Octopart, The Little Startup That Hung In There

Looking for a transistor or a relay? Or possibly an oscilloscope? More than likely you'll end up at Octopart, a vintage Y Combinator startup that launched in 2007. The company is a search engine for electronic parts, allowing users to navigate through a taxonomy of structured stuff, or just do a plain old parts name/number search. Once you find what you're looking for, Octopart will show you a variety of distributors who sell the part and their prices, along with a link to go buy it. Here's the most searched item on the site. The company is small, but growing and profitable. While the company won't disclose revenues, about $10 million a year in commerce flows through their site, they estimate (meaning end purchases at distributors via referrals from them). Octopart generates revenue from those referrals, and through display ads on their site. And it has a great story of how it got here.

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