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Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

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Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an awesome question Adam. Just had a look at our cohort analysis. Happy to let you know that 16% of the December 2010 cohort (those 100 people) are still using Buffer today (27 months later). It's actually fairly representative of what our retention stabilizes to after 4-5 months for almost every cohort, though 100 is not an ideal sample size! We've certainly worked to improve retention over time, but in additio…

Joel, what are you using for your cohort analysis? An internally-built tool? A third-party service?

Hey Charlie! We've been back and forth on this in the lifetime of the startup, but we're now doing all metrics ourselves, so it is internally built. I built an early version of the cohort analysis (which didn't scale, but that didn't matter) just a few months in and it was massively valuable. It's not too hard to knock something together.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#62
Oh, I can outdo you!

Many years ago I did an upstart that was a combination of delicious and facebook, using bayesian filtering to locate links and people you might be interested in from what you posted yourself. Incredibly clever product. Before Google had even thought of pagerank. We got funding, we had great engineers, and I was the CEO.

But you know what? We never launched. We ran out of money before we got that far.

You launched - I didn't.

Congratulations! You've made it further than most.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#63
post #57

Working on a web product for +1 year here and we are still a few months away for release. Personally I think I'll cry when I see the first sign up that isn't a test account. If I ever see it.

If you're like me, you'll probably spend ten minutes Googling trying to see if the account is from a bot or a spammer of some sort before you convince yourself that it is real.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#64
What sort of inbound traffic numbers are you getting? I have to be honest - I was completely turned off the landing page. Further more, the content structure reads like a blog to me - I had no idea it was service at first glance. I'd be happy to give you some action items / critique over Skype or Hangouts if you're interested.

Drop me a line - @twanlass.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#66
post #62

Oh, I can outdo you! Many years ago I did an upstart that was a combination of delicious and facebook, using bayesian filtering to locate links and people you might be interested in from what you posted yourself. Incredibly clever product. Before Google had even thought of pagerank. We got funding, we had great engineers, and I was the CEO. But you know what? We never launched. We ran out of money before we got that…

Can we hear more?

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#67
post #11

This is probably not very important but What is the expected workflow when someone visiting your site at http://www.brombone.com/ clicks sign up and clicks cancel in the following screen? I just get an error.

Obviously I didn't test that. Why would someone cancel? It supposed to take you back to the home page.

Like I mentioned earlier, it probably does not need to be high on your agenda. However, to answer your question why would someone cancel... because the button is there and we users are stupid.

Open up a private browsing instance and go through the workflow. You'll probably end up here[1]. Did you change something in the last hour? I thought I was getting a message from dailycred not from you when I checked before I went for my walk.

Seems like you're logging these errors somewhere. Sorry if I am muddying the error tables for you.

[1] http://www.brombone.com/account?error=access_denied&erro...

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#68
post #18

I find it odd that the hacker community likes to completely disregard non-technical people[1]. It's situations exactly like this where it would bring a huge amount of value to have someone dedicated to marketing/community outreach and evangelism for the product. Even though it's a technical project, explained well and with patience even the most non-technical person could wrap their head around it and develop a plan…

I'd love to have someone dedicated to to marketing/community outreach and evangelism. If someone with those skills wants to join me on the journey, send me an email (in profile).

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#69
post #62

Oh, I can outdo you! Many years ago I did an upstart that was a combination of delicious and facebook, using bayesian filtering to locate links and people you might be interested in from what you posted yourself. Incredibly clever product. Before Google had even thought of pagerank. We got funding, we had great engineers, and I was the CEO. But you know what? We never launched. We ran out of money before we got that…

You still got the source?

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#70
post #52

Disclaimer: I'm a hardcore phantomjs user. Add a service that scrapes results and I think you'll be overwhelmed with interest. Scraping is a pain. It takes a special niche talent -- but a ton of people want it. Let people submit what information they want off a page -- you write the script that does it for them. Pay as you go, etc. If it saves people time, they will pay for it. I do full-time consulting -- building o…

I'll be in touch.
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