301–310 of 395 posts
That's a no brainer, and I'm even being honest about what you're getting, not saying it's $8000 when I'm actually paying $5000 for half of all your labor for however long it takes for you to get it all working, then investing $3000 on some hand wavy "marketing" thing.
Would it not be more effective for you to first spend the $3,000 talking to customers (perhaps pre-selling)? Then once you land on an idea customers want, then you can invest $5,000 (or more) to actually build the product.
If this was answered, I can't find it. - At $5k / 50%, who is covering the costs of creating a separate entity (LLC formation)? - What happens in the event that the project is completed in time, but the addl $3k spent to acquire enough customers doesn't yield any positive results? - Who owns the IP in case after all is said and done, it falls into a dead pool? IP in code that didn't survive as a startup is still valu…
OK, I'll put something concrete on the table to get away from the hypothetical. Here's one of my MVP's (yes folks, I am working on more than one idea at a time): http://www.tommyteaches.com/ Go on, check it out and come back. This is actually a finished product. There's nothing new to build at this stage except for additional installments of Tommy Teaches apps (additional subjects) and a few that will require slightl…
Some feedback: very very very wordy ! I would not explain how it works (GA) but show some examples right away. Your audience is the parent and they are viewing on behalf of their child. So they want to have an immediate experience of how their child is going to shortly learn and have fun. Need to get them to feel the game right away. Their brain is going to be in "playing with child mode" during the time they are sho…
My intent with the wordiness was to try to generate some SEO juice and see if I can bring people to the site organically. This just launched so it is too early to tell.
I am going to shoot a video of the game in action and include it in the site (as well as posting it on YouTube).
I will absolutely consider your input with regards to the wordiness. Maybe split some of it off into a "Tech Talk" div in the page or even a separate page.
One thought I had for using the term and going into a super-short explanation of what using a GA means is simply to try to differentiate the app a little. Admittedly there are a ton and a half apps in the app store that teach all of these subject. The question to answer became: How is yours different? The answer was the GA. That's why I felt I had to make a very lightweight introduction for visitors.
I am also hoping that this might generate some chatter in tech blog circles. I am not sure that there are other apps that use GA's to teach children (or teach anything at all). That's probably not true, but the fact that I might need to go looking for them might mean that they haven't done a good job of getting the word out.
In the next month or so I am going to get out to various local Meetups and try to show this off and network. No particular goal in mind other than simply meeting interesting people and creating some awareness.
What would be a good place to post for feedback on the site content and design? I think I've seen some of that on HN but it isn't all that frequent.
This discussion is awesome! I would never have believed such a simple conjecture could provide so much illumination around the myths and realities of startups. First, its a great deal, both for hmexx and folks who take him up on it. Frankly I think it could be revolutionary. My reasoning is as follows; Many "products" over the last couple of years have been fairly straight forward web "apps" built on top of existing…
May be you are trying to make a point but this statement is clearly NOT true. It all depends on how wide the area are you talking about. Are you talking about California or Kansas or entire US ?
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Some feedback: very very very wordy ! I would not explain how it works (GA) but show some examples right away. Your audience is the parent and they are viewing on behalf of their child. So they want to have an immediate experience of how their child is going to shortly learn and have fun. Need to get them to feel the game right away. Their brain is going to be in "playing with child mode" during the time they are sho…
Thanks for the feedback. My intent with the wordiness was to try to generate some SEO juice and see if I can bring people to the site organically. This just launched so it is too early to tell. I am going to shoot a video of the game in action and include it in the site (as well as posting it on YouTube). I will absolutely consider your input with regards to the wordiness. Maybe split some of it off into a "Tech Talk…
Sally learns best by doing X, while Sam learns best by doing Y. (Show cartoon Sally doing X and cartoon Sam doing Y). Most apps will try to teach Sally and Sam the same way, but the TommyTeaches app is smarter than that! Tommy will be learning as he teaches. Tommy will learn which techniques are best for Sally and Sam individually, then tailor the lessons to... etc.
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It's always a problem and a catch 22, you want to get customers, but also avoid competition, but I think the trend today is that stealth mode is not that helpful, there are so many ideas and if you believe what they say in the news, not enough developers to build them, your big enemy is a market with no customers, not a market with competitors. if you launch 3 months after someone in today's world, even if they manag…
You could also find a niche market that has little to no competition and develop to that. I remember when the Desktop Publishing market was new, and the Commodore Amiga had Deluxe Paint and a few third part desktop publishing apps in 1985. Then later in Adobe made Photoshop in 1989 for the Macintosh that copied the ideas of desktop publishing software on the Amiga. Not only that but Newtek had a Video Toaster and Vid…
So do I. Remember Pagemaker vs. Quark Express?
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Just to counter some of the negativity in here, As a partner in a consulting shop just starting out, this isn't a bad proposition. It nets you rent money to work on scratching a pet peeve; if you're between clients and you've got something really simple you can wrap up in a month at a discounted rate this is a great idea. HN is filled with "passive income strategies" blog posts that revolve around short projects like…
Yeah but doing this without: A NDA, a No-Compete Clause in a contract, and even nothing written down and signed and witnessed by a notary public just rings alarm bells in my head. What stops him from taking your MVP project and doing it with someone else? What stops him from telling others about your project so they can copy it or do it better?
A valid point of course but in reality anyone needing this type of arrangement wouldn't be in a position to sue to enforce the contract. Unless the idea turned out to be so super successful and if that were the case I'm sure money would be forthcoming to avoid any problems.
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If interested, drop me a line at hnproject2013@gmail.com If you have questions or HN-style critic on the structure/proposition, write below and help me build proposition version 1.1!
Email sent. For the record, I think this is a great idea.