FindTheBest, which was recently backed by Kleiner Perkins' sFund, launched in August of 2010 and is now attracting 1.5 million monthly visitors, according to Kevin O'Connor, who founded DoubleClick in the mid-90's, and recently sat down with me for a four-part interview.
The new service is a place to compare a multitude of attributes across 500 categories, from venture capitalists, dog groomers, smartphones to ski resorts. What Kayak did for the travel search-engine space, FindTheBest wants to do with hundreds of categories, said Kevin.
In this interview, Kevin talks about why FindTheBest decided to tackle 500 categories vs one or a few. I also ask him which verticals are working the best and his strategy to work with publishers. In this interview, the first of our four-part series, we also talk about how FindTheBest is different from the first-generation search engines, such as Shopping.com, NexTag and PriceGrabber. We also talk about what kind of larger companies could be a good partnership fit to accelerate FindTheBest's business.
Stay tuned for our upcoming interviews, in which Kevin talks about how he plans to curate the content, distribute the content and how FindTheBest plans to make money.
It's been a while since we've seen new approaches to comparison-shopping engines. But we did see a bunch back in 2005. Just for fun, you might be interested in taking a look back at what I wrote in 2005 about the first wave of comparison-shopping engines.
Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.
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FindTheBest is an objective, socially curated, comparison engine that allows you to choose a topic from hundreds of Comparisons, tailor your search based on dozens of key filters and select the best option based on the factors important to you. Ultimately, FindTheBest allows you to make faster and more informed decisions by allowing you to easily compare all the available options.
You'll find many other comparison sites that may seem similar to FindTheBest. You may have used shopwiki.com to find and compare specific products like HDTVs, or kayak.com to find and compare airline tickets. These sites, however, are different than FindTheBest in two major ways. First, while many of these sites only allow you to search and compare within a narrow range of products or services, FindTheBest allows you to search and compare a wide range of topics from ski resorts to celebrities. Second, many comparison sites are simply driven by affiliate marketing deals "recommending" products or services which pay them the highest referral fees. FindTheBest is unique in that it provides both a broad range of topics to search through as well as an unbiased database free from any hidden advertising. While we may look to advertisers to be able to keep our search free, any advertisements on our site will be clearly marked and targeted to your search.
FindTheBest is organized into nine broad categories ranging from Arts & Entertainment to Sports & Recreation. Each category includes dozens of Comparisons-from Aquariums and Nutrition Charts to Surf Spots and Zoos. Each Comparison consists of a variety of related listings, and each listing can be sorted through numerous key filters.
FindTheBest will soon become a collaborative knowledge base allowing you to eventually contribute information by providing and editing your own listings, and posting reviews and ratings. In this way, FindTheBest will ultimately become a place for you to find and share information as well as add your voice to the community.
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