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Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

soshiku.com

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Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#51

Post by bazookaaa »

asmosoinio wrote: post #46

The layout fails on Google Chrome. It shows the "Simple Assignment Tracking" etc. chapters each on separate vertical space, and "Partner Up" goes below "Sign up" and "Take the Tour"-buttons. Yes, I blame Chrome and not your site. Update: I find the images on http://soshiku.com/tour a bit too big -- the page is really big right now (i.e. lots of pixels). Lots to scroll even on a 1920x1200 resolution. An me nagging abo…

Thanks for the feedback. I'll make the tour multi-page. Strange that it doesn't work in Chrome but works fine in Safari. Sure wish I had a PC so I can debug in both Chrome and IE!

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#52

Post by _b8r0 »

bazookaaa wrote: post #33
aneesh wrote: post #27

If you'd have said "review my app", I would've said it's awesome. Great job. But the moment you call it a startup, I have to ask how you make money. So, how do you plan to make money? Students are poor, and cheap, and I'm not sure ads would fit it even if you had the traffic.

You're right, I should have used "web app" instead. There are ads (which doesn't hurt to have), but I'm thinking of other means of monetization. Thanks for the feedback.

both orib and steveplace have good suggestions that I'd like to expand on.

For study notes, I think an Amazon affiliate model would probably work best. Ebay would be tempting (i.e. potentially cheaper) but likely to throw up less relevant results.

As for packaging up and selling to schools - great, but even greater would be to provide schools with their own hosted version instead. They set up a CNAME off their domain pointed at a hosted version and students can work within their own schools. This would also work for colleges.

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#53

Post by aneesh »

steveplace wrote: post #48
bazookaaa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I should have used "web app" instead. There are ads (which doesn't hurt to have), but I'm thinking of other means of monetization. Thanks for the feedback.

You could sell study guides based off what homework they are saving.

No, then you're in the content business. And students won't like you for profiting off their work.

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#54

Post by aneesh »

orib wrote: post #49
bazookaaa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I should have used "web app" instead. There are ads (which doesn't hurt to have), but I'm thinking of other means of monetization. Thanks for the feedback.

A suggestion and a possible monetization idea - don't sell to students. Make schools your target. They buy a copy of your app and put it on their servers. Make it possible for teachers to push out assignments to it. It also makes the thing actually useful for me -- I don't want to have to remember to add the assignments to it myself. I already know what my assignments are and I don't have time to type them into yet a…

+10 if I could. This is much better than selling to students. I know a couple startups selling to schools, and there are difficulties there too (like actually closing the deal), but if you want to monetize, this strategy is worth a shot.

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#56

Post by bigthboy »

I think its a very good concept and, from my personal research with my own start-up, an industry with a lot of potential for growth. The question is, what is it that will seperate you out specifically from the rest of these CMS and similar systems? I'm not just talking about Blackboard or other enterprise only systems, there are a growing amount of these free/open-source systems. Also, how do you expect to reach your audience. The internet is big and even advertising about it on the side of Facebook or some other place isn't going to get that many people. (Most of the time students aren't going to opt to go out of there way to setup something like this.)

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#57

Post by Joseph_K »

bazookaaa wrote: post #16
Joseph_K wrote: post #12

Very clean interface, the app works smothly, etc. BUT This is not useful to me as a student if I have to enter all of my assignments manually. If I know what to enter, why do I need to be reminded? If there were some way to import assignments and classes from somewhere else, then it would be very useful. I don't know how feasible that would be, but there's no way I'd use Soshiku without that feature.

That's why I made it so users can add assignments via email or SMS. So when they're in class, for example, they can add it from their phone and not to have to worry about it.

That's a definite step in the right direction, but I think it's inadequate. As it is, I know what my assignments are without entering anything, ever. What exactly would compel me to start entering all my assignments manually? Other than the fact that I can do it with a very shiny app?

Re: Ask YC: Please review my first startup, Soshiku

#58

Post by asmosoinio »

bazookaaa wrote: post #51
asmosoinio wrote: post #46

The layout fails on Google Chrome. It shows the "Simple Assignment Tracking" etc. chapters each on separate vertical space, and "Partner Up" goes below "Sign up" and "Take the Tour"-buttons. Yes, I blame Chrome and not your site. Update: I find the images on http://soshiku.com/tour a bit too big -- the page is really big right now (i.e. lots of pixels). Lots to scroll even on a 1920x1200 resolution. An me nagging abo…

Thanks for the feedback. I'll make the tour multi-page. Strange that it doesn't work in Chrome but works fine in Safari. Sure wish I had a PC so I can debug in both Chrome and IE!

I suggest: http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

Gives full access to virtual machines with different versions of Windows and different browsers. I tried it, bought some credits and loved it.

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