♫ I’m coming out…of anonymity ♫

Hi fellow HNers,

My name is Jake Gold and on Hacker News I go by the name “staunch”.

It feels really weird to say that. I never went through any real trouble to remain anonymous. I’m sure a crafty person probably could have figured out who I am, but still, I did make a conscious decision not to openly reveal it.

I made the choice to use an alias when I first signed up over 4 1/2 years ago. I worked for a few different companies as a contractor and as a full-time employee and had vague concerns that maybe I’d say something that would get me in trouble in some way.

I realize now that it was a mistaken idea. I’ve definitely made stupid comments and I’d take some of them back, but I’ve never said anything so off my real character or opinion that I wouldn’t be willing to apologize or stand behind it.

In that time I’ve probably embarrassed myself in real life, in front of people I actually know a bunch of times, why should I care if I do it online occasionally?

If there are any consequences in the future I’m fine with it. I’m going to give this “live in public” idea a shot.

Why now?

For a long time I’ve wanted to do my own startup so bad it hurt. Over the last 5 years I got to work for two, and created a couple cool side projects that got traction and made me a bit of money. Nothing that was “my” startup though.

Now I’ve finally done it. A friend of mine that I’ve known for 7 years, and worked with at two different companies, finally got together to start a real startup of our own.

I want to be able to talk about it on HN openly, as myself, and ask questions and get help from the people who I’ve already been talking to for years now.

My Startup

The site we’re creating is called Get.com

Although we only realized it after the fact we’re quite narrowly focused on solving Paul Graham’s #20  http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

20. Shopping guides. Like news, shopping used to be constrained by geography. You went to your local store and chose from what they had. Now the space of possibilities is bewilderingly large, and people need help navigating it. If you already know what you want, Bountii can find you the best price. But how do you decide what you want? Hint: One answer is related to number 3.

(emphasis mine)

Our brief description:

Get.com is a community web site and product discovery platform that helps people make faster and smarter purchasing decisions. It solves the same problem for products that Yelp and TripAdvisor do for local services and travel respectively.

Anyone who has spent hours reading reviews and pouring over product specs on Amazon or CNET can relate to the frustration and difficulty in searching for the best product for their needs.

We announced publicly last week, and got some great coverage, including a listing on the “paper of record”, TechCrunch:

A New Product Discovery Site Emerges, With A Killer Domain And $1M In Funding: Get.com

We also got coverage on LifeHacker, VentureBeat, FoxBusiness, and a bunch of other great places.

Initially we’ve launched a Q&A platform to start, which is our first step in solving this problem. We’re aiming very high and we’ve got some exciting ideas about where to go with it.

We’ve already had thousands of signups, received some amazing feedback, and started pumping out changes and improvements at a pace that only a two-man startup can.

So far it’s everything I hoped for in doing a startup. It’s every bit the rollercoaster everyone says it is, but it’s exactly what I want.

Disclaimer

I’m aware that this post may seem narcissistic. I really don’t mean it to be. It’s just something I wanted to announce publicly.

I posted it on Hacker News http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3032071