Welcome to the space guys, it looks like a great product, I've signed up for the beta and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. What follows is by no means meant as a slight on the creators of the product, it looks like they've done a sterling job and I wish them every success.
I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality) http://geckoboard.com into private beta a little over a month ago and have been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the notion that you're swimming against the tide.
It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.
This is my experience as well with Active Interview. We've been around for about a year, and I even personally pitched our working product with paying customers to PG at SXSW in March. He shot it down immediately. But yet, Hirehive gets front page Techcrunch treatment just a few weeks ago. We're not in the valley and didn't go the YC route either.
But in the end while I think there is an initial marketing benefit, it still comes down to how hard you scrap and acquire customers in the long run.
I think for most of the coverage, TechCrunch is more interested in the fact that the company is backed by Y-Combainator than the product or idea. There's tons of great products, companies and ideas that just aren't sexy enough for a page view driven news site.
I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality) http://geckoboard.com into private beta a little over a month ago and have been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the notion that you're swimming against the tide.
It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.