Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#1

Post by kingsidharth » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:25 PM UTC

About an year ago me and utkarshkukreti set out to create an online network for entrepreneurial people. Just where you could share ideas, ask question and mark progress of your startup in mile-stones and all.

The MVP we ended-up building is live at http://besperk.com . We got decent enough traction in earlier days. It did face some problems - there were no email notifs at first, then there were just too many of them. We tried hard keeping up with them.

But it just didn't work out. We burned-out and the traffic slowly died. But it wasn't all useless; looking back, it's clear, we did solve some problems. Biggest one of them - UX of online forums.

Now we have 4 options:

1. Open Source the Code. It's sorta amatuer but some people might be interested in using / developing it.

2. Sell hosted forums. Blog owners and other people interested? Will you be interested?

3. Get other interested devs on board (It's sorta too much on one Rails dev) and continue to work in this direction.

4. Sell everything.

Would like to hear from you guys. Ideas from HN always help :)

Off to wiser people out there:

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#2

Post by adivik2000 » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:36 PM UTC

Well document and Open Source it.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#3

Post by aymeric » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:40 PM UTC

adivik2000 wrote: post #2

Well document and Open Source it.

Why should he do that? Could you detail your answer a bit?

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#4

Post by tomcreighton » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:40 PM UTC

Have you thought about relaunching after a redesign? What you just outlined as the idea behind the site sounds great... so I visited the site and was hit with off-putting text (the 'voice' of the site doesn't work for me), spelling errors and no clear indication what the site was FOR.

So: idea really good (to my mind), execution: needs some polish.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#5

Post by evolution » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:42 PM UTC

I think you can try out forum as service. We've been servicing our clients for 2 years and had faced need of this. Well integrated under custom domain, white labeled and customized forums are something that I won't mind paying for.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#6

Post by kingsidharth » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

tomcreighton wrote: post #4

Have you thought about relaunching after a redesign? What you just outlined as the idea behind the site sounds great... so I visited the site and was hit with off-putting text (the 'voice' of the site doesn't work for me), spelling errors and no clear indication what the site was FOR. So: idea really good (to my mind), execution: needs some polish.

Please ignore the front page for now. It was some crazy test we did for some purpose. Did you sing-in and check it?

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#7

Post by buro9 » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:49 PM UTC

evolution wrote: post #5

I think you can try out forum as service. We've been servicing our clients for 2 years and had faced need of this. Well integrated under custom domain, white labeled and customized forums are something that I won't mind paying for.

Fully white label? As in... an API you can use?

In which case, Disqus.

Or just comments on things?

In which case, Disqus.

Also, if you're doing forums as SaaS you really need to think about the kind of anti-spam, moderation and admin tools that you're going to provide.

I don't know if you've ever seen the admin section of vBulletin, but there's a reason why vBulletin is so widely used and it's not to do with the front-end.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#8

Post by macavity23 » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #6

tomcreighton wrote: post #4

Have you thought about relaunching after a redesign? What you just outlined as the idea behind the site sounds great... so I visited the site and was hit with off-putting text (the 'voice' of the site doesn't work for me), spelling errors and no clear indication what the site was FOR. So: idea really good (to my mind), execution: needs some polish.

Please ignore the front page for now. It was some crazy test we did for some purpose. Did you sing-in and check it?

Why are you doing 'crazy tests' on your live front page? You should have a staging site for that.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#9

Post by tomcreighton » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #6

tomcreighton wrote: post #4

Have you thought about relaunching after a redesign? What you just outlined as the idea behind the site sounds great... so I visited the site and was hit with off-putting text (the 'voice' of the site doesn't work for me), spelling errors and no clear indication what the site was FOR. So: idea really good (to my mind), execution: needs some polish.

Please ignore the front page for now. It was some crazy test we did for some purpose. Did you sing-in and check it?

I did, and I maintain that the idea is good, and parts of the design are really well-realized, but it still needs some attention.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#10

Post by kokey » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 2:51 PM UTC

evolution wrote: post #5

I think you can try out forum as service. We've been servicing our clients for 2 years and had faced need of this. Well integrated under custom domain, white labeled and customized forums are something that I won't mind paying for.

I also think there's space in the market for a strong forum engine service, while labelled. Something that's search engine friendly and maybe something to help people replace their php forums with.