RateItAll, a site that describes itself as a “distributed Yelp for everything” has closed an $800k round of funding led by Accelerator Ventures, JAIC America, Pacific I&T Ventures, and Eric Di Benedetto. The site allows users to rate topics that range from travel to politics to athletes (it shies away from product and restaurant reviews that are seen on sites like Yelp and epinions). RateItAll initially launched in in 1999, but was effectively shut down in 2001, where it lay dormant until its relaunch in 2007.
Since then, the site has done quite well – In 2007 it managed to generate $190k in revenue with a single full-time employee (the team has now grown to four). The site is somewhat unique because of its revenue-sharing program, which gives users 50% of the advertising revenue generated by the reviews they’ve written.
Over the past year RateItAll has grown to a million monthly uniques and has been seeing explosive growth in user interaction, going from about 10,000 new ratings in February to 70,000 in May, much of which was driven by its MySpace application. Of course, it still has a long ways to go – there is no shortage of review sites on the web, and many of them have far more content than RateItAll.
COMMENT
Grammar nazi comment: something can’t be “somewhat unique”, it’s either unique or it isn’t unique.
190k$ with a single employee ??? omg….
(
what was the funding on this thing???
I wish my site would be like that… i’m a single full time employee too
ow…………. so it’s hosted by TechCrunch…. made and hosted my you guys…. That explains it
I met the founder a year ago when they where just undergoing the revamping of the service, amazing to see them having such success – awesome that they pulled it off with one employee and now have a bit of cash to fuel the company.
the difference between this and yelp is that they’re not going to run into the massive problem yelp has of a non-existent and high-cost-of-sales local ad marketplace for monetization because they deal with physical businesses. meaning they can actually make money through existing online ad marketplaces. which is good, right?
the site has a nauseating UI. After about 3 minutes i just gave up and left.
I’m with ‘McLovin. I heart Yelp’s UI and have from the start. They did everything right. IMHO, people used CitySearch because they had to, but CitySearch was never concerned with its users. Whereas people use Yelp because they *love* to.
I rate their logo as out-of-focus and painful to my eyes.
The UI interface is not the best one I’ve seen. Other than that, I can say that the website should focus on a niche target, otherwise it will just be the place for everything and nothing and be forgotten after a few money burning cycles!
Alright, let me see if I got this:
I can clone a business model, and use the example of a leader in the space to make my case, and raise 800K, and the most original part of the plan is what I dropped into the crapper that AM?
Whereas I surveyed 1000+ mobile trades people, worked in the sector, designed an architecture for a totally new method of paid independent dispatch, for which the users have agreed to pay up to 30 /mo. And I can’t raise a dime? Rather, I have been treated rather poorly by the VC community.
I see how it works now.
I wish my site would be like that… i’m a single full time employee too
(
Ciprian: Try using a spellchecker and working on something that isn’t a known-failure business model like “link exchange.”
Alan: 1000+ ain’t nothing. VC and Business 8.0 (or whatever it’s up to now) is driven by unique visitors. Besides, why not be your own angel investor? Someone once told me not to trust a principal who won’t put their own money into their business. If it’s such a no-brainer, that is…
CAPTCHA sure would be a nice addition
Congrats Lawrence. You have been plugging away at that site for years. Glad to see it finally has gotten some cash! Hopefully the funding will be able to take you over the next bump!
I’ve seen Yelp have credibilty issues when it comes to ratings and the truth.
This in SF.
http://sf.curbe...ate_reviews.php
And this in the NY Times:
http://www.nyti...f=smallbusiness
I could of posted a dozen more, but didn’t.
The one review on my business is 5 stars out of five, but it was written by my wife’s best friend who has never shopped there. Yelp means very little to anyone who thinks about how credible a source like this REALLY is.
So Lawrence, good luck, I hope you can solve the sell out and credibilty issues Yelp has.
Way to go Lawrence! But dormant from 2001 to 2007? Where did they get that from? Looked pretty live to me during Pubcon 2004 when I first met you.
RateItAll rocks! The RateItAll widget is particularly useful: http://www.rate...wt-widgets.aspx
RateItAll seems way too broad to catch on in a big way (as Mehdi Akiki said above, a place for “everything and nothing”). I recently saw a start-up — http://www.Shop5.com — for example, that allows people to rate and review websites, which seems pretty narrow when compared to “topics.” And the credibility is at least partially ensured by the fact that the opinion of the site’s editors comprises 50% of the overall star rating, according to their FAQs. Seems like a good model.
At the risk of seeming like I’m hocking our own stuff (which I suppose I am), I thought I’d make note of our website. It’s also based on ratings, but it is more focused on the community voting on topics that they create. (I believe that in the future users will employ it to rate products as well, but we haven’t seen that occur much to date.)
Ours is still in a fledgling state; nevertheless, I’d love to hear what all of you think about it. We’re really working to make the site increasingly functional and getting good feedback really helps.
It’s here: http://www.makefive.com
@21 Tom – I was thinking about what you said about this company being too broad and I agree. I think that maybe the future of review sites could be more niched that way there is more quality control and meaning. To me, Yelp seems too broad and their quality control must be a nightmare, and they still don’t catch all the jackasses who post lies and manipulation.
@22 – nice UI, the big advertisements are too big, they make me notice advertising and I hate that on websites.
– I like the video that tells people about you and love the Pixies. 
– Overall the idea is nice, but I wonder about the traction and long term loyalty of your customer.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone.
We have some cool things in store for the UI.
And the vertical vs. horizontal point is a fair one, and it’s something we hear quite a bit. But there are some compelling examples of sites that didn’t go vertical – Wikipedia, Craigslist, and eBay come to mind.
Additionally, from a reviewer perspective, it’s less than ideal to have to go to different sites depending on what you want to review – Yelp for bars, Flixster for movies, Amazon for books and products, etc. It’s multiple logins to remember, and you can’t bring your reputation / friends from one site to another. I think if we can provide a superior service for reviewers by freeing up their content to go anywhere, giving them ownership and control of their reviews, and sharing revenue, that we’ll have a bright future.
Nice post Lawrence and gl with the UI.
I see your point about people coming to one place for everything, but I have a passion for chocolate and use seventypercent.com. I get more info about fine chocolate their, it’s in a more quality controlled environment and it is easy to understand without a lot of text and links to 1000 other things. And because chocolate is my passion, and books maybe someone else, it’ll be hard to convince them to change sites…. we that are passionate do not mind having our own login at our review sites, it’s what we think about daily, because most people only have 1-3 things they are REALLY passionate about.
I am not saying your idea is bad, I just believe the internet will become more social and niched in the future.
I admire your perseverance Lawrence, follow your dreams and believe!
I am confident that RateItAll will have a very bright future. A friend of mine will be joining your team soon. Congratulations on your success!
GO LAWRENCE!
Rateitall has some of the most passionate users and Lawrence is extraordinarily good at keeping things transparent and communication lines open. I see amazing things from rateitall. I’m super psyched to see this site getting funding and attention.
its amazing what good software can do
Improve My Gas Mileage
WOW! I wish my little auction search website could generate that kind of investment funding. I am not a big fan of RateItAll.com for some reason. I tend to use http://www.Yelp.com, http://www.ReviewPage.com, and http://www.InsiderPage.com more than RateItAll.com… That is just my two cents however.
Congrats to RateItAll.com for the nice investment funding! I am not a big fan of RateItAll.com, as I tend to use http://www.Yelp.com, http://www.ReviewPage.com, and http://www.InsiderPages.com the most. Best of luck to RateItAll.com!
wow,Very severe！