I’ve been researching on platforms to host MongoDB databases. The next table compares the three services I found so far:

This information is bound to suffer changes, since some of these services are still in beta. Even MongoDB is changing as the 10gen team is releasing new features. Let’s see also if other players also enter this market. I’m really looking forward to not having to administer a database ever again.

I’ve joined LeanTalk a month ago. It’s a community where a specific topic about lean startups is discussed for 24 hours only, like “How do you know what a good metric value is?”. New topics are suggested and up-voted by the members. To get in you have to apply. There’s some really insightful advices there from time to time.

Note: The lean theme is becoming a bit hyped. There’s now services, consultants and everything dedicated to lean startups. But I believe the underlying principles are still important, like costumer development and measuring every assumption.

Lately, many curation products have been announced. Scoble mentioned Curated.by, Storify, Keepstream and Bag The Web. More recently, Robin Good did a really thorough analysis, including comparison tables, covering about 20 tools. And here we are, developing a product to help professionals aggregate content. Should we give up now and go home?

Not really. These are the reasons we really want to push forward with Bundlr:

There are many problems to tackle

Scoble started with 7 needs. Now Robin added more 25! And there are probably more with further research. The thing is, content curation is becoming a term too broad to define a single tool. Most out there are trying to solve only a set of those needs, targeting specific niches. And so is Bundlr. We’re focusing on making content aggregation simple and useful. (We already found that curation isn’t the best term to explain Bundlr to potential costumers.)

It’s a big market and no tool has yet achieved significant adoption

And I don’t expect one to become a standart, like some asked. The market for information professionals is large and heterogeneous, even if you count only professional bloggers and journalists. And it’s undeveloped so far.

No proven business model

Advertising on curated pages, sponsored streams, freemium, are some business models being tried out. It still isn’t clear what works best. Therefore, there’s room for innovation.

So, all the news around this market have only incresed our excitement for building Bundlr. But they’re also a warning: that we should focus more on the feeback we’re getting from potential costumers and less on the competition. Now, back to work.

Had a great time at FOWA London. It was a great oportunity to present Bundlr to new people and to do more general networking. We had the chance to talk with people like Josh Williams, Ryan Singer and Jason Calacanis, and profit from their valuable feedback. The venue was great and, surprisingly (it’s England after all), also the food.

While I’m catching up with the videos of the talks I didn’t attend, TEDxCoimbra is already this Saturday. If you’re also going, don’t forget to say hi :)