Dragdis 3 minute pitch. Feedback needed

My initial thought on this was that it needs to be a combination of self-hosted/hostable, open source and community driven. At the very least, it users should be able to control where their data is stored. Now that I see that advertising is a major component, I feel even less confident this can work.

If one of the goals is a Series A, the only way this thing works if it goes big and goes big fast and investors can be convinced on the promise of a working advertising model. If advertising is a big part of the monetization strategy, the chances of success are low. Everything would need to go right. But it's just as likely that in a few years time the company stops work on it if the numbers don't look encouraging.

The problem with being funded here and already having some eyes on a Series A, and also looking at an ad model, these are all big pressures that are placed on a startup (i.e. go big, go bust or pivot into solving another problem). It also takes the focus away from the user. Of course the idea is to build as good a product as possible. But the user is now the product and the userbase is tasked with showing enough growth potential to convince investors for more funding. The startup pressures can create conflicts of interest between users and company goals (do we need yet another company that harvests data from users as their reason for being?).

This product and the idea of it, from the outset, is about empowering users. Making their life easier. Giving them superpowers.

What gets me the most is that, technically, this is a product and an idea that doesn't require a funded startup and a cloud based service to succeed. For some products, having investors and a major push for growth is pivotal. But you could easily see a software that accomplishes the same things, but is either free and open source, or just a simple paid service or software. If the vision really is as good as you make it out to be, people should be willing to purchase it. That model is more compatible with the core concept of user empowerment.

I use a combination of pocket + bookmarks for similar use cases that dragdis solves; I like the concept of dragdis a lot (it's like pocket with better organization, plus the awesome feature of being able to save specific snippits of data).

However, I use pocket a LOT, on my Android phone, as a way to SAVE content. I'd love to replace pocket/bookmarks with dragdis (or, at least - try to) but I'd definitely need a mobile integration to make it work (via the share intent, i'd imagine).

Great product concept, I'm excited to try it and see how well it works for me!