131–140 of 239 posts
@pg, why dont you upgrade your design ? You have so much money . You can hire best designer . If you say,i can contribute my design to you .
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Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration fro…
If it makes you feel any better, I've held the opinion for years now that ratings are broken across most services on the web. Jeff Bezos even acknowledged as much in a famous essay of his on how the distribution of one-to-five star ratings settle over time. Still, every new service sticks to the binary thumbs-up/down model or five-star. I'm sure you probably know the pitfalls of each, so good luck to you. I'm hoping…
I think you're talking about Yahoo and the J-curve, couldn't find anything by Bezos.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, we went through a phase of pitching ourselves as "Disqus for ratings" but the problem was it's hit or miss with people.
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Thanks, I'll give it a shot. I don't believe I've tried that particular wording yet.
One thing I would suggest is when you mention it, have a link ready with an email signup so people like me who are intrigued can easily sign up to get a mail when the beta releases. The name seems fairly popular at least a google search for "Tinj" or "Tinj movie reviews" didn't work. (Although the hacker news thread came up with the second search)
http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketpl...
"DogVacay is an online marketplace that links dog owners with passionate dog care providers who open up their own home as an alternative to the traditional cage-oriented kennel."
The social network for pets is actually not such a bad idea. I've got friends who build one in a niche: - only in italian - only for one race of dog and it so many users I could not believe it. It's kind of funny and depressing reading them: they write in the first person as it was the dog talking. Stuff like "hello my friends, today my master gave me a bath". Wow... :) (I won't link it, as they seem to be very jealo…
Free startup idea for the day. 3D design software for the masses. It seems to cover lots of the bases in the article. I feel the need for this right now (just this weekend I wanted to print out a plastic part to fix the broken piece on my lawn mower). 3D printing seems to be an up-and-coming area. The hardware for this is still being perfected, but the software seems further behind. There are lots of competitors maki…
The main problem I see is that development is going to be hugely expensive. It's an inherently complex problem domain. You need people who know hardware and 3D modelling. And you need people who can design UIs. There's a reason AutoCAD costs so much!
Someone will do it eventually. But it will be interesting to see how they are able to make it affordable and still make money. I know about Tinkercad but don't know what their plans are.
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Can you explain, in one sentence, what it is that you're building that's different from existing movie ratings sites? Try this template: "it's like Rotten Tomatoes, except ..." It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate on 3 axes instead of just 1. It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate the movie by answering questions about what parts you liked. It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except your ratings are automatically po…
It's certain that the problem is me, and my poor communication skills, I never blame the audience. Describing what we're doing and illustrating the pain points aren't the same thing. How about this: Tinj is a rating system that lets people externalize opinions about movies in context so they can receive comprehensive recommendations. See? Told you I still suck at this. Here's a problem we're solving: Given that opini…
This is what I suggest you do. It might cost you ~$50 or so. Go to a coffee shop like Starbucks and offer someone to buy them their coffee in exchange for some feedback on the "new website you're building". Try to find normals (not super technical folks, unless that's your target audience). Explain to them what you're building, let them play with the site (hey this is also a nice UX test), take your notes whatever but in the end, ask them to explain to you what your site does. Maybe if you do this with 10 or so people you might see a pattern emerging (bonus: get pretty good feedback on product too).
I am not saying this will work, but this will not be a waste if the people you talk to are anything close to your target audience.
P.S. What Emmett is saying above is to give him a one sentence description that brings him as close as possible to cloning your site. Also, do you really need "externalize opinions"?
I'm wondering if the reasoning that you should build a startup based on your own needs is applicable to ideas that have already been solved abroad and will not be imported in your country for some time. We don't live all in the Silicon Valley and people feel the same needs all over the world. Let's take the Stripe example. I live in Italy and I would use their product right now. Too bad they are not here and will not…
This friction also works in reverse, though. As a startup you have a hard time to get the deals with the movie industry, while Netflix already has the connections.
It is not obvious so much that actually there are several social networks for pet owners with apparently hunderds of thousands (registered) users. There is one even in Hungary where I live (only 10million people live in Hungary), but here are some english sites also:
http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworks/tp/pet-social-n...
Yes probably this is not a huge market, but some people make some money off of this.
So, yes, it is totally not obvious what startup ideas are good or bad.
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It's certain that the problem is me, and my poor communication skills, I never blame the audience. Describing what we're doing and illustrating the pain points aren't the same thing. How about this: Tinj is a rating system that lets people externalize opinions about movies in context so they can receive comprehensive recommendations. See? Told you I still suck at this. Here's a problem we're solving: Given that opini…
I feel your pain. It's hard to find the balance between saying what problem you're solving vs how you're solving it. This is what I suggest you do. It might cost you ~$50 or so. Go to a coffee shop like Starbucks and offer someone to buy them their coffee in exchange for some feedback on the "new website you're building". Try to find normals (not super technical folks, unless that's your target audience). Explain to…
I've more or less mastered the 1-minute demo, hard not to since I've done it a thousand times (and a thousand different ways too). Trust me, I used to suck a lot more.
As for the "externalize opinions" line, just trying something new.