Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 164 posts

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#21

Post by randomsearch »

user_0001 wrote: post #12

Good luck, I used to live in the NE of England (hence why this is the first Show HN I have actually looked at. Maybe is all the front page HN traffic (or my slow connection). But after 30 seconds of waiting for the page to load, I was greeted with a..... blank page. sigh maybe it was a timeout, or maybe I really must allow JS to see anything on the page. Maybe this is just me, this annoys me and if a site won't displ…

> Yes it is the spawn of the devil and all marketeers should kill themselves, but you have mouths to feed, morals go out the window.

I understand the sentiment, but really -- is it impossible to market something without being immoral? I think it is. Lots of startups have provided great products that help people get their work done or make their lives easier. Marketing can just be the process of letting those people know that the product exists, and why it's useful, right? Not all marketing involves brainwashing kids into buying fast food, etc.

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#22

Post by hugs »

evbots wrote: post #14
EpicDavi wrote: post #6

Just a note: if you go to http://openloopz.com (no "www") it displays "Heroku | No such app". I'm guessing you mean to redirect to the "www" subdomain.

yeah...heroku is weird about naked domains. you need to use a DNS provider like DNSimple to set up your domain correctly with Heroku. Then your users will be able to drop the "www". This worked for my side project, konkourse.com. References: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains .

Are naked domains generally considered "something you shouldn't do" these days?

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#23

Post by [deleted] »

evbots wrote: post #14
EpicDavi wrote: post #6

Just a note: if you go to http://openloopz.com (no "www") it displays "Heroku | No such app". I'm guessing you mean to redirect to the "www" subdomain.

yeah...heroku is weird about naked domains. you need to use a DNS provider like DNSimple to set up your domain correctly with Heroku. Then your users will be able to drop the "www". This worked for my side project, konkourse.com. References: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains .

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#24

Post by [deleted] »

hugs wrote: post #22
evbots wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah...heroku is weird about naked domains. you need to use a DNS provider like DNSimple to set up your domain correctly with Heroku. Then your users will be able to drop the "www". This worked for my side project, konkourse.com. References: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains .

Are naked domains generally considered "something you shouldn't do" these days?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#25

Post by smcl »

slamus wrote: post #19
caidan wrote: post #13

Unfiltered First impressions: Your medium article is 50X better than your website. Your website is useless for promoting your product. I don't like the headline font for your site, the lack of screenshots, basically the lack of focus on a product that will live or die on its usability and interface. I'm not a fan of the Z in openloopz. Combined with the comic sansy looking headline font it doesn't feel polished. The…

Harsh, but pretty good feedback.

I hope whenever I submit something to HN that 1) someone cares enough to be this critical\constructive and 2) I am adult enough not to take it on the chin and not get sulky. I'm most worried about #2

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#26

Post by ricardolopes »

Looking at that page it's hard to understand what the product is about, or why should I care. Above the fold I can read:

"Keep your friends and colleagues in the loop!" "Every day, more and more people are relying on OpenLoopz to communicate better and get things done quicker."

Which doesn't tell me what the product is or does. Reading the why section:

"ACCESS AND SHARE ALL YOUR CONTENT IN ONE PLACE" "IMPROVE COMMUNICATION WITH FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES" "INTEGRATE WITH YOUR FAVOURITE APPS" "ULTIMATE CONTROL OVER YOUR DATA"

I continue to have no clue about what the product is. I just know that I can integrate it with apps, control its data, etc.

So my suggestion is to focus more on the copy of that page. What is the product, at its core, what does it do and why should I care?

Good luck with it (sorry if this comment sounds too negative, I'm not trying to attack, just to provide what I think is valuable feedback for improvements).

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#27

Post by tixocloud »

unltd wrote: post #11

the loopz seems to be a cool concept. Still I'm not sure what problem you are solving:the website doesnt help me to understand anything and only the blog post helped. btw I'm in a similar situation : 34 with 2 kids + one on the way and I'm almost out of money after investing on my 2nd startup. You shouldn't see this as a desperate situation but as a challenge with an opportunity to focus on what really matters ( in y…

Would you be interested in connecting? I'm looking to connect with entrepreneurs with families who are still trying to make it all happen.

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#28

Post by leftnode »

I'll come out with a contrarian point of view: I think you're wasting your time and certainly your money.

To have invested your life savings into this app which, uh, is really hard to determine what it does seems silly to me - especially since you have a family to care for.

Slack Meets GitHub Issues? Doesn't Slack already meet GitHub issues in that it integrates with GitHub fine?

The fact that you need a very long blog post to explain exactly what this does should be a warning sign that it's unfocused and released too late.

"It can help you manage everything from todo items to chat messages to blog posts to photos to fully-fledged projects, photo albums and even mini social networks! Really, the type of content you create is completely up to you."

That sounds like a nightmare to me, now I have to invest a lot of time to figure out exactly how this thing works? Start small, focused, make one small thing that does one thing well. Release it quickly, try to get a few people using it (hopefully paying for it) and gather some of their feedback. Find out how they're using it and what their pain points are. Grow from there.

I know you said opportunities where you live are few and far between, and you clearly have the skills, why can't you build a production ready application at an established company?

Finally, I'm being overly critical because I've been in a similar situation before - you spend months building something, release it, and argh! why aren't people coming? It's frustrating, I know, but your skills are better put to use elsewhere.

Re: Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

#29

Post by simonw »

"If you build it, they will come" just doesn't work for startups. Your first 100 users will be won painfully, one at a time.

Think of your first public launch as the start of the development process, not the end. You need to track down people who need what you've built (or need something similar), talk to them in person, listen to their problems and make sure your product solves them.

If you can convince 100 people to try your product and a decent proportion of them turn into daily active users, you're onto something special. If you can't do that, keep iterating or find a new problem to solve.

Post reply on HN