Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

The site is terrible. I have NO idea what it's supposed to be. Github is mentioned twice, in tiny lettering.

Your blog post is what your homepage should be. If I'm a first time customer coming to your site looking at this, I close it and move on.

Lots of people leap before they have a parachute because the plebeian view is that entrepreneurs take risks. The reality is that good entrepreneurs manage their risk neurotically. It doesn't help your situation now, but always start these endeavors as night + weekend projects. Manage your risk. Test the market. Get 5 paying customers, then start thinking about quitting your full time job.

So, some feedback...

From what I gather, OpenLoop a tool for me to organize information and/or projects, generic enough to be used across many verticals and company orgs. It sounds similar to Trello or Basecamp. And that's OK. I'm not sure if my view is accurate, but that's what I feel like you're trying to sell.

"Show, don't tell". Go look at trello.com. Go look at basecamp.com/tour. As a potential customer, I want to see screenshots of the software before I signup. I want to see what's different. I'm asking myself "is this worth my time?" Show me a gif of OpenLoop in action. Or make a short screencast (with actual video of the software, not a high-level animation) and stick it right in the hero. Put up a demo at demo.openlooopz.com. Automatically wipe/reimage the account every night to keep out spam and vulgarity. Let people play with it.

Explore verticals. Are there verticals currently using OpenLoop really well? Project Managers? Nurses? Accountants? Is it really great at bug tracking? Highlight those on your website - "Project Managers use OpenLoop to Deliver Great Products", "Squash bugs quickly with OpenLoop". Build some dedicated landing pages for those verticals and buy some FB ads. Measure pageviews/signups and see who is most interested.

Testimonials or Case Studies. Talk to people currently using OpenLoop and ask them for a quote to put on your page.

Blogs. Setup a tumblr in 15 seconds and start blogging about how people are using OpenLoop. Publish guides on popular workflows. Publish ways you're different than your competitors.

Refine your copy. People generally don't read large blocks of text. I could tell you were struggling to describe your product because the first item in your FAQ is "What is a loop". Ditch the copy and show me the software.

Ditch the "Slack Meets Github" tagline. Perhaps you only used that here. But it didn't help me understand the product.

Naysayers come and go. Don't give up, but make sure you're providing if that's your role. If you're out of fuel (money), time to do a contract gig to earn some more runway. You might even have to go back to full time work and do OpenLoop on the weekends. There is no shame in that. If you can, take a 2 week break from anything OpenLoop related (perhaps a contract) and spend time with your family. You'll come back refreshed and find yourself with tons of new ideas for ways to market/advertise, new verticals to research, better copy, etc.

Best of luck to you sir!

You should spend some time watching folks use your site.

Sit down with a few friends new to this system, and silently watched them use it for two minutes. Get them to think aloud, and ask questions when they are silent to better understand what they are trying to do and what they expect. When they ask you how to do something, you ask them how they think they should do it.

I think you really need to see this for yourself. Users are often consistently blind. When you see 2 out of 3 folks struggling with the same thing, it needs to be changed.

-Is the first thing users want to see a search box? -How quickly do users figure out how to use the system for something useful? -How quickly do users figure out why loopy is better than sliced bread? -Do users struggle to find a way to get rid of the welcome message? -Are users able to progressively find the more complex features the more they use the system?

Yes, exactly this. I read a few comments here, went to your website, and then sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what your product was.

I finally broke down and created an account and was amazed by how nice the interfaces looked. I like the idea of how your project is structured, but your website really needs to do a much better job of showcasing what it is that it actually does. Maybe even start out with a nice high-res video quickly showing me what it looks like.

Very cool looking product, very poor front-page marketing. Improve the front-page marketing and start getting active in marketing yourself (through blog posts and the like) and I think you'll do fine. You're on the slow, painful "acquire users" path now. Stick with it.

The advice to "scratch your own itch" is fine if you're building a hobby project. If you intend to build a real business then doing at least some "validation" (I hate how entrepreneurs use that word, but that's beside the point) is critical.

Even just talking to 10-20 people is better than nothing. Hindsight is 20/20, but hopefully anyone reading this reply takes a moment to do that before coding anything.