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HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

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Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#31

Post by mwilkison »

http://www.zerodb.io/

ZeroDB is an end-to-end encrypted database that lets you operate on data while it's encrypted.

Demo video: https://vimeo.com/128047786

Question: We want to sell to large enterprises (financial services, healthcare, saas providers, etc.). The common advice is to start with SMBs/startups and get traction that way before going upmarket to enterprises. How can we balance that with the fact that what SMBs are asking us for is very different from what enterprises have told us they'd like in a fully-baked product?

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#33

Post by ksks »

Hi, Kevin and Sam,

I am the founder of https://ManualTest.io. My app automates manual testing. It generate and run integration tests by recording and replaying users' actions on their websites. Manual testing is still being used everyday (by developers or not), so this could be a huge time saver for them.

My app is recently available on the Chrome Web Store, it only got a few users, despite having quite positive feedbacks. My question is, I am not sure the lack of users is because (1) I haven't done enough marketing/SEO/etc to get it in front of people, or (2) because I need to build more features before users would find it useful enough to try, or (3) it is just not something users want.

If its (1), I should stop coding and start focusing on letting people know about my product. If it is (2), I have a few very useful features that are still waiting to be done, but they could take at least weeks to complete. Without enough initial users, I am not sure which features users want most, or if the current set of features is enough for now, so I should focus on letting users know about it (so it is (1)).

Thanks!

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#34

Post by yaraher »

Hey guys,

We are CodePicnic (codepicnic.com), a platform for sharing, running and showcasing code through a browser. We help people and business improve their demos, APIs documentation, or anything that needs for their users to run and try some code online.

We'd love to improve our "getting there" process. We've been interacting with users here in Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt and other sites, and getting better and increasing our usage, but still we feel is not enough right now. Our first users love us, the service and the potential, but perhaps there's something glaring we aren't doing well in order to be more well known. Is a long process, we get it, but the more we learn, the better.

I also believe this is an important matter that many other startups would love to learn about.

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#36

Post by acallwood »

Hey fellas,

ACe here from Painless1099 (www.painless1099.com). We automate tax withholding/filing for anyone earning 1099 income (think: freelancers and Uber drivers.)

We're thinking through growth specifically right now and are chewing on whether to go the B2B route or the B2C route. Different implications for both regarding scale and revenue obviously. We'd be stoked on a bit of help figuring out which to tackle first and how to make headway!

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#38

Post by mburst »

Live Dota - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamtol.li...

About a year ago I created an eSports app that lets fans of the game DotA follow and watch their favorite teams live and on the go. It's been super fun seeing my side project grow and have users in the community volunteer to help with designs and language translations.

The biggest tournament of the year (http://www.dota2.com/international/announcement/) is coming in a few months and I would love to talk about different ways to capitalize on this.

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#39

Post by wuliwong »

Hi Kevin and Sam,

We are working on a new version of http://www.muusical.com. The new version is a significant change. It is going to be a free Spotify that is powered by a crowdsourcing platform where users add the music and meta data.

I would love feed back about a strategy for approaching investors who are wary about music startups.

If you're interested, read more here too: https://angel.co/muusical

Thanks!

Re: HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam

#40

Post by darienbc »

memaroo.com

Memaroo is a web research dashboard, designed to make iterative web searching organized and more efficient. Memaroo records your search history into different projects, which can be accessed from anywhere -- so you can search for things on your phone and then continue your research later on your desktop. Projects can also be shared with other users, allowing collaborative searching and result sharing.

Memaroo is an improvement to an established search paradigm. But people are comfortable in that paradigm, despite its flaws.

How can I get potential users to break their existing search habits and try something new and possibly better?

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