2x on TechCrunch in one summer. Mind boggling really, as there are a lot of other great innovative real estate apps out there that don’t get any attention.

By: vanG

vanG — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:29:56 +0000

Eric Marcoullier is spot on. Yahoo paid $10m for a small java script widget site mybloglog.com with virtually no technology and a community that is lucky if it was more than 50k users.

$10m doesn’t buy much these days.

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:57:42 +0000

“Ehm, pssst, Michael, hey, 12 plus 30 is 42.”

that kind of old line thinking would never foster innovation here in the ‘valley’.

WTF.

By: David

David — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:39:28 +0000

I agree with Mike. I think they need to do a better job with data validation. In addition to being incomplete, they also seem to show a fairly large number of listings for homes that are no longer on the market.

By: Ted

Ted — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:36:07 +0000

Mike Arrington fails math.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:10:01 +0000

Not a bad idea but the information seems very incomplete. I tested it on my area and a lot of items are missing. For example, the house across the street from me has been for sale for several month, but doesn’t show up in the MLS listings.

Needs work.

By: Salaudin

Salaudin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:59:14 +0000

Quote from Michael Arrington:
“The company has 32 employees (12 in the U.S., 30 in India).”

Ehm, pssst, Michael, hey, 12 plus 30 is 42.