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HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

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Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#71

Post by edibleEnergy »

radicalbyte wrote: post #56
edibleEnergy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback and for checking out our site. We are not targeting end customers directly but hope that at some point it would be a service that a B2C would offer to their customers. It’s really hard to describe our product without being technical but we will revisit it. Any ideas? We are exploring how to run this self hosted, it is entirely possible but we haven't gotten there yet. As for data protection it…

Problem: bug reports are crap. "why rely on obscure text reports when bugreply can show you the problem: live!" "bug reports for the youtube generation" "take the pain out of bug reports - bugreply lets your QA|consultants|users record the steps leading up to their problems" You really need to brainstorm this; first get the value prop clear for various target demographics, then iterate iterate iterate until you can g…

I will definitely follow up with you- thank you for the ideas. I think in an effort to show how different we are from other screenshot and screencast tools we may have gotten too technical in our wording- but we definitely don't want to scare people off! Thanks again!

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#72

Post by snowmaker »

yurivish wrote: post #61
snowmaker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually really think you have something here. I spent some time playing with it, and it's quite addictive. What I like best is that it allows someone with zero artistic ability (like me) to make a piece of artwork that they'd be proud of. That's quite a trick. What are some things you've thought about building on top of it? What have your users been asking for?

Thanks, Jared! Some of the things I've thought about: - Expanding the expressive range. The new app has a "silk eraser" and I have ideas for at least one new type of brush. - Continuous undo (as if it's a movie), or at least more undo levels. - Making a better Alchemy: http://al.chemy.org/ - Unifying the experience of the website (2013; JS/Canvas) and the new app (Swift/Metal) - The website lets you share replays of…

It sounds like you have engaged users who are giving you useful feedback.

I like the idea of a gallery - that will help you grow as people show off their work. You don't necessarily need live replays to do it - you could start with static and add those later.

One thing to think about is how you can make it grow more. Your users won't generally bring you growth ideas, but it's important to always be thinking about how to get more users.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#73

Post by spicavigo »

snowmaker wrote: post #47
spicavigo wrote: post #28

Hi Jared and Trevor, I created https://codebunk.com . Its an Online Interviewing Tool for developers. Its the best tool out there. It provides code execution in 23 languages, collaborative editor, REPL shells, AV Text chat, Teams, Question banks and a lot more. Its cash flow positive and has some of the coolest clients. However, the rate at which it acquires new customers is pretty low (~3/month). I have exhausted (o…

It sounds like you've tried PR and social media, but haven't tried any other channels. If you've made something people want, and it sounds like you have, it's time to invest in getting customers. A good rule of thumb is that you should spend 50% of your time working on your product and 50% of your time getting customers. I have a feeling that's higher than what you're currently doing. There are a number of distributi…

Thanks! That seems like a good playbook. I will start simultaneously on a couple of those.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#74

Post by tlb »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #13

Hi, thank you both for doing this. I've been working on a project on and off for about two years now which I finally launched as a beta last year. It's called CloudSploit ( https://cloudsploit.com ) and is a service designed to allow users to continuously scan their AWS accounts for vulnerabilities (account-level risks that could lead to a compromise). AWS has some security products, and their are certainly competito…

Don't buy ads. Your product should spread by word of mouth, since developers know lots of other developers. The viral message (from current customer to potential customer) would be something like: "I got a scan from Cloudsploit and they found like 4 remote exploits in my AWS. You should have them check your infrastructure." Hearing that from a friend would be more powerful than any number of Twitter ads.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#75

Post by spicavigo »

zodiac wrote: post #53
spicavigo wrote: post #28

Hi Jared and Trevor, I created https://codebunk.com . Its an Online Interviewing Tool for developers. Its the best tool out there. It provides code execution in 23 languages, collaborative editor, REPL shells, AV Text chat, Teams, Question banks and a lot more. Its cash flow positive and has some of the coolest clients. However, the rate at which it acquires new customers is pretty low (~3/month). I have exhausted (o…

