In the news

  • New York Isn't Silicon Valley. That's Why They Like It.

    "Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake are involved in multiple tech ventures, like Hunch, which helps people make decisions, like what kind of digital camera to buy or what kinds of dishes to make with Thanksgiving leftovers. They've placed themselves as close as possible to the center of the New York tech reboot."

  • The Free Thinker: Caterina Fake of Hunch

    "Caterina Fake gets the most done when she goes where her curiosity and energy take her. Fake's new start-up is Hunch, a website in New York City that takes user input to make recommendations on thousands of subjects."

  • Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake Named as Top 25 Angels in Tech

    "Chris Dixon has been through three stages as an angel investor: he worked at Bessemer Venture Partners, struck out on his own, and then co-founded a seed-stage fund, Founder Collective."

  • Video Interview with Caterina Fake and Chris Dixon

    "Kara Swisher interviews two of the co-founders of Hunch, an online decision-making start-up that uses algorithms and also user-generated questions and answers."

  • amNY special report: New York City's 10 hottest tech startups

    "This startup wants to be your 'smart friend,' the one you go to for advice when you’re in the market for a car, stereo, computer or whatever. It topped more than 1.2 million users before it reached six months old, and is compiling a useful database on consumer behavior."

  • Vanguard 2010: 17 People Who are Changing the World

    "Last June, [Caterina Fake] launched Hunch.com, a site that uses collective knowledge systems to create decision trees aimed to help users make decisions based on their interests. 'I think the supreme success in life is in not being able to distinguish between work and play, when you’d do whatever you were doing even if nobody paid you to do it,' Fake says."

  • Hunch.com checks out healthy at six months

    "Hunch.com, introduced to us in an early version last March, has demonstrated a growing user base and ever-better utility to go along with its fun-to-use design work. ...Since it went fully public just six months ago, Hunch has grown explosively."

  • The Insurgents of 2010: The 50+ People Remaking New York

    ..."Mr. Dixon wants to help shape New York into the country's tech capital. [Chris says] 'We think the East Coast is poised for a technology revival and we hope to be part of it. We like products and building stuff.'"

  • The 2009 Silicon Alley 100

    "Chris and Caterina (former co-founder of Flickr) launched Hunch, a decision-making helper, in June. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales joined their board in December. Chris also invested in several startups, including art e-commerce site 20x200; launched a new investment vehicle called Founder Collective; and his blog became a must-read among the startup and venture capital set."

  • My Hunch Is As Good As Jimmy Wales' Hunch

    "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has joined the board of directors of Hunch. ...Wales' reasons [for joining] are pretty similar to why Hunch is one of my favorite startups. At its very core, Hunch is a decision engine, but one that's more sophisticated when compared to services such as Aardvark that offer answers to specific problems in a binary way."

  • The World's Most Intriguing Startups

    "Hunch [is] a Web site that uses the experiences of others to help people make decisions. ... Type in "What magazine should I subscribe to?" for example, and Hunch will provide answers by matching responses from users with similar preferences."

  • Hunch Confirms that Liberals Enjoy Vegetables, Conservatives Like Fried Chicken

    "Images of liberals as vegetarian, multi-grain-bread-loving hippies and conservatives as fried-chicken-idolizing McDonald's lovers are more than just stereotypes--they're based on real trends, according to Hunch's new "How Food Preferences Vary by Ideology" report."

  • Birthers Rarely Leave U.S., Less Likely to Vote: Hunch Profile

    "Hunch, a new website that helps people make decisions...found some interesting stuff when they crunched the numbers on site users who described themselves as Birthers."

  • Il Messaggero

    Caterina...Challenges the Giants of the Web

    "The indefatigable adventurer [Caterina] has embarked on a new adventure, Hunch. With 'Community and Creativity' as her motto, she and her colleagues are building their business empire."

  • Caterina Fake has a Hunch

    "Hunch seeks to combine the insight of large groups of people (often dubbed the "wisdom of the crowd") with a dab of artificial intelligence...The service manages to be both serious and playful, smart and frivolous, ready to discuss everything from technology to art."

