Official Scoutle Blog

Today a video-interview came online with Scoutle Founder Godfried van Loo at the Dutch website nuzakelijk.nl

To watch, go to:

Bedrijven van NU : Scoutle

Two months already… Time goes fast. Scoutle made it to an Alexa Rank of 156,354 which I hope to bring under 80,000 during the next month. I don’t expect many updates on the current version of Scoutle… I use all my time for the new version.

I can promise you this will be a huge difference! I have received many feedback from current users and in two months, I also collect a lot of information from Google Analytics and other statistics, like Crazyegg click stream data. The new version is completely different which will mark an important moment again in the Scoutle history.

This second month has it’s own cool thing. I welcome many different languages now. Yesterday, the first user from Latvia joined. Of course, this user is not likely to be matched as long as more Latvian users stay away. I will therefor try to find people that can help me translate the language table to different languages so that Scoutle can be used be people that may not know either English or Dutch.

So I hope to double the amount of users the coming month and once the second version of Scoutle comes online… I hope to double every month again!

Although from the outside nothing may seem different, today is a special day for both Scoutle as well as for myself. After 1,5 years working full-time on Scoutle, shaping the idea followed by developing, the money has simply run out. Besides, I didn’t know Scoutle would grow this big in such a short period of time.

About one week after launching Scoutle, May 8th, I started with a new, full-time job at Springer (English | Dutch). I was given a great opportunity there and am still very grateful. However, after the TechCrunch post, Scoutle took a huge jump and I can tell you this… You can’t have a full-time job when your startup has a speedy start.

I was working from 09-17 at Springer, rushed home and continued my day from 19-01 to work on Scoutle, knowing that some things had to wait till the next evening. There are a lot of things you need to fix as soon as possible in the first weeks after launching, even things you thought were just 100% right. As you can imagine, these kind of working hours are not something one can keep up… The weekends were even more crazy. At a certain point, I just didn’t want to answer the phone anymore… There are way to little hours in one day.

But well… After two weeks, I resigned but promised to stay until the end of June. I left with good understanding, which of course also is something valuable. So now, July 1st, I can focus myself on Scoutle again, 100%. Which is a great relief and helps me get a little more sleep as well. I’ve planned and had several meetings already, throughout the country because it is about time a final business model gets written. I have been contacted by and met several interested, and interesting, people that offered me to help and with help, I mean serious business. This I take very seriously because now it’s time to bring Scoutle to the next level… Let’s say, 100.000 users. And if possible, by the end of this year.

I am now working on a complete new version of Scoutle, having new features but also, a complete new design to help people understand and start using Scoutle quicker and easier. Also, this will help getting a team together. the me has to become we soon, these things can’t be done on your own.

So… serious business but I can’t wait to get started with it. I hope to get together a team soon, find some investor(s) and partners and launch the new version of Scoutle… all this, somewhere in the beginning of September. If you still have some suggestions or tips I should think of in the new version… don’t hesitate to contact me.

Yesterday, I had a pitch at the Mediapark Jaarcongres. About 600 people in front of me and on my left, five investors/critics that would ask me some hard questions after my 4 minutes pitch.

My day started at 06.00 meaning I had a great 4 hours of sleep, due to several reason. We had a breakfast session with one of the investors (great opportunity to ask questions) and the congress started around 10.00. I met some people I knew from my former job.
Around 14.00 it was my turn… Having explained Scoutle to mostly about 3 persons at the same time, I was pretty happy with the fact a huge light was blinding my eyes a bit. I could hardly look to crowd and it did actually made me less nervous, although it must still have been clear this wasn’t a daily routine.

The investors couldn’t really say anything since I could not present them a complete business model yet. Fortunately, I had already announced this in my presentation. Although I do have some ideas I still need to research them before I bring them out in the open. But they liked the idea, I received some compliments on being there on my own and having achieved what Scoutle has become already and are curious and interested to know how Scoutle will develop. One of them said my ambition of having 100.000 users next year was a bit low. To have that number go up, I would really need a bigger team and some investments of course but it is good to know an investor would like to hear more. They also stated that it is a bit hard to understand how it works and the website is not able to answer to this in a short period of time. I know this, I do need to work on it. I can’t just say “If you try it, you will understand it.” even though Scoutle is free to use.

But, they concluded with enthusiasm and one said to contact me later on and kept his promise.

After the presentation, people actually came to me and offered me help, free hosting and partnerships and such but also some just came to compliment me or talk about business models and their thoughts. Funny part was also I could see that during the questioning, new users registered! There were a lot of laptops with Internet in the room.

Hopefully, more press will write something about Scoutle in the near future. I hope printed press, like newspapers and magazines would. This will bring Scoutle over to those that may not read the digital versions.

Now, one day later, I have also received emails from other blog-related websites that want me to come over and see if partnerships can be arranged. All that, from just 4 minutes and a presentation.

Scoutle is a startup, developed by Godfried van Loo. Starting up a startup and working hard to make it a success has been a dream for many years. After about a year of thinking, experimenting, starting over, developing and growing the idea… Scoutle came online May 8th, 2008. I will also write back in history and will put the publishing date on dates in history to make it easier to follow.

In this blog I will write my experience. It’s not a manual or guide how to startup your own startup but I hope to inspire you to start for yourself.

Don’t hesitate to comment and ask questions. I will be welcome to answer them!