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Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

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Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#1

Post by ryanwaggoner »

After months of hard work and wistfully watching many other HN members debut their startups to this community, I'm proud to announce that MightyBrand.com is up and live. Please take a look and let us know how you like the idea, and more importantly, how you like the execution.

Elevator pitch: MightyBrand monitors social channels for mentions of your brand, analyzes those conversations, and gives you tools to easily engage in those conversations.

http://mightybrand.com

If needed, my contact info is in my HN profile...I'd love to hear from you!

Edit: for those of you who are wondering, MightyBrand is a rebranded and much-improved relaunch of BlueSwarm.com, which we applied to YC with for the last round.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#2

Post by redorb »

I think your prices should be $5/month "blogger" then I would just rename the others and perhaps shift the price downward too, "startups" will probably do this themselves with google alerts or other services.

I think your market is small; I feel those who know enough to care about brand mentions - care enough to already have ideas of how to do it, and those who don't won't probably 'get it'.

Good luck in your endeavor

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#3

Post by rockbilly »

* I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right.

* Why do you start at 3 brands? I'm guessing that there are enough users that would like to monitor a single brand maybe for $12-$14/mo?

* The plan pricing isn't good. The Big Shot plan costs $100 for 10 brands/users while the Blogger plan costs $19 for 3 brands/users. Why shouldn't I just get 4 Blogger plans? Clearly the convenience of not having to deal with multiple accounts and who can access what where, but it just doesn't look like you're getting the value you should be getting. As 37s said about their pricing "Each tier is roughly double the previous tier, but we deliver more than double the benefits." (http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1287-ask-37signals-how-di...).

Overall, it looks like a great way for companies to track their brands online and see how things are going. I'd say you could easily create a sustainable business model out of that.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#4

Post by ryanwaggoner »

redorb wrote: post #2

I think your prices should be $5/month "blogger" then I would just rename the others and perhaps shift the price downward too, "startups" will probably do this themselves with google alerts or other services. I think your market is small; I feel those who know enough to care about brand mentions - care enough to already have ideas of how to do it, and those who don't won't probably 'get it'. Good luck in your endeavo…

Thanks for the feedback. We're definitely still working through our pricing model, so I appreciate the suggestion.

As we state in our FAQ, there's a number of ways you can cobble together a free solution on your own that will accomplish some of the same things, but it'll take longer and will lack a lot of features. At $20 / month, our solution doesn't have to save much time to be worth it, or at least that's the thinking. Guess we'll see :)

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#5

Post by unalone »

I hate that Feedback tab. I don't know what service provides it, but it ruins my process of browsing the site, it's ALWAYS slow to load, and I think a contact form is much more useful.

The design is clean. Two things: make a hover effect on the "Free Trial" button, it feels oddly static right now, and "60 sec signup, no credit card" bleeds off the button in Safari 4.

Now, question, from a genuine newbie: how is your service better than my just subscribing to a set of 6 RSS feeds?

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#6

Post by ryanwaggoner »

rockbilly wrote: post #3

* I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right. * Why do you start at 3 brands? I'm guessing that there are enough users that would like to monitor a single brand maybe for $12-$14/mo? * The plan pricing isn't good. The Big Shot plan costs $100 for 10 brands/users while the Blogger plan costs $19 for 3 brands/users. Why shouldn't I just get 4 Blogger…

Your points are excellent ones, and we'll definitely consider adjusting our pricing model and perhaps adding a solo plan that allows a single user to track a single brand.

Thanks again for your feedback. It's always nice to hear that someone "gets" what you're trying to do :)

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#7

Post by sgk284 »

rockbilly wrote: post #3

* I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right. * Why do you start at 3 brands? I'm guessing that there are enough users that would like to monitor a single brand maybe for $12-$14/mo? * The plan pricing isn't good. The Big Shot plan costs $100 for 10 brands/users while the Blogger plan costs $19 for 3 brands/users. Why shouldn't I just get 4 Blogger…

"I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right."

I'm torn between this. On the one hand, it's less friction for the user to sign up... but then you wind up bugging the user later on. I feel like it's better to just get all of the "administrative non-sense" out of the way at the start. Also, if they're willing to give you their credit card (even if you aren't charging it right away), I suspect the data would show that they're more willing to pay for it later. I've got no data to back that statement though. Does anyone have any experience with this to share?

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#8

Post by ryanwaggoner »

unalone wrote: post #5

I hate that Feedback tab. I don't know what service provides it, but it ruins my process of browsing the site, it's ALWAYS slow to load, and I think a contact form is much more useful. The design is clean. Two things: make a hover effect on the "Free Trial" button, it feels oddly static right now, and "60 sec signup, no credit card" bleeds off the button in Safari 4. Now, question, from a genuine newbie: how is your…

Thanks for the feedback...we're still working through design and layout issues, so all feedback and advice in this area is welcome.

You can definitely put together a free service to monitor mentions of your brand, but there's a few things that you miss:

1. No analysis or deeper meta info about the conversations and the people who are talking

2. No dashboard to quickly see an overview of what topics and brands you're tracking have new mentions

3. Takes more time to put together the feeds and keep up on what new social channels are relevant and should be added.

4. No integrated ways to engage in the conversations you find, which just saves a bit of time.

5. No collaborative features, such as being able to see which items someone else on your team already responded to.

Obviously, for some users, a free solution using RSS feeds or something similar is the way to go, but if your time is worth $50 / hour, our solution only needs to save 24 minutes per month to be cost effective.

Re: Ask HN: Review our startup - MightyBrand.com

#10

Post by mdasen »

sgk284 wrote: post #7
rockbilly wrote: post #3

* I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right. * Why do you start at 3 brands? I'm guessing that there are enough users that would like to monitor a single brand maybe for $12-$14/mo? * The plan pricing isn't good. The Big Shot plan costs $100 for 10 brands/users while the Blogger plan costs $19 for 3 brands/users. Why shouldn't I just get 4 Blogger…

"I greatly appreciate that the 30-day trial doesn't require a credit card. Bravo! Finally someone gets that right." I'm torn between this. On the one hand, it's less friction for the user to sign up... but then you wind up bugging the user later on. I feel like it's better to just get all of the "administrative non-sense" out of the way at the start. Also, if they're willing to give you their credit card (even if you…

I personally hate being asked for a credit card for a trial because I know the company is hoping that I won't cancel in time and that they get to charge me. If your product is good, I'll be on board. If it isn't, I don't want to go through administrative hassle (especially since many sites make it difficult to cancel - sometimes even requiring phone calls).
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