Andrian Holovaty, the founder of web 2.0 startup EveryBlock.com, was profiled in this weekend’s Chicago Tribune along with his fascinating local/neighborhood exploration tool EveryBlock:
The action, though, around EveryBlock.com is hot and heavy. A means of painting a portrait of your own neighborhood by delving into the site’s constantly updated databases-crimes, housing inspections, news stories and many more-it’s got big media companies vying to partner up and the tech community heralding its achievement.
Yet when it began in January, the site staged none of those extravagant Internet launch parties designed to herald its arrival and, one suspects, to let computer geeks impress preternaturally buff singles with all the money their industry attracts.
I’ve used EveryBlock to look at neighborhoods I’ve been interested in moving to – as well as exploring the tool as a means to provide more public transparency into data that has long been held semi-privately by government agencies and related groups.
For those of you in the startup business, the article is well worth reading for some real-life perspective on doing it right – and modestly – and achieving your successes.
