They had a great team. I think it may have been too distributed. If they selected groups in one location and connected them with the right people it'd be interesting.
Nreduce online incubator shuts down
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#12I liked nReduce, but I think a lot of the ideas could have used some feedback (including mine at the time), or early pivots, some were very obviously not that great
It might have been good to incorporate some sort of acceptance gateway or idea validation phase.
Maybe something like you create iterations of your landing page and the software auto A/B tests them for you. Once you have X signups for one you can join the others at the next stage. Video posts can also go on your home page to keep your fans informed.
They probably should have taken some small amount of money from users at some point also, even if just to keep the service going
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#13When nReduce started, it was actually really cool. I think a big problem they had was changing a small piece of user feedback that was a slight pain point, but not a major one. Everyone used to check in on Wednesdays and many were, week after week. They changed it so you could choose whenever you want, and all the teams in my group disappeared. It went from a vibrant Wednesday to dead every day. It was incredibly sad…
That's really great feedback -- I was the dev behind nReduce. I think that makes total sense that removing the hard deadline reduced everyone's motivations.
Joe and I tried to play with a lot of the timing, from first using the notion of 3 month batches, to opening it up for people to join every week (and doing a weekly join session to onboard people), to just opening it up completely.
We didn't see any immediate overall engagement drop after opening it up for people to join anytime and set their own checkin day, but we did notice once people received less than three comments per week on their checkin they dropped off within a few weeks.
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#14When nReduce started, it was actually really cool. I think a big problem they had was changing a small piece of user feedback that was a slight pain point, but not a major one. Everyone used to check in on Wednesdays and many were, week after week. They changed it so you could choose whenever you want, and all the teams in my group disappeared. It went from a vibrant Wednesday to dead every day. It was incredibly sad…
Good idea. Anyone want to take the opensource code, launch a new site, and fix the check-in day?
I'm the original dev and I actually am interested in launching it again too (with modifications). Shoot me an email!
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good idea. Anyone want to take the opensource code, launch a new site, and fix the check-in day?
I might be interested in helping with something like that. Shoot me an email offline if you'd like. Would it be worth setting up a quick Google Group or something, for interested parties to communicate with each other?
I'm interested in that too if there's an attempt to redo this again with some changes. My email is just username at pretty much any email provider.
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#16I tried nReduce for a little while. I remember lots of interface bugs -- being unable to give feedback to others, being unable to find content (can't remember the details). It was fairly unusable, so we stopped.
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good idea. Anyone want to take the opensource code, launch a new site, and fix the check-in day?
I'm the original dev and I actually am interested in launching it again too (with modifications). Shoot me an email!
I loved it back when it was using a fixed Wednesday deadline and saved bandwidth by linking to private YouTube videos, (rather than hosting nReduce copies).
If you bring it back, make sure you let me know.
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#18Hey nreduce guys, if you're reading this, I'd love to have you on Techendo (shameless plug: http://techendo.co/) for an interview. please reach out to dan at techendo dot co
Re: Nreduce online incubator shuts down
#19nReduce inspired a local weekly startup meetup I started called iterators. Really, I wanted the weekly check in aspect more than anything. It's interesting the bonds that form when you meet more than monthly. It's too bad to see it gone, but it had an impact, and that's great. There will be others that come and go.
We have a weekly meetup as well running in SF called Tribes http://tribes.techendo.co/