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Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

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Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#11

Post by joshu »

It's an interesting idea. There are a lot of details that you would have to flesh out.

What is reputation? How would you explain it? How does it aggregate?

Draw some pictures - what might it look like, what might it be integrated into a site? Etc.

In my mind, reputation is the summary of a series of transactions. Ebay's user reputation comes directly to mind. How they will interact across sites seems challenging -- I have 1000 points on news.yc and 2000 followers on twitter; how do they interact? How do you present this, etc?

I recommend you cut the idea to the very minimal core to see how small you can make it, and see if you can validate that minimal concept.

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#12

Post by ScottWhigham »

grandalf wrote: post #3

I think this is a good idea. I've actually thought of something similar myself. Why not have each person's reputation be based on a variety of attributes -- discussion forum insight, financial reliability, technical expertise, etc. This could eventually replace the credit ratings infrastructure of experian, equifax, etc. Ideally lots of sites would participate -- e-commmerce sites could rate you as a customer (headac…

* This could eventually replace the credit ratings infrastructure of experian, equifax, etc.*

Wow - talk about smoking the kool-aid. We went from "similar to gravatars" to replacing Equifax all in about 1000 characters. That's a bit much for me lol.

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#13

Post by ab_initio »

joshu wrote: post #11

It's an interesting idea. There are a lot of details that you would have to flesh out. What is reputation? How would you explain it? How does it aggregate? Draw some pictures - what might it look like, what might it be integrated into a site? Etc. In my mind, reputation is the summary of a series of transactions. Ebay's user reputation comes directly to mind. How they will interact across sites seems challenging -- I…

Joshu - Thanks for the comment. Curious as to what exactly you mean by "cut the idea to the very minimal core to see how small you can make it, and see if you can validate that minimal concept." Are we talking about hashing out some specific feature and then seeing if that, on its own, will be successful? I guess, if you could explain a little about what you mean by "validating a concept," it would make things more clear to me.

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#14

Post by grandalf »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #12
grandalf wrote: post #3

I think this is a good idea. I've actually thought of something similar myself. Why not have each person's reputation be based on a variety of attributes -- discussion forum insight, financial reliability, technical expertise, etc. This could eventually replace the credit ratings infrastructure of experian, equifax, etc. Ideally lots of sites would participate -- e-commmerce sites could rate you as a customer (headac…

* This could eventually replace the credit ratings infrastructure of experian, equifax, etc.* Wow - talk about smoking the kool-aid. We went from "similar to gravatars" to replacing Equifax all in about 1000 characters. That's a bit much for me lol.

Well consider that those companies charge $10 per credit rating lookup...

Credibility/trust tracking is huge. Ebay's seller/buyer trust data, if tied to SSN (or better) would be worth Billions.

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#16

Post by joshu »

ab_initio wrote: post #13
joshu wrote: post #11

It's an interesting idea. There are a lot of details that you would have to flesh out. What is reputation? How would you explain it? How does it aggregate? Draw some pictures - what might it look like, what might it be integrated into a site? Etc. In my mind, reputation is the summary of a series of transactions. Ebay's user reputation comes directly to mind. How they will interact across sites seems challenging -- I…

Joshu - Thanks for the comment. Curious as to what exactly you mean by "cut the idea to the very minimal core to see how small you can make it, and see if you can validate that minimal concept." Are we talking about hashing out some specific feature and then seeing if that, on its own, will be successful? I guess, if you could explain a little about what you mean by "validating a concept," it would make things more c…

People have a tendency to overcomplicate things.

You are looking to build a system that is a) as small and as simple as possible that yet b) still retains conceptual integrity.

You want the first because it's easier to build and get to market, and the second because it's not done till all the necessary parts are in.

Remember that the vast majority of your understanding of the problem space is not accurate, and will remain so until you encounter customers and users. So do as little work as possible; just enough to get you to those customers and users. Then you listen to them to find out the next parts to build. (The ideal case here is that you are also customer #1, incidentally.)

So no, not just some specific feature; you need the right coverage. But make sure you don't go overboard anywhere in particular, especially if it might not be needed.

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#17

Post by ab_initio »

joshu wrote: post #16
ab_initio wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joshu - Thanks for the comment. Curious as to what exactly you mean by "cut the idea to the very minimal core to see how small you can make it, and see if you can validate that minimal concept." Are we talking about hashing out some specific feature and then seeing if that, on its own, will be successful? I guess, if you could explain a little about what you mean by "validating a concept," it would make things more c…

People have a tendency to overcomplicate things. You are looking to build a system that is a) as small and as simple as possible that yet b) still retains conceptual integrity. You want the first because it's easier to build and get to market, and the second because it's not done till all the necessary parts are in. Remember that the vast majority of your understanding of the problem space is not accurate, and will r…

Awesome. Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if you (or anyone) think it would be more fruitful to take a holistic approach i.e. factor in ebay, twitter, HN and create an overall score, or stick with a simpler, more streamlined karma counter type thing that would be "widgetable". Or does the latter necessarily lead to the former?

Re: Ask HN: Review my Startup (Idea)

#18

Post by joshu »

ab_initio wrote: post #17
joshu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a tendency to overcomplicate things. You are looking to build a system that is a) as small and as simple as possible that yet b) still retains conceptual integrity. You want the first because it's easier to build and get to market, and the second because it's not done till all the necessary parts are in. Remember that the vast majority of your understanding of the problem space is not accurate, and will r…

Awesome. Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if you (or anyone) think it would be more fruitful to take a holistic approach i.e. factor in ebay, twitter, HN and create an overall score, or stick with a simpler, more streamlined karma counter type thing that would be "widgetable". Or does the latter necessarily lead to the former?

You're still dealing at levels of abstraction too far away from an actual product. At a distance, all these things are similar, but up close they are quite different.

How would you "factor in" ebay and twitter into one number that made any sense at all?

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