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Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

customerfind.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#2
STEPS TO GET YOUR PAID ACCOUNT

1. REGISTER ON THE WEBSITE

2. WHEN YOU GET TO "STEP 3", WHICH ASKS YOU FOR PAYMENT, POST IN THE THREAD WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

My new website is CustomerFind.com.

Remember my web app HipHopGoblin.com? Well, about a month ago, I wrote up a blog post detailing what I had learned and posted it up on HN [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824905]. In part, I explained how I had used Twitter to promote the website: I scanned for artists mentioning certain keywords, and then auto-followed them. This got me a lot of exposure, and a lot of gratitude from people who were glad to find the site.

Then I got contacted by the CEO of a web site, asking for me to sell him my scripts. "Sure," I said. "I can package them nicely and include the MySQL db-creating scripts."

"No, no," he refused. "I want a hosted solution." And thus was borne CustomerFind.com.

After a month or so of work, this is iteration #2 in my startup, this time having a paying customer from day 1. And I'm offering a 7-day free trial for all HN readers. Just reply to this post with your email address and I'll hook you up.

All feedback and criticism welcome, as well as suggestions for future directions of the product. I'm thinking of evolving it into a CRM tool, so you can communicate with the people who have followed you back (and are clearly interested in your product). But I don't want to write it unless I know that many will pay me for it ;)

Again, all comments welcome. Thanks for taking a look.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#3

STEPS TO GET YOUR PAID ACCOUNT 1. REGISTER ON THE WEBSITE 2. WHEN YOU GET TO "STEP 3", WHICH ASKS YOU FOR PAYMENT, POST IN THE THREAD WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS My new website is CustomerFind.com. Remember my web app HipHopGoblin.com? Well, about a month ago, I wrote up a blog post detailing what I had learned and posted it up on HN [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824905 ]. In part, I explained how I had used Twit…

doesn't twitter ban people for doing this?

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#4
post #3

STEPS TO GET YOUR PAID ACCOUNT 1. REGISTER ON THE WEBSITE 2. WHEN YOU GET TO "STEP 3", WHICH ASKS YOU FOR PAYMENT, POST IN THE THREAD WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS My new website is CustomerFind.com. Remember my web app HipHopGoblin.com? Well, about a month ago, I wrote up a blog post detailing what I had learned and posted it up on HN [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824905 ]. In part, I explained how I had used Twit…

doesn't twitter ban people for doing this?

Good question. In my experience, no. There are many other apps that do the same thing, and this one is especially geared towards finding high-quality keywords. In fact, we only follow 25/day, so that we can slowly figure out which keywords work and which ones don't. The ultimate goal is to follow keywords that convert at 20%+, which is easily doable.

That being said, Twitter reserves the right to do whatever they want at any time. But this is non-aggressive, and we're discouraging "spammy" behavior.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#6
post #3

STEPS TO GET YOUR PAID ACCOUNT 1. REGISTER ON THE WEBSITE 2. WHEN YOU GET TO "STEP 3", WHICH ASKS YOU FOR PAYMENT, POST IN THE THREAD WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS My new website is CustomerFind.com. Remember my web app HipHopGoblin.com? Well, about a month ago, I wrote up a blog post detailing what I had learned and posted it up on HN [ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824905 ]. In part, I explained how I had used Twit…

doesn't twitter ban people for doing this?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#7
post #5

Wow. Your website is a very blatant ripoff of Basecamp's design. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but yours is a little over the line.

Why in the world would my comment get down-voted? The layout and design elements are practically identical.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#9
post #5

Wow. Your website is a very blatant ripoff of Basecamp's design. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but yours is a little over the line.

I have to agree, it's a bit overly similar (mostly because of the top bar). However, I trust that Zack will be going back to that design and updating it over the next few days. A design is a pretty easy thing to change, and I don't see anything morally wrong with using someone else's design as a starting point.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my new startup. [Free account for HN community]

#10
post #7
post #5

Wow. Your website is a very blatant ripoff of Basecamp's design. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but yours is a little over the line.

Why in the world would my comment get down-voted? The layout and design elements are practically identical.

did you look at http://basecamphq.com ?

The only similarity is the top header black bar.

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