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Stop building apps no one wants

launchsky.com

81–90 of 143 posts

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#81
Ok, suppose you have entrepreneurs that are ready to use launchsky, they've created a bunch of projects to evaluate. What about end-users ? I don't really care what other entrepreneurs think about the idea, I do want to get in touch with potential users !

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#82
post #35
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.

To quote Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Ford never said this, and it isn't true anyway. At least in cities, the public didn't want horses, they wanted better cars and more financing options.

In New York City alone, hundreds of horses died in the street every day, and the owners simply unhitched their carriages and left, resulting in streets clogged with horse corpses. Horses generated over a hundred tons of manure daily, which, combined with the dead horses, was a sanitation nightmare that led to typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.

I hear this misattributed quote so often on Hacker News that it makes my head spin. :-)

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#83
post #78

I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will. I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013"). (Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

There's no site to browse.

It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#84
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.

There is no web site. It's just a mockup of a website.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#85

I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will. I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.

Sorry! If the product was fully built, we'd of course let you browse.

But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#86
post #78

I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will. I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013"). (Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

Ha good catch. I assumed the stuff in the background were already projects on the site, tried clicking out to browse, got frustrated and clicked back.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#87

Just to bounce ideas/brainstorm. The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.) So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive. 1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system. 2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these…

I would disagree about needing incentives/rewards to get people voting. You are the counterargument to your own comment. You just commented on this idea here on HN, for free, with no incentive and no reward. People like us often love to see new ideas, and comment on them and join in a discussion with the founders. "This is great", "I don't think this will work", "this would be better if...", "what are you planning to…

Thanks!

I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side.

It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle.

edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013"). (Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

There's no site to browse. It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

Confusion = good launch page?

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#89
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013"). (Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

There's no site to browse. It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

It's actually a little inception-esque. You're pitching an idea for an app about ideas for apps.

I think it's essentially light-market fit testing but it actually kind of blew my mind that the site itself poses the same question it hopes to answer for others, "Would people use this?"

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#90
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013"). (Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

There's no site to browse. It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

I think you should be more clear that it is a launch page on the first screen rather than after clicking the sign up button.

It sort of seems like a Quora-esque "you must sign up to see more" type of thing right now.

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