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by maxklein 5227 days ago
Paul Graham said. "We're trying to figure out why this YC batch did so well. One theory: they all used Convore (http://convore.com)

What actually made the startups switch away from convore? At the point pg said that, quite a number must have been using it. Then they just stopped?
5 comments
mahmud 5226 days ago
There are many reasons why Paul Grahama might speak too highly of Convore, but one theory is endowment effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect

People think more highly of things that they have an ownership stake in.

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jackowayed 5227 days ago
It's not like every YC startup was a paying customer of Convore. I'm pretty sure he meant that they used Convore instead of/as well as a mailing list to communicate with the rest of the batch. He was making a claim that Convore leads to better communication than a mailing list, and that in the case of that YC batch, it was enough better that he thinks it made the companies noticeably better overall.

But 200 people using it for free (and probably naturally fading out of using it once the summer is over anyway) is not going to keep them afloat.

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Alex3917 5226 days ago
"What actually made the startups switch away from convore?"

I don't think anyone switched away from convore as much as they just stopped using it over time. The problem with convore was that it was too focused on information, and people don't care about information, they care about people. So what started as a better version of chat/forums eventually devolved into a less good version of quora.

The best thing that convore had going for it was that all of the content was extremely lightweight, but in the end I think this is what killed it also because the emotional connection just wasn't there.

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edanm 5226 days ago
Their new startup is Grove, which is hosted IRC for teams. I'm guessing this is what most of the YC batch switched to to replace Convore, since it hits more directly on their need.
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batista 5226 days ago
What's more possible:

1) he just said it to promote Convore

2) he really believed that (in an environment with hundreds of factors), companies' use of Convore had a noticeabe effect on their performance?

I know where I'd put my money on...

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