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I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

babyli.st

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Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#131
Looks great!

When we had our first child, I couldn't find an online registry that I liked, so I scripted a rudimentary one up one night. It worked really well. My wife loved that she could register for intangibles like "Bring us dinner", or any gift from any store. When the baby was born, I took a lengthy paternity leave and, like you, thought I'd build a web app for others to use the registry. I actually took the idea to a local startup bootcamp and it was torn apart by the instructors/angels and left to die on the boardroom floor. Too hard to generate sufficient revenue. Here are a couple of tidbits from my experience for you:

1. One angel had invested in a universal registry and said it took them three years to find any revenue at all. What they did was pivot into a wedding registry that enabled guests to contribute to the couple's honeymoon fund. They made money on travel agent referrals to the couple.

2. This is a crowded market.

A lot of the comments in this thread (like mine!) note how great your site looks. When I showed my site to the bootcamp people, I emphasized my slick design. They essentially said, "No one gives a crap! What problem does it solve that isn't already solved by someone else!"

I thought, "But, but, but... everyone is like me right? Tech savvy and appreciative of good design and UX?"

Check out http://wishpot.com. They are a universal registry. All web 2.0 with social integration. They've got some funding (http://www.centernetworks.com/vc-funding-docstoc-wishpot-kaa...). Been around a few years now.

Here's a competitor: http://www.findgift.com/Services/Gift-Registry/. It was founded in 1997 by a couple from Georgia.

And another: http://myregistry.com. Second spot on Google for "gift registry".

Now check it out:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/findgift.com+wishpot.com+my...

Good luck!

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#132

Looks great! When we had our first child, I couldn't find an online registry that I liked, so I scripted a rudimentary one up one night. It worked really well. My wife loved that she could register for intangibles like "Bring us dinner", or any gift from any store. When the baby was born, I took a lengthy paternity leave and, like you, thought I'd build a web app for others to use the registry. I actually took the id…

Thanks :)

I was aware of a lot of that at the beginning and I have no regrets. I would use BabyList for my own registry and for various reasons wouldn't use the others. We'll see how it goes.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#134
Hey, very nice app... here's a request/recommendation ... I'm the expecting daddy, i created the page but would now like to give my wife access to add/delete stuff... is there something to invite the mommy/daddy to use the same account? I know the mom's are supposed to create this, but i couldn't help myself... really nice site.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#135
post #93

Here's my number one feature request that wishlists never seem to support: partial contributions. This is even more the case with baby registries, where families might want help with high-cost items (carseats, cribs etc) but where well-wishers are generally going to contribute something in the $20 range. Ideally, I want to be able to contribute $20 towards that $80 carseat. If A, B & C also contribute, the item shoul…

I like the idea, but doing it would involve a lot of payment processing shenanigans (not an unsolved problem by any means - i.e. kickstarter - but definitely a significant hurdle for a weekend project).

Maybe WePay has an API? I haven't checked it out since it doesn't work outside of US, so I have no use of it.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#136

I had had the same idea when I was pregnant but there were several key problems that I concluded were unsolvable. I am both curious and skeptical as to how/whether you address these. (I am basing my questions on an understanding that yours is a registry and not a simple a wish list, as per your own description). 1. How to mark items as purchased. Relying on gift givers to "reserve" and "unreserve" items may be a step…

Obviously you've thought a lot about this. Once I've had users actually use the site as their baby registry (fingers-crossed) I'll see what the actual percentages of the problems you've described are.

1 - when you reserve you enter your name and email address. you then get an email (that i currently don't make you confirm, but could) that says "you have promised to purchase X"

2 - This is an issue with in-store registries as well. I am not currently solving this issue, but it is technically feasible to do so.

3 - I'm depending on the older relatives to give us cash for baby's college fund :) I'm definitely not trying to solve e-commerce for an older generation.

4 - That's a good point. Hopefully this is a small percentage or items/online stores.

Thanks for the feedback.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#137
post #93

Here's my number one feature request that wishlists never seem to support: partial contributions. This is even more the case with baby registries, where families might want help with high-cost items (carseats, cribs etc) but where well-wishers are generally going to contribute something in the $20 range. Ideally, I want to be able to contribute $20 towards that $80 carseat. If A, B & C also contribute, the item shoul…

Hi frossie,

We actually support that at Wishpot (so, we may be the lovechild you're looking for!). Any wish can be enabled for contributions, and then instead of purchasing it, the "buy it" button turns into a progress bar. The cash goes straight into your paypal account - we don't take a cut and aren't a middleman. There's a little how-to here: http://www.wishpot.com/help/how-to-contributions.aspx

Let me know what you think, would love your feedback - tom at wishpot.com

Tom

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#139

Do you offer a simple input field for users, where they can enter a URL? I think the bookmarklet is a bit high threshold for some (if not most) users. Telling them to copy+paste a website URL and enter it into a field on their control panel is not. For SEO your site could use a little work. Perhaps a blog about pregnancy could help get your domain ranking for some niche related terms. You are probably aiming for soci…

Thanks for the advice. I've thought the same thing about the bookmarklet. I'll probably create chrome and ff plugins before scraping web-pages server-side.
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