Unigo: "why didn't I think of that" startup

I'm impressed. A kid has the guts to go out, follow his idea, meet some well-connected folks, sell those folks, get some funding, execute on his idea, and then sell the NYTimes on it.<p>Reminds me of a quote I read from John Mackey, founder/CEO of Whole Foods: "I would say that entrepreneurs are only a step up from panhandlers because you've got to go out and hustle money, and you're mostly selling dreams and enthusiasm."<p>(From a really great/long interview here: <a href="http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/06/former_housemates_john_mackey.html" rel="nofollow">http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/06/former_house...</a>)

Good idea for a startup.... buuut it might be better if their site worked.<p>I tried to register and:<p>Invalid postback or callback argument. Event validation is enabled using &#60;pages enableEventValidation="true"/&#62; in configuration or &#60;%@ Page EnableEventValidation="true" %&#62; in a page. For security purposes, this feature verifies that arguments to postback or callback events originate from the server control that originally rendered them. If the data is valid and expected, use the ClientScriptManager.RegisterForEventValidation method in order to register the postback or callback data for validation. System.Web.UI.ClientScriptManager.ValidateEvent(String uniqueId, String argument) +159 System.Web.UI.Control.ValidateEvent(String uniqueID, String eventArgument) +108 System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList.LoadPostData(String postDataKey, NameValueCollection postCollection) +55 System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList.System.Web.UI.IPostBackDataHandler.LoadPostData(String postDataKey, NameValueCollection postCollection) +11 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessPostData(NameValueCollection postData, Boolean fBeforeLoad) +353 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1194

NYTimes has a history of these "All is takes is guts!"-type articles.<p><a href="http://blog.aisleten.com/2008/01/18/build-a-crappy-website-make-a-million-dollars/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.aisleten.com/2008/01/18/build-a-crappy-website-m...</a><p>It takes more than guts, and it's not easy. It just pisses me off to see article after article telling the "I woke up the next day to cash my first million dollar check!" story.<p>To get the real truth about running your startup, forget about all these fairytale fantasies and read Diary of a Failed Startup. That's the true story of what you face.<p><a href="http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/</a>

It's definitely a new approach but not a new idea: <a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.collegeconfidential.com/</a><p>This really is a great domain (problem area, not uri) for a wiki though.

"Now Goldman goes to work every day on Park Avenue, in an office with an interior window through which he can keep tabs on his 25 employees"<p>An office on Park Avenue and 25 employees before the idea has even been proven. Madness.

I've asked a ycnews user who was one of six Stanford students who were working together at the start of 2007 to create a startup where students from different colleges would record video tours of their schools, to comment. I think they had applied for Summer Session 2007 funding, but I'm not sure.

There's really nothing new under the sun, but success has as much to do with timing and luck than with skill and perseverance. When I was 17 I founded soc.college.admissions for a related purpose. For those of you who don't remember USENET, think of it as the poor man's web. Mostly text only, and uncontrollable, it was eventually overrun by spammers and eclipsed by the Web. And does anyone remember sixdegrees.com in 1998? It was the first LinkedIn/Facebook site to see major publicity. The not-yet-ready public was horrified at the privacy implications, and it died.

TheU.com pretty much did the same thing -- not sure what happened to them. The site was pretty decent (more so for entertainment purposes) when I was going through the admissions process.

unigo.com has some serious issues on Firefox:<p>If RadComboBox is not initially visible on your ASPX page, you may need to use streamers (the ExternallCallBackPage property) Please, read our online documentation on this problem for details <a href="http://www.telerik.com/help/radcombobox/v2%5FNET2/combo_externalcallbackpage.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telerik.com/help/radcombobox/v2%5FNET2/combo_exte...</a>

how does it make money?