Stop building apps no one wants • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#21

Post by bithive123 » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

vlokshin wrote: post #2

This is a new project we'll be building at DarwinApps. I'd love to hear feedback/criticisms/advice from the HN community!

How do I browse your website? I seem to be stuck in a modal window and everything else is unclickable.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#22

Post by skisly » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:25 PM UTC

icoder wrote: post #19

I gave you my email address, now how can I submit my first idea, as was promised? ("Sign up now, and submit your first idea for free")

"We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013." I think you have to wait till 2013

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#23

Post by brudgers » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #11

Steve Jobs famously avoided asking people what they wanted, instead showing them what they wanted. His philosophy was often described as arrogant, but guess what? He was frequently right -- people often accepted his ideas about a product they couldn't imagine until he showed it to them.

When one has a multitude waiting eagerly for pronouncements, then, of course, solving the problem of showing may be left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#24

Post by vlokshin » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #20

Here's my question: how do you get & keep a critical mass of people on the site to evaluate these ideas?

Admittedly, this is one of our biggest challenges.

It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).

Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.

One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.

Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.

Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.

The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#25

Post by gyazbek » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

I for one would NOT use this service. There is a lot of mistrust in this industry, and no one wants to potentially give away an idea for the sake of third party market analysis that isn't that well known or confidential.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#26

Post by vlokshin » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:29 PM UTC

wushupork wrote: post #9

How is this different from a LaunchRock in essence? I feel like for many consumers, it's very hard for them to imagine the product w/o seeing/touching/interacting with it no matter how great you pitch or describe it. If someone were to describe to me a blog of funny cats or what's essentially Instagram, I don't think I would have cared much and never really appreciate how much enjoyment I would derive from both just…

Valid point.

LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.

LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.

We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#27

Post by aw3c2 » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #11

Steve Jobs famously avoided asking people what they wanted, instead showing them what they wanted. His philosophy was often described as arrogant, but guess what? He was frequently right -- people often accepted his ideas about a product they couldn't imagine until he showed it to them.

I would rephrase that to "making them want through marketing".

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#28

Post by shizamdamnit » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

I can't ever see myself using a service like this for fear of somebody developing my idea first. Many of the good 'apps' out there quickly generate copy-cat apps, this will just take the originators out of the loop :)

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#29

Post by vlokshin » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:32 PM UTC

gyazbek wrote: post #25

I for one would NOT use this service. There is a lot of mistrust in this industry, and no one wants to potentially give away an idea for the sake of third party market analysis that isn't that well known or confidential.

Point taken, and we do appreciate the feedback. The same can be said for KickStarter/Indiegogog/Everyone else.

We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.

As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#30

Post by louischatriot » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:32 PM UTC

That's interesting, with two caveats: - Many people may be wary of giving an idea for which they see a huge potential, but it may not be a problem for side projects - I don't see what the people giving their opinion would gain. Maybe it's just the thrill of being pitched new ideas regularly?

Cool idea in any case.