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

My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 76 posts

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#41

Post by timelinex »

citizenkeys wrote: post #16
timelinex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, what is it sustainable competitive advantage? How do you plan on getting traction? What are the legal implications? How much have you personally invested both in terms of time and money into this project? What previous projects have you completed? Can you get a friend to co-found this with you? Show us something that would indicate you punch above your weight class, eg Academics, Social, Hacking.

Sustainable competitive advantage is that we don't incur the costs of bandwidth or storage. Videos are stored on any other site on the Internet. Another advantage involves some API possibilities. Traction is people creating lists. Yes, the ycombinator list got 3000 uniques a day. But ANYBODY can create a very particular list of videos that draws that many uniques or more. More traffic equals more traction. I have inv…

"Twenty years of real-world experience in various technology-related jobs." It is worrying that you don't have anything to show after such a long time period. Well, all i can say all the best.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#42

Post by citizenkeys »

bfung wrote: post #25
citizenkeys wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WikiTorrents doesn't really have much to do with bittorrent. It's an evolving idea. The idea is simple: if you can come up with a good, unique, specific list of videos, then you can translate that easy into lots of traffic. Traffic = traction = money.

who gets the money? =P Why wouldn't I just put that list of videos on my own blog to generate revenue? I think my point is that it's not enough to just make something that's already been done (a website of a list of stuff...). Your solution needs to solve someone's problem... say if you had some algorithm that could generate these interesting lists of videos w/o user intervention, or some automation to aggregate vide…

..I agree with your suggestions. But algorithms without user intervention and automatic aggregation sound like version 2.0 features. My idea right now is building something that reliably works, basically a version 1.0 product.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#43

Post by cheald »

citizenkeys wrote: post #40
iampims wrote: post #35

Patrick, 3,000 uniques in a single day doesn’t validate an idea, let alone a business model. The influx of visitors you had is equivalent to the traffic any blog receives when one of its post hits the HN front page. Yet, none of them is complaining about not having gotten a lucrative book deal. That being said, the idea of a torrent of videos is interesting. I’m much less convinced about its implementation. Not to so…

"Working hard on it" requires seed money and somebody that believes that the founder just might be able to pull off the idea. You can't work hard on an idea while you're worrying about food and rent. The point with the ycombinator video page was this: theoretically, if you had 365 lists, each able to generate that much uniques each day, then you'd have over a million uniques a year just with that traffic. A million u…

No offense, but unless you're working 3 jobs to cover food and rent, you can work hard on an idea without seed money.

Stop watching TV (seriously, unplug it and put it in a closet). Stop playing video games (same deal). Stop going out barhopping. Devote your evenings and lunch breaks to working on your idea. You have plenty of time that you're not utilizing. You'll find that most startup founders - especially new entrepreneurs without a previous "win" - don't start by getting seed money thrown at them for an idea. They toil in every spare moment they have to produce a product that is worth investing in.

pg says "Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly" and it's true. You get to bust your ass 24/7, bend over backwards, wear sixteen hats at any given time, and learn at least 3 new major skill sets for no promise of reward, and a better-than-even chance of failure. If you're not willing to give it all you've got, then honestly, entrepreneurship probably isn't for you.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#44

Post by rdamico »

citizenkeys wrote: post #30
krisneuharth wrote: post #28

What if you compiled all of this scraped data and made microsites for each category? I think your idea is interesting but so far the implementation is off-putting. You could do all sorts of organic SEO tweaks and then put some ads on the pages for a revenue stream. Don't give up, but also don't expect people to throw money at you for making something. If that were true, everyone on HN would be millionaires.

I don't consider my goal of 500/week to pursue the idea much the equivalent of people throwing money at me. That's about minimum wage to pursue a technical idea that might payoff big. $500 a week is nothing by silicon valley standards.

Couldn't agree more with krisneuharth. I think many people have posted on this thread in an attempt to provide constructive, candid feedback to help you out, but the way you are reacting so negatively to it all is really counterproductive.

One trait you'll find in any successful entrepreneur is the ability to have a thick skin and be open to feedback from others, even when it isn't what they want to hear. That doesn't mean you need to act on or even agree with others' advice, but if you really want to increase your chances of success you need to be able to at least hear others out in a respectful way.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#48

Post by citizenkeys »

cheald wrote: post #43
citizenkeys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Working hard on it" requires seed money and somebody that believes that the founder just might be able to pull off the idea. You can't work hard on an idea while you're worrying about food and rent. The point with the ycombinator video page was this: theoretically, if you had 365 lists, each able to generate that much uniques each day, then you'd have over a million uniques a year just with that traffic. A million u…

No offense, but unless you're working 3 jobs to cover food and rent, you can work hard on an idea without seed money. Stop watching TV (seriously, unplug it and put it in a closet). Stop playing video games (same deal). Stop going out barhopping. Devote your evenings and lunch breaks to working on your idea. You have plenty of time that you're not utilizing. You'll find that most startup founders - especially new ent…

I don't watch tv, don't play video games, nor do I drink or go "barhopping".

To paraphrase paul graham (yet again), you can't realistically run a start-up and work a day job. If you do, then you're not really running a start-up. And if you don't work a day-job, then eventually you're likely to run out of money until the start-up gets profitable.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#49

Post by cheald »

citizenkeys wrote: post #48
cheald wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but unless you're working 3 jobs to cover food and rent, you can work hard on an idea without seed money. Stop watching TV (seriously, unplug it and put it in a closet). Stop playing video games (same deal). Stop going out barhopping. Devote your evenings and lunch breaks to working on your idea. You have plenty of time that you're not utilizing. You'll find that most startup founders - especially new ent…

I don't watch tv, don't play video games, nor do I drink or go "barhopping". To paraphrase paul graham (yet again), you can't realistically run a start-up and work a day job. If you do, then you're not really running a start-up. And if you don't work a day-job, then eventually you're likely to run out of money until the start-up gets profitable.

It doesn't have to be TV or video games. What do you do in the evenings? What fills the space between "clock out of work" and "go to sleep"? What do you do in the morning before you wake up and go to work? Just nearly everyone (three-job single mothers excepted) has a lot of time that they don't utilize. My point is that you can grow your product and business by making use of that time.

pg's right - you probably can't successfully run a full-tilt startup AND work a full time job. You don't have a full-tilt startup yet. You have an idea, and it's a lot of blood, sweat, and bleary-eyed mornings to get to the point where you'll need to put 100% of your time into it. "pg said I have to have seed funding first" is a pretty lame-ass excuse for why you can't work on your product.

If you think the only two states you can be in are "Working at a desk job" and "Being given a bunch of seed money to quit your desk job", you're misunderstanding the whole process, and cutting yourself way short.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#50

Post by benologist »

Your front page says you plan to sell the domain to the Wikimedia guys at the earliest opportunity and that your grand plan is to have full length videos all over Wikipedia. Wikipedia publishes images/etc that they have the verifiable right to include. I really can't imagine any circumstances other than vandalism where going to Arnie's page = sit back and watch the Terminator movies. So that's the first obvious problem.

The second is this. Lists of videos are a Google search. On any topic, and up to date within minutes. If I want to maintain my own list then I can make a playlist or use Delicious or browser bookmarks or StumbleUpon or dozens of other services.

You need a much, much, much stronger idea, a calmer approach and a much better measuring stick than 3k visitors from HN.

Post reply on HN