Last Spring we quietly launched a new website in our network called CrunchBase. It’s a front end for our database of company information (address, executives/founders, funding info, etc.). We accumulate all this data about startups, but much of it doesn’t make it into actual posts on TechCrunch or the other blogs. And even when it does, it isn’t structured properly. So we thought we’d just put it up in a structured format for people to use when researching these startups.
We started linking to CrunchBase often in our posts. This tends to drive some readers absolutely nuts because they want to go to the company, not CrunchBase, when they click a link. As of today that policy is being discontinued.
Instead, we’ve created a small widget that pulls in some of the important data points about a startup, and we’ll include that widget in posts about startups. To see an example, see this and this post. I’ve also put the widget in this post for the startup PoliticalBase, since I mention them in the next paragraph.
This is just the beginning. The next step is to turn the site into a wiki in exactly the same way that PoliticalBase has done (try clicking on “edit” on any of their pages). They maintain data structure but allow users to create and edit all content as well. We will also allow people to add other relevant links about the startup to the page. We’ll either build this ourselves or partner with someone. For fun, I’ve added Facebook and Digg, too.
We’ll also be allowing everyone to embed the widgets into their blogs, and anyone who does so will be automatically linked to from the CrunchBase page as well, if their content is non-spammy and relevant. We’ll create other tools (RSS in particular) that allow people to easily export the data and use it however they please.
Since all this data is structured, we’ll be able to do some interesting things with it. Like create a venture capital index showing how much money is going into startups each month. Or show a map that includes geographical info about startups. And so on.
There are a number of companies that gather this information and sell it to people for thousands of dollars per year. Our intention is to disrupt those businesses by giving all of this data away for free.
This is a work in progress, and will be for some time. Please bear with us as we make mistakes, and keep giving us your feedback. We’re listening. And if your startup isn’t yet included in CrunchBase, you can submit the data directly here.
YAY; those referral links were simply annoying. Could have made it so that at least the FIRST company link wasn’t going to CrunchBase.
And the widgets load very very very slow.
Thank god
yeah, we’re moving it from a dev server now. It will probably break in a few minutes, but this gives our team a good incentive to hurry up and get that new server up and running.
Hey Mike, I really like the look of the widget, but it doesn’t seem to work at all if you’re looking at the site in an RSS reader (due to it using javascript I guess). Any chance that you could use an image or pain text fall back?
Other than that, great work. Is this what you’re advertising for developers for?
This is an excellent feature and much less annoying than those infernal stealth crunchbase links. Looks like crunchbase will become a really valuable tool for the community, good stuff.
actually i think if you linked the company name to their URL, it wouldn’t be that annoying to have a small Crunchbase icon next to it that linked to their listing… however, it’s probably more effective to just show the thumbnail summary paragraph from CB embedded in the post (like you did in the FB story today). i think that’s a better technique, and will make readers more comfortable / familiar with crunchbase data. (and i assume you’ll allow other folks outside TC to embed that thumbnail & link to the CB listing, right?)
anyway, looks like good stuff & keep up the good work. (kudos to Mark & Ben
Nice work Michael, very innovative!
cute post - piss off your users to the point where they are breaking and then move it to a wiki to try to grow the site bigger and sell ads against it - what reason does anyone have to edit your directory after you used all of us for your SEO and traffic building practices? never once responding to how pissed off your readers are.
obviously your plan worked - check alexa for crunchbase - you used shady practices to gain traffic to crunchbase by making users unknowingly go to another site different than the expected site - either internal tc link or company directly - too bad google didn’t penalize.
The widgets should be showing up more quickly now. Sped up the ajax.
Thanks! This was incredibly annoying.
I hate to be the lone dissenter, but I’m not sure I agree that the CrunchBase widget adds to the reading experience. I don’t need a corporate overview of Digg every time I read an article mentioning it — I’m already pretty familiar with it. I could see it maybe being useful when you’re doing a review of a brand-new company, but wouldn’t that be highly redundant with the review itself?
Basically, if it’s not a new company, I don’t need it, and if it is a new company, you should describe it in the body. I do like having the option of going to CruchBase if necessary, though I agree the default link was really annoying.
My vote is to return to the previous, clean design: focus on the new data, not the old.
Douglas - the widget itself is an honest attempt to respond to our readers.
Mike - fking good idea mate
I think the widgets will do well, albeit you might need less posts per page –> the loading time now is massive with these widgets.
Download this widget and see for yourself
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3371
it’s getting more cluttered, I can’t say i like it. it’s bad for your advertisers too
Tcruncher2 - The widgets are not the ones slowing down the page (as far as I can tell). The site’s probably so slow for you because it’s waiting for other components to load. We realize things are bloated generally and will be working to clean things up.
Great idea. But, why only feature companies in CrunchBase that have been featured on TechCrunch.
Why not allow any startup to submit its info into CrunchBase?
The more content, the better. CrunchBase could become the defacto database of startups! Instead of the database of what TechCrunch thinks is worthy.
Just my 2¢.
Logan - we do try to create profiles for every internet company that submits their info to CrunchBase. We may be a little slow at doing this sometimes, but it’s definitely our intention to build CrunchBase up not only with companies we feature but all relevant startups.
