Yapeo

Lean…It’s how we roll

Jacob — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:44:31 +0000

Did you build your house, bake your bread or make your shoes? No, most likely not. You left it to professionals that can do it better, faster and cheaper. You wouldn’t consider doing these activities yourself because it is a poor investment. Not a monetary investment but an investment of your most valuable resource, time. Why run a Startup different from the way you run your life?

Being lean is key to the success of any startup. At Yapeo being lean means being smart with resources. It doesn’t mean keeping under a certain dollar figure or spending 80 hours a week doing everything yourself. To stay lean at Yapeo we follow our rule of ( )Source It. If we can’t (open, out, crowd …)Source It we don’t do it. Following this single rule makes us lean.

(Out)Source It

Could we build our own system for catching metrics, mass email distribution or A/B testing? Sure we could, but it takes time and expertise that we don’t have or want to invest in. Leaving these tasks to experts not only allows us to focus on our core business it allows us to get better results. I don’t know everything there is to know about the backend of A/B testing and all the statistical components. By utilizing a service like Optimizely we are able to quickly test layouts, copy, colors or position. I don’t have to worry about sifting through raw data and developing a method to analyze the results. With Optimizely we log in and see what works and what doesn’t. Services like this are not that expensive especially if you keep an eye open for deals at sites like AppSummo .

(Open)Source It

Utilizing open source software, platforms and applications is the heart of running lean. Take advantage of the expertise and community validated software available in the open source community. Need a video conversion tool? Use ffmpeg like we do or as discussed earlier (Out)Source IT to a service like zencoder, don’t waste your time writing it yourself. The best software in the world is free and/or modifiable. As a startup founder you have to be a programmer, designer, accountant, marketer, customer service, tech support, public relations and about 100 other functions. Don’t consume yourself with building blocks of code. At Yapeo we take what we feel are the best open source components and put them together to form the most kick ass classified system you ever saw.

We are working hard to change an industry, not writing code for coding sake. As a bootstrapped startup resources are quickly exhausted. A monetary infusion, from say the AppSumo Lean Challenge, means more outsourcing which frees up time to focus on customer needs which will eventually generate more resources. Running lean means we can do more with less, pivot to meet user demand and leverage technology to make classifieds a fast, easy, fun way to buy/sell online.

Why video classifieds?

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:49:17 +0000

Think about it, how many commercials do you see a week on tv? How much do advertisers spend on those ads? Billions! Why, because video sells. It brings a level of comfort to the viewer. Video is the next evolution for the classifieds market. Years ago it was just short cryptic messages in the back of a newspaper. Today there are hundreds of online classifieds sites, auction sites and “lists” for users to buy and sell goods. Most of these allow you to post a picture or two of the item. Yapeo is built around the idea that a video can relay so much more to the potential buyer. This gives the buyer a level of comfort that an image or text description can’t compete with. Videos help the seller too. How many times have you posted an item and received 30-40 questions about how the item looks, works or operates? It takes time to respond to these inquires. A 30-45 second video can answer all of those questions upfront.

Video classifieds are a better way to buy and sell on the Internet. Yapeo makes it fast, easy and fun for you.

Beta launch, we need your help!

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:18:59 +0000

We have officially gone into beta. It has been a long time coming and it feels good to get this out into the wild. We have gone through page after pageto make sure that we can offer the best video classifieds anywhere. I am sure we have something. So, the first 1,000 members to post a video classified will be entered into a drawing for an Xbox360. Not a bad prize for a 30 second video. For check here for details.

If you find an issue or would like to make a recommendation please contact us here

Good luck!!

A simple idea

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:25:10 +0000

Why are the simple ideas the most difficult to execute? It seemed like an easy task, create a website where people can post videos about what they are trying to sell. Turns out it is a lot more complicated than expected. The small idea born over a few beers turned into a very long project. The wait is almost over. The ability to show a video instead of a cryptic description or poor picture when selling your stuff is here. Classifieds have been around forever and have had very little innovation. Yapeo is the next evolution of classifieds. It is a better way to buy and sell on the Internet.

Hello world!

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:41:44 +0000

Yes, like many blogs we will start ours with a shout out to the world. We are still banging out code but will get an update on our progress shortly.