Ask HN: Review my investment website startup, StockYoyo.com

I also saw your demo at the HNDC meetup last night - nice job, and kudos for being brave enough to get up in front of a room full of critics.

Some feedback:

- Without seeing the demo, I'm not sure I would easily get what the site is about from a quick glance at the home page. You have some nice wording -- "A free and enjoyable way to learn about investing" -- but it's part of a scrolling animation and doesn't jump out at you. I also don't see the word "game" anywhere on the front page. It seems like your two key themes are "fun" and "learning" and those don't quite stand out enough.

- The actual game mechanics are a little confusing - why would users actually care about being the "executive" of a company? As an investor, I might care about learning more, or being exposed to good advice, but to assume that people will be motivated to win a game just because you created it seems like an overreach.

- Why would StockYoyo picks be better than one of the million other investing sites out there? For that reason, why would it be better than the ultimate "wisdom of crowds" valuation -- the market itself?

I could imagine that one of the numerous self-managed investment sites out there would benefit from having a compelling, easy to use game where aspiring investors could learn but then also easily transfer their picks into real money when they are ready. I'm thinking of the online poker model -- a .net site to learn with play money, a .com to use the real stuff. There might be some significant regulatory hoops to jump through to get this working but I can see real potential there.

As a concept I like it, and I think your implementation looks good. However the level of commentary in the Cooperative insight is really weak, bordering on completely useless. I'm not sure how to solve that, but to me that is something that instantly jumps out and greatly lowers my impression of the whole site. I realize that it is early days and you don't have many comments to chose from, but perhaps some tough curating of the comments you display is still in order.

Why would StockYoyo picks be better than one of the million other investing sites out there? ... My impression is the real value of this website is play versus plan. Other sites are more heavy and technical but this one is more light and fun.

Caught the presentation at HNDC last night; very good UI/UX and a decent idea to boot

And, really, since your competition is The Motley Fool CAPS system, and you are several years behind them, you would be wise to take a look at how they've implemented their system to be conducive to learning about investing to help yourself differentiate. Off the bat, I can name several things:

- their "outperform"/"underperform" ratings are not absolute, but relative to S&P 500

- they provide easy access to SEC filings (quarterly and annual financial reports, etc), along with statistics (this is important if your goal is to encourage anything resembling security analysis)

- they have a wiki dedicated to translating financial jargon

- they periodically write articles introducing beginners to differing financial topics, such as fixed income investment, investing for retirement, investment philosophy, etc (i'll purposefully avoid commenting on the quality of any of their articles)

- they have a comprehensive stock screener (with a bug or two, in my experience, but still fairly worthwhile)