Hey, a lot of companies I interview with use coderpad, which I'm guessing you're competing with. It does seem like your product has more features than them, but my guess is that it is not enough of an improvement to make companies already using another online interviewing tool to switch to yours, especially if they have no problems with their existing tool (ie your features are just nice to have). Also, I like coderp…

Not yet. Do you think that I should? I mean, in terms of potential return.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#76

Post by snowmaker »

zodiac wrote: post #40

Hi Jared and Trevor, I'm building games and tools for language learning. While talking to users, I asked them what language learning tools they wished existed when they were studying in the past. A lot of them talked about a tool that lets them talk to native speakers of their target language online. I know I should build something users want, but there are plenty of tools that let you do this (including a YC company…

If there are plenty of tools which do this (and you're right, I think there are), but there are still a lot of people who want them but aren't using them, then the existing companies are missing something. It could be that the existing products don't work in quite the right way; sometimes small differences are important. Or it could be that the companies haven't figured out the right way to reach customers.

When users tell you this, do you show them the existing products you know of? If your hypothesis is right that the space is saturated, then they should start using them right away. But I suspect that they won't, which means that there's more left to be done.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#77

Post by edibleEnergy »

tlb wrote: post #67
edibleEnergy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of user you’re describing isn’t our focus right now and I agree it would be hard to get a user of a website such as Facebook or Twitter to go through all those steps. We think potential users can be broken down into different groups. The first group would be people within the same organization (testers, design, other devs, marketing, support, etc). In that scenario, the company would subscribe to our service…

It'd be worth trying to sell to website testing/QA as a service companies, like https://www.usertesting.com/ . If they saw value in offering your better bug reports to their customers, it'd get you a lot of business fast.

We were contacted by a company like that with thousands of users and they expressed some interest in using or licensing our product. Initially I thought that would be too big of an undertaking for beta testing since we aren’t certain of our costs but now I’m rethinking it. I'm also not sure how we'd transition from free beta testing to a paid service in a situation like that. Thanks for the idea though, I’m definitely going to explore that further.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#78

Post by jaz46 »

yurivish wrote: post #5

Hi Trevor and Jared, http://weavesilk.com is a side project of mine for many years. I put out a brand new version of the iOS app this month and am thinking about developing it further but find it very hard to decide what direction to go. The website is popular, and people love Silk, but for different reasons: some find it relaxing and meditative, others like that it closes the gap between their artistic ability and t…

Holy crap this is so much fun! You're definitely onto something pretty sweet here.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#79

Post by snowmaker »

workerdee wrote: post #22

Hello, I have a little Etsy shop and was wondering how to get technical people’s attention. How do you find gifts for female family and friends (when they don’t already have something in mind)? As for the shop itself, the photographs need improvement – I set up a small lighted space on my kitchen counter and am working on this. Shop: http://zebbles.etsy.com

I never know what to get female family and friends! Particularly when it comes to things like jewelry, and I'm pretty sure many guys have the same problem.

Maybe you could start a blog offering gift advice for clueless techies, or even become a gift concierge, offering to help individuals find the perfect gift for a small fee.

Re: HN Office Hours with Jared Friedman and Trevor Blackwell

#80

Post by snowmaker »

feedbackhotline wrote: post #23

Jared and Trevor, Feedback Hotline (feedbackhotline.com) is the easiest way for businesses to collect feedback. We provide the hotline for free. We intend to make money through data. We think we need to prove three things to succeed: 1. Businesses/organizations will join 2. People will send a lot of feedback 3. We can monetize this feedback We are currently optimizing for 1, focusing on small businesses. We believe f…

That's right. Your customers are the businesses who will adopt this. The people who send feedback are also important, but they're not your direct customers, and you have to start with businesses before you get them.

I see some businesses on your site. Are these all actual customers? How are they using it, and what do they think of it so far?

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