Mark –>
http://www.getfirebug.com
Check out Network Activity –> should assist
Cheers
Dude all of you are on it. You guys are writing like developers now! NICEEEEEEEE
Thanks Tcruncher2, but already my weapon of choice.
Thank you! I got bit by the bug a couple of times. I don’t mind the extra vertical space, that’s what scrolling is for.
Nice idea and even nicer intentions. Good going!
Didn’t see an RSS feed for the recently profile companies, so I created one using Dapper:
http://www.dapper.net/services/CrunchBase
Fantastic!
It just hit me, how I frequent this site (avg. 10 times a day) expecting developing news, yet, it never stuck me to expect anything from you guys.
Truly, I’m glad to see you guys are thinking of the TechCrunch’s growth, as much as you are reporting those of others.
Keep up the good work team!
How long does it take for submitted info to appear in CrunchBase? I’ve been featured on this site several times, submitted my info myself, and still have not been added… this was about 4 months ago…
Sorry to post this here, but I didn’t see an email…
I’m in the area affected by the CA Wildfires and I think our local PBS station really deserves some kudos for using Google Maps (over 1.64M views), Twitter (updated every few minutes), and Flickr (for staff and community photos).
There are the ONLY agency that has not been affected by slow servers (unlike every other TV news station, the San Diego Union Tribune, and even the county’s emergency sites)!
http://twitter.com/kpbsnews
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms.....51&z=9
Nick
Good call Michael! Doing this will cut the annoyance while keeping it a top notch resource site. And yes, free is always good! Love the widgets but I hope it doesn’t slow down the loading time of your site (which I must admit is a little slow to load up at times).
Yay! This is rad….and as for the widgets, can we get some of that embed love?
I was just wondering about this last night and a few hours later bam! the solution. Great stuff here at Techcrunch. Reporting bugs on sidebar using Safari, hopefully fixed on version 3 =)
James Thomas - Time varies. We currently have a lot of submissions to go through. What is the name of your company?
Peter - WackyLabs LLC, umbrella for skinnyr.com and formerly jamjunky.com
This is very cool. Should have know about this earlier….
Hmmm…
here is one place where you can find all the TechCrunch startups based on the category and location integrated with Google maps( Still lot to be done thou )
http://webbmaps.com/
Cheers, Nag
that sounds cool. a peer produced data base of start ups. How close are you to releasing this? any idea who you might partner with.
see you in Boston.
James Thomas - I see the submission. It’s on our to-do list, but it might be awhile before we get to it.
Techcrunch is the only site that ADDED a click to get to the information I was looking for in 2007. Poor design or shrewd business move - Either way I am glad they’re gone.
Mike - We might be able to help you with this. We are launching a very powerful new competitor management product that sounds like it could be ideal for crunchbase. Shoot me an email if you want to talk, we are local. We also built competitious.com.
Thank god. Wonderful wonderful ideas.
Crunchbase has been structured in a very easy and user friendly manner.
http://www.meetingflex.com
Social Networking + Videos
I’m one of those people that was annoyed at CrunchBase links being inserted into posts. However, the widgets I like. Good idea!
great idea,, thanks for the post
Thanks Techcrunch - the Crunchbase links were too annoying and the widget looks useful too.
if/when you go for the wiki format you could get VC industry data from it, but you guys hit maybe 1/4 of VC fundings at this point.
Can you make the data available through a simple API as well? For example, I’d like to be able to get the crunchbase data for a specific company. This can enable building very interesting mashups.
@Jon (#23)
Thanks for creating the Crunchbase RSS — that’ll be super useful! Not sure why they don’t have RSS
Hello Techcrunch Team,
is it possible/allowed to add the Widget to a regular Website instead of a Blog?
Thanks
Werd. An API would be nice. It will allow developers to derive bigger picture data, e.g. total funding in a given year, average funding for a particular type of startup…etc etc.
Also, it would be nice to include the valuations of the companies (if they are known as in the case of Facebook).
I’m with #11. I really don’t need to see the crunchbase widget for facebook which probably is 1 in every 5 posts (a bit of an exaggeration, but thats what it feels like).
Maybe instead of a widget towards the bottom of the post you can put a crunchbase icon for those that want to read further.
You guys obviously want to develop this further as it seems that you are sacrificing usability to achieve a goal of popularizing this site. Give it a week or two and all of your users will be nauseated by the widget.
Just giving my own simple THANK YOU. This is much, much more desirable than the click through to CrunchBase. Hopefully other’s will follow suit with something similar, or equally pleasing.
Crunchbase is a nice start for the Web 2.0 space. BTW, VentureDeal is a subscription database for $25/mo and you get 100 free downloads included. It was started for some of the same reasons Michael said that he started CrunchBase - the big database companies charge outrageous sums ($15K per year), since they are aimed at the Venture Capital firms. We cover all technology sectors.
Interestingly enough, even the VCs don’t like paying $15,000 a year for the data…
CrunchBase is a 1-for-1 compy-cat of the Codex I setup over at Betaflow.com, when I started that blog. I don’t own it anymore but at least give credit where credit is due.