YC hates competition to its companies, so much that it scrubbed the article about Rentul from the front page and newsfeed. Fuck you yc, Airbnb I am coming for you.
Looking at Rentul, my first impression was that it took too many clicks to get to a listing. I clicked on Breckenridge Colorado and was given a page that said "here are what we found in breckenridge." I didn't realize at first that I had to click on that text to actually see the ratings. Second impression was that I couldn't find any properties listing their rates. Every one of them said "Contact the owner to find out the rate" but then I clicked "Contact Owner" and was accused of being a spammer. Then I realized I needed an account to ask an owner a question at which point I bounced.
Plug your funnel, put the rate right on the page, and don't make me "click here to read more." Might improve your conversion rate.
That being said your submission was probably just flagged. probably not someone at yc actively discriminating against competitors.
We are improving search, however if you search by city as the search indicates you get 30+ results. We are just transferring photos and rates from our curation project and will be up by the end of the night. This includes rates with the listing in search.
Additionally, do you complain about signing into HN to make a comment like above or other social sites??? From a "Security Engineer for a big company", come on guy you're not for real.
On the YC front, the article was a link to Raspwire not our site. All we did is make the submission. There was no reason to flag a great web blog for writing an article about us.
I would also find more value from the listings if rates are posted with them so I'm looking forward to when you get that (and the rest of the photos) up.
The copy when you click on "Contact Owner" doesn't seem like it will convert well. The line "The only good spam is found in Hawaii." seems superfluous and confusing. The right answer is to run an A/B test with and without that line and compare. I would be interested in the results.
I'm also curious why you have the "Read full description" link to expand the listing? On my monitor the whole description fits on one page but maybe a smaller screen it looks better this way? What is the reasoning for that?
As for the signing in being a problem, I understand that signing in should be necessary to contact a property owner. I was just letting you know that it was my bounce point.
Good luck with your site. I'm sorry someone in the HN community wasn't receptive.
Plug your funnel, put the rate right on the page, and don't make me "click here to read more." Might improve your conversion rate.
That being said your submission was probably just flagged. probably not someone at yc actively discriminating against competitors.