Santa Fe first to test new search site

Yellcast aims to connect local businesses with consumers

Startup launches Yellcast that aims to connect businesses and consumers.

Santa Fe has been chosen by a new Silicon Valley startup as the place to shape what it hopes will be a buyer-centered search engine that connects consumers with local merchants.

The idea of Yellcast might sound familiar, but the fact that its goal is to focus on local merchants and products in a specific community makes it different than Google or Yelp or national search engines where large companies with the most hits often monopolize the internet pages.

Yellcast is more like a personal yellow pages delivered to your computer where merchants can update their listings with photos, products, offers and seasonal specials as often as necessary, and shoppers can engage when they are ready to look for products and services.

The project is still what its founders and designers call an “early stage application,” and that’s where Santa Fe enters the picture.

“This is our first market, this is our test market,” said Peter Negulescu, head of operations and partnerships for Yellcast, who brings experience from both Excite and AOL. “We want to launch in a real market where local matters.”

Santa Fe’s economy not only has a solid base of locally owned businesses, but a consumer base that values local shopping. So it became the ideal city for the company to try out Yellcast, then make changes and improvements before bringing it to other markets.

And one of the startup’s founders, Bill Foster, also lives in Santa Fe and has been following the development of the high-speed fiber internet connection the city has been developing at the Santa Fe Railyard. Foster was one of the pioneers at Excite and is co-founder of Yellcast along with Venkat Ganesan, an electrical engineer who has been involved in several startups.

Foster said many small businesses don’t have the time or expertise to develop a full website and maintain it. Yet having an online strategy is essential even for small businesses.

“This levels the playing field for that plumber who doesn’t have a website,” Foster said.

The other thing Yellcast promises

is confidentiality of search information. Unlike major search engines that immediately sell your data to private companies that in turn push what can be annoying advertisements months later, Yellcast said the information is not stored or repackaged.

The site works like a lot of search engines: Consumers enter the type of business they are looking for and the location. From there, a string of options come up — with information pulled from phone numbers, advertisements and business websites.

Then the shopper clicks on the businesses they want to contact and fills in a box stating their specific interest.

The site then sends the information to the vendors via email or text message, but keeps the contact information anonymous until the consumer agrees to hear back.

Yellcast makes its money from the business when it agrees to get back to the potential customer — and each of those contacts costs $5.

But the charge is paid just once. So if a dog-walking business connects with a customer who ends up using the service weekly, it only pays for that initial contact. After that, Yellcast basically goes away; no information is saved or repackaged.

That $5 fee is being waived for the initial test period in Santa Fe while the company looks to proves its idea is ready for other markets.

Registering a business on the site also is free, but even those that do not register are included in the first dump of search results, because those contacts are drawn from existing web sources such as phone books, business sites and company websites

As with any new launch, some of the issues involve clearing away the clutter. A search for “movers” in Santa Fe brings the top result of a Pak Mail business, while a search for “moving companies” has a better return for those who are selling a home and might have to transport a lot of belongings.

Likewise, a search for “newspapers” brings up not just publications such as The New Mexican but places that sell newspapers, such as La Fonda on the Plaza, and a Santa Fe-based firm that specializes in buying and selling them.

“During the Santa Fe communitywide beta test period, all connections are free. Once the beta period is over, the cost will be $5 per response,” said Kate Greer, a Stanford University graduate who is head of product development for the company.

So far, Yellcast has met with business leaders in Santa Fe and talked with both the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic chamber, and the Rotary Club. It also announced its launch at the city’s bizMIX event last week at Yares Art Project in the Baca Street Railyard, where dozens of business owners and startup entrepreneurs were able to see the product in action.

For more information, go to yellcast.com.

Yellcast, a new search engine that connects people with local vendors and helps build local business connections, unveils its product at the city’s bizMIX event last week at Yares Art Project in the Baca Street Railyard.

With Yellcast, merchants can update their listings with photos, products, offers and seasonal specials as often as necessary, and shoppers can engage when they are ready to look for products and services.