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Stop building apps no one wants

launchsky.com

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Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#101

Post by vlokshin »

hiddenstage wrote: post #98
vlokshin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry! If the product was fully built, we'd of course let you browse. But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)

Do users have to be registered to vote? How will you bring in the non-developer person to sign up to LaunchSky? If I was building a SaaS type app, this would be awesome because my target market would actually be voting. But any other type of app I'd like the avg consumer to be voting.

We'll probably split support in some way.

NOT SIGNED UP: likes/up-vote; something basic SIGNED UP: the above + "i'd use it" + feedback; still have to figure out how to effectively incentivize these users and keep them coming back for more.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#102

Post by trotsky »

It seems to me that there is a significant group of users out there that are web app groupies for lack of a better word who will more or less express an interest in anything as long as it is pre-launch or early in the launch cycle. Since these folks are usually not your actual target market, their feedback is pretty worthless unless you're just looking for whether you fit neatly inside a web x.0 box. It seems like a website where people posted ideas for websites would be almost guaranteed to have a high population of these folks.

Of course I'm probably not your target market so my feedback is probably pretty worthless.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#103

Post by caleywoods »

vlokshin wrote: post #87
unreal37 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree about needing incentives/rewards to get people voting. You are the counterargument to your own comment. You just commented on this idea here on HN, for free, with no incentive and no reward. People like us often love to see new ideas, and comment on them and join in a discussion with the founders. "This is great", "I don't think this will work", "this would be better if...", "what are you planning to…

Thanks! I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side. It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle. edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.

I commented below regarding this issue of voting for free and it not costing them anything.

I feel like, after reading your comments parent and your reply that I'm replying to, I feel that it might be beneficial to have each user on the site have a weight calculated from various criteria (that probably doesn't exist yet).

Firstly let's assume that submitted ideas have a lifecycle, something like this:

    Inception (posting to the site)
    Green-lit (threshold of submitters required Yes votes)
    Lack of Interest (threshold not met)
    Released  (product launch)
Let's say a project reaches Release (from our above defined lifecycle), all users who voted "Yes, I would use this" for the project might need to verify they've used the app or risk having their weight ratio degraded (thus making future "Yes, I would use this" votes count for less). If the project they 'backed' fails then there is no change to the weight.

This solves one side of the problem for idea submitters. They should be able to view something like an "Interest Index" which takes into account the weight of users who have stated they would use it.

Eventually if I clicked "Yes, I'd use this" on 40 projects and 20 of them reached release and yet I never followed through with using them, my vote might not count for squat any longer.

Just a thought.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#104

Post by atte »

hiddenstage wrote: post #98
vlokshin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry! If the product was fully built, we'd of course let you browse. But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)

Do users have to be registered to vote? How will you bring in the non-developer person to sign up to LaunchSky? If I was building a SaaS type app, this would be awesome because my target market would actually be voting. But any other type of app I'd like the avg consumer to be voting.

This is a great question. Our primary crowd will initially be tech-focused, so if you pitched an idea where your target market is restaurants, you're not going to get people from the community clicking "I'd use it." That said, you would probably still get some useful feedback (other apps in the space, technical challenges, etc), just like you would by posting here. Later down the road, we might be able to offer access to other markets by posting to our site (e.g. select by a market category when you post, we push out your post to a group representing that market).

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#105

Post by maxwin »

hiddenstage wrote: post #90
vlokshin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no site to browse. It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

I think you should be more clear that it is a launch page on the first screen rather than after clicking the sign up button. It sort of seems like a Quora-esque "you must sign up to see more" type of thing right now.

I agree. I was kind of annoyed when I thought I needed to sign up to browse the page and of course I didn't.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#106

Post by vlokshin »

trotsky wrote: post #102

It seems to me that there is a significant group of users out there that are web app groupies for lack of a better word who will more or less express an interest in anything as long as it is pre-launch or early in the launch cycle. Since these folks are usually not your actual target market, their feedback is pretty worthless unless you're just looking for whether you fit neatly inside a web x.0 box. It seems like a…

I wouldn't call that worthless; it's something worth thinking about.

We have a ton of thinking/testing still left to do as we flesh out exactly what the product will be. Gaming/aggregating good vs. bad support ("I'd use it") is going to be crucial.

While traffic from said groupies would be nice, we'd like the actual feedback to be a bit more useful than a group of people marking "I'd use it". A reward system for making the right picks of apps that actually make it (whatever that definition of "make it" ends up being) is probably a worthwhile thing for us to think through.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#107

Post by frozenport »

rplnt wrote: post #31
shizamdamnit wrote: post #28

I can't ever see myself using a service like this for fear of somebody developing my idea first. Many of the good 'apps' out there quickly generate copy-cat apps, this will just take the originators out of the loop :)

Good apps generate copy-cats, not ideas of good apps. Ideas are worthless. Everyone has them.

Good ideas are not worthless.

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#108

Post by vlokshin »

mosselman wrote: post #95
nollidge wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confusion = good launch page?

I agree this is so annoying. I love the idea though... I have a good idea -> I pitch it and then 100 people start building my idea too. Nice! Now I don't think having an idea is the same as executing it well, but I could imagine people being hesitant. Oh and because of the annoying landing page I vow to never to use your site, nice try.

Sorry to have lost you, but thank you for the feedback!

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#109

Post by vlokshin »

caleywoods wrote: post #103
vlokshin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side. It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle. edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.

I commented below regarding this issue of voting for free and it not costing them anything. I feel like, after reading your comments parent and your reply that I'm replying to, I feel that it might be beneficial to have each user on the site have a weight calculated from various criteria (that probably doesn't exist yet). Firstly let's assume that submitted ideas have a lifecycle, something like this: Inception (post…

I definitely like the idea/approach.

It may complicate the initial product, but we could always keep this less exposed to end users (or at least the voters/reviewers).

Thanks for the awesome feedback / insight / thought -- I really appreciate you taking the time to think though it for us!

Re: Stop building apps no one wants

#110

Post by danso »

This concept has three competing flaws:

1. The most obvious: how do you prevent your ideas from being stolen?

2. If your idea is vague ("A site where people can post Hipstamatic-like photos, but easily share them!") then you will get a lukewarm response, even if the actual idea (and implementation) is great.

3. If you spend the time fleshing out your idea into something that excites users...then you've committed enough resources to not need a site like this. Also, see #1.

In other words, users are at a catch-22 here. Your site wants to keep them from launching half-baked ideas by providing them with audience opinion. And yet, in order to get validation, a user will have to show off a well-baked idea.

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