31–40 of 75 posts
Yes, it's hard as an introvert! But once you "break the ice" and turn it into a habit, you will continue to grow.
On first blush, it seems like this is more in the line of Nextdoor, neighbors helping neighbors, but with some money changing hands. I'd go in that direction.
As others have mentioned your biggest challenge is the two-sided marketplace, it is unfortunately just about the hardest thing to pick for a startup. You won't get creators until there is a large enough volume of supporters for it to be worth it to them (why set up a campaign if no one responds). You won't get supporters until you have enough creators to match services they might want.
Many marketplaces like this start with at least one of two things - they either already control one side of the market via relationships (they have access to a large amount of supply, for example), or they have a lot of capital they can use to fund the concept until it gains traction (by funding creators for example). Ideally you have both.
My advice, given the time you have already invested, is to figure out how you can niche down very narrowly to start. Pick one geographic area, and perhaps one service type, and then grind it out manually to match supply to demand. Maybe you're matching creators who tutor on the side, to students in Seattle (or whatever). You want to be narrow because it's too hard to build supply and demand if you're broad, especially by yourself without funding. You'll have to try lots of hacks to see what works to get initial users - it will be manual, you will have to talk to a lot of people, it won't "scale" but that is ok to start. If it works you can grow into other markets later (example: Facebook started only for Harvard, Uber was only black limos in SF).
Also consider looking for a charitable benefactor who will fund creators (even if they don't use the services) to get a bit of energy into the marketplace. If you can find someone, or a company that wants to do this for a bit of good will and press you'll have some capital to fund the initial creators.
Good luck!
First, great looking website! On first blush, it seems like this is more in the line of Nextdoor, neighbors helping neighbors, but with some money changing hands. I'd go in that direction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> gofundme/Taskrabbit? Yes, Taskwer has elements of both. As I said in my previous comment, it's different from GoFundMe in a way that campaign creators don't have to ask for donations, instead, they can offer services to people in their community. Taskrabbit gives taskers the ability to offer various tasks and people go there in a search of someone who will perform those tasks. Rating system is very important there…
> Yes, Taskwer has elements of both. As I said in my previous comment, it's different from GoFundMe in a way that campaign creators don't have to ask for donations, instead, they can offer services to people in their community. There are two clear ways to do this: charity or work. GoFundMe is charity, TaskRabbit/etc is work. Unless you can communicate very clearly why the middle ground of not-charity-not-work is bett…
I would ignore everyone who's repeating the same sort of standard startup advice or saying "blah blah doesn't xyz already do this". A lot of startup advice is bad / actively harmful, your thing is pretty good, and you should just do it if it's fun.
Because you're on HN, you're about to get a good bump. In a few days, that bump will go down, and you might start to feel sad! Ignore this sadness and keep pushing through. The time from when people first hear about a product and when they actually start using it can be like a few weeks to a month. If, in a few days, all the numbers are going down, know that this is how even successful products look after a product launch. (See the trough of sorrow) Keep going!
Keep shamefully posting it in places, consider a hacker news launch, or even putting up posters in high-foot-traffic areas (if you live in or close to a walkable area). I know social-media bad, but it's a pretty good place to reach out to folks on. My guess is making a little tiktok thing is not a bad idea.
If you've got cash to blow, consider ads. Lots of people will tell you ads are bad, because they "don't scale" or some other over-optimized thing. But if you just want people to see your thing, ads are a reasonable way to drive a little traffic and get a beginning user-base to experiment with.
Have fun! The design and explanation of the site is great!
As others have already mentioned, why would someone choose to use your site over a more established site like gofundme or even patreon if they wanted to tie rewards/services to donations? Who do you envision your target audience to be? Someone who is undergoing a rough patch who is too proud to go on gofundme and has time to spare to work odd jobs? Who do you envision your target audience's target to be? People who w…
Campaigns on the landing page are just placeholder campaigns to show how it works. I apologize for not making it clear enough. I will fix that.
Go to where your users are. Reach out to the local service providers individually and tell them about your service. You will get users if they see value in what you're offering. It's not scalable, but you need users to better help you understand the product you need to be offering. Now, some feedback on the product. Imagining myself as a local service provider, I don't see how the service would help me land gigs or m…
With that being said, I think what I would like to see you do is try to use your own platform to raise a marketing budget. What services would you offer to try to raise the budget? Why are you trying to raise the budget?
What I like about the platform is a combination of charity and work, the blend of GoFundMe and TaskRabbit. So what I'd like to see is 1) why are you trying to raise this money, why is it meaningful to you and 2) what range of services can you provide, basically what hustles can you do, to give back to those who give?
First, great looking website! On first blush, it seems like this is more in the line of Nextdoor, neighbors helping neighbors, but with some money changing hands. I'd go in that direction.
I'm struggling quite a bit with market positioning and that's why I need people to give me some feedback. Thanks man!