  • Forget Bing, Flickr co-founder's new site, Hunch, is a true decision engine

    "Hunch could be just your thing. Microsoft may be calling its new search site, Bing.com, a "decision engine," but [Hunch] seems to have cornered the market on life's biggest quandaries. Hunch promises to get to know you - based on your answers to questions and how you use the site - and customizes answers to better suit your personality and interests."

  • Hunch: The Search for Better Search

    "Hunch is the latest of several decision-making sites...designed to shake up a Web-search landscape that has long been dominated by keyword queries. The sites...aim to do what Google and other keyword-based search engines have trouble doing: delivering results tailored to specific human situations and problems without sending users to many different sites on the Internet."

  • 'Hunch' Web site will make decisions for you

    "Stumped on a tough decision? Hunch...will consider your quandary by getting to know you, asking you a series of questions and then spitting out three decisions. [Caterina Fake] created Hunch not because people need help with emotional decisions but because it's too tough to find smart information online."

  • Hunch: A Real Decision Engine

    "Much like Wikipedia, Hunch gets smarter as more people use it. Hunch is a new concept...While there’s an obvious similarity to question-and-answer sites, Hunch is a very different experience."

  • Hunch Launches, Reinvents How You Make Decisions

    "When we last used Hunch, we were impressed by its accuracy and the breadth of content it covered. Now, we’re simply astounded. I thought of practically every question I could really want to ask, and Hunch had a decision tree to help me resolve my doubts. More than Bing or Simon, Hunch is a full-featured decision engine that is tough not to use once you get into the swing of it."

  • Flickr Co-Founder’s New Hunch

    "Decisions, decisions. Next week, a new site will be aiming to help you make them. Hunch...lists topics ranging from electronics to relationships that users can search or browse. Each topic lists questions that users click multiple-choice answers to arrive at a decision."

  • Caterina Fake's Hunch.com, launching Monday, is already redefining 'decision engine'

    "With much pomp and circumstance, Microsoft is trumpeting the notion of a "decision engine" -- an online service that helps users make the right choice on a variety of lifestyle and purchasing questions. That description might loosely apply to Bing's approach to Web search, but it fits Hunch -- which launches Monday -- to a tee."

  • The Robot Made Me Do It: Comparing Three New Cyborg Q&A Services

    "The user experience is very structured but it's also a lot of fun. You could call this a profile-driven, crowd-built recommendation system. ...You'll probably want to go back...and you'll probably want to clap your hands and smile each time you do. "

  • Hunch Borrows a Cue from Pandora but for Answering Your Deepest Questions

    "Hunch definitely has a lot to offer, and its clean, sensible design makes it a breeze to use. As its users contribute more information, Hunch should become more robust, and part of what's exciting and fascinating about community-oriented sites is that it's not always clear what they're going to become."

  • Online Oracle from the Masses

    "Flickr Co-founder Fake has created an exciting platform which takes the old idea of crowdsourcing a step forward, and at the same time builds user trust and has an attractive business model. This should incite envy among other Web 2.0 colleagues...[who] can only dream of such a complete package."

  • Hunch: The Decision Maker You Were Waiting For?

    "Hunch is fun. At first, you'll probably enjoy browsing through the various topics and maybe even creating some of your own. But after a while...you'll gravitate to the more serious topics to help you make decisions. Hunch provides a unique alternative to answers services from Yahoo or Mahalo...It could become the "go-to" answer service on the Web with more user involvement."

  • Does Hunch Have All the Answers?

    "It’s a great idea that combines the crowd-sourced nature of Wikipedia with services like Yahoo Answers. ...I’m optimistic about Hunch...many of the questions and resulting decisions I found were genuinely helpful."

  • After trying it out I have a good feeling about Hunch

    "I’ve followed my way through dozens of [Hunch's] questions already, and I’ve been happy with the results. Maybe Hunch will become the ultimate tool for making product purchasing decisions. Or maybe it will be the way users figure out if they should see a doctor about a problem. Or maybe both."

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