Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#31

Post by icebraining » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:04 PM UTC

> Just where you could share ideas, ask question and mark progress of your startup in mile-stones and all.

But does it actually offer that, or is it just a generic forum UX? Frankly, I think the latter market is pretty well covered by cheaper, full featured and easy to host (PHP) alternatives. There's no point in going after that.

I think what SO (and possibly Quora, I'm not there yet) has shown is that you can succeed and displace well-established competitors if your software is custom tailored to the domain at hand.

So, what differentiates your engine-for-the-entrepreneurial-community from any other engine? What specific features does it have just to solve that problem?

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#32

Post by four » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

Move on. Better use of your time, energy and wisdom to start on the next thing, than to spend it on trying to extract some money from the last thing. Move on.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#33

Post by fleitz » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

Your MVP worked perfectly, you put something out, gained valuable experience and now know that there is a market for hosted forums.

Go talk to the people that are interested and get letters of intent. Get something salable and charge them money. Who cares if a bunch of people who could roll their own forums in a weekend are interested, what matters are the 99% of people who can't and are willing to pay you.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#34

Post by hernan7 » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 6:45 PM UTC

Number 3 looks interesting. Maybe become a cloud-based competitor to VBulletin.

(Make sure that transitioning from the old forum to the new one is as painless as possible, though. Forum members usually hate any changes to their forums.)

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#35

Post by wsdom » Thu, Sep 29, 2011, 11:07 PM UTC

I would say find a way to integrate with with large social networks. Facebook and LinkedIn both have API's you might be able to use to help regain traction and maintain certain aspects of your site. Like the idea and its potential after looking at your site. But the name is strange. I cant even tell if I am saying it right.. Might want to work on that also. But I would would keep going with it or open source it... Only my opinion.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#36

Post by Zakuzaa » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 12:01 AM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #11

macavity23 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you doing 'crazy tests' on your live front page? You should have a staging site for that.

We were expecting some traffic from a source, tried targeting them with that those tests.

That source is HN. :)

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#37

Post by teyc » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 1:11 AM UTC

startupguild uses Yammer. I think you're solving the wrong problem here.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#38

Post by md1515 » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 2:12 AM UTC

What would you sell if traffic died? It seems like you were truly interested in entrepreneurship so why not help the community and open door number 1.

I can't use it, but maybe someone can revive it.

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#39

Post by rongdonu » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 11:42 AM UTC

The ultimate modern village of Bnagladesh: www.hulhulia.com

Re: Ask HN: We dreamed, we shipped, we are stuck

#40

Post by spobo » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 12:24 PM UTC

5. Pivot! Experiment a little with what your users want. Ask your users what they are missing. Add a random chat feature or something that will match up potential co-founder matches based on some shared interests and qualities each of you provide and you'd like to pool.

Do some A/B Testing on landing page designs to draw more people. Measure which features stick and which don't.