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My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#71

Post by thenayr »

Upon visiting your site for the first time (I went straight to the link and cheated), I am entirely overwhelmed and confused. 10 minutes in and I've yet to discover exactly what it is your site aims to help me with.

Things that stand out:

Why is the front-page a list of blog posts written by you asking for funds? I can't think of a worse way to welcome users to your site. Not to mention I haven't a clue what I'm looking at..

A "we need money" page. Begging for money is hardly a way to get someone interested in funding your company. This page is highly redundant and the Paypal donation button is also extremely tacky.

An @gmaildotcom email doesn't exactly come off as being professional. It doesn't take more than a couple seconds to setup an email for your own domain and IMHO just looks much more professional.

The big sidebar links on the right. What are they? Popular links? Favorite links? I've still yet to figure that out.

Overall I'm having a hard time seeing exactly where all the hard work and effort towards this site is going. Not to be rude, but it's certainly not towards the design and usability of the site. The site itself is something I could throw up in a day with any decent CMS (drupal comes to mind immediately). It seems most of your effort has gone towards convincing yourself that you have something amazing on your hands and trying to convey that through... begging?

Upon visiting your twitter I was greeted with the message "http://wikitorrents.org/ for all your BitTorrent wiki needs." That really doesn't mean anything at all. Not to mention it looks like this site has been around for over a year now. I'd expect there to be at least some signs of growth at this point. Why would someone invest in a year old site that hasn't more than a few pages of content? Maybe I'm missing something here?

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#72

Post by user24 »

There's a huge difference between "3000 uniques a day" and "3000 uniques in a single day". What's your average traffic per day this month?

But more importantly, there's really no necessary correlation between traffic and value. (examples: wikileaks, geocities, cuil, somafm, and, well I mean just browse through TC's deadpool)

Can you instantly answer what your business model is? How much revenue you expect to have in the next 6 months? What your competitors are doing, and how your service differs? Who your users are? And what the next iteration of your product will be?

If you have to think about those things, you're not ready to be acquired.

(disclaimer: I'm talking out of my ass based on what I've read not what I've learned.)

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#73

Post by gmatty »

citizenkeys wrote: post #48
cheald wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but unless you're working 3 jobs to cover food and rent, you can work hard on an idea without seed money. Stop watching TV (seriously, unplug it and put it in a closet). Stop playing video games (same deal). Stop going out barhopping. Devote your evenings and lunch breaks to working on your idea. You have plenty of time that you're not utilizing. You'll find that most startup founders - especially new ent…

I don't watch tv, don't play video games, nor do I drink or go "barhopping". To paraphrase paul graham (yet again), you can't realistically run a start-up and work a day job. If you do, then you're not really running a start-up. And if you don't work a day-job, then eventually you're likely to run out of money until the start-up gets profitable.

dont stop. dont make excuses. don't doubt yourself. They are all a waste of time. Focus on the end goal and methodology for getting there. If you really want this, move in with housemates or figure out what you need to to save a little so that you can self fund for a while. Also figure out some reasonable numbers as to why you can make money doing your startup and how long you think it will take to pull it off. Double those numbers. Otherwise, you will need to be cannonball in the chest convincing to any investor worth pulling in to fund your idea. Find ways to check your gut instinct with numbers. Understand the inputs to the numbers and understand the trends in the numbers. Own the pain, own the glory.

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

noahc wrote: post #36
citizenkeys wrote: post #31

My final comment about the value proposition before I go to Thursday NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences ( http://www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife/ ): The value proposition of WikiTorrents.org is that you can easily find a continually evolving list of videos about whatever topic you're researching, no matter how specific or obscure the topic and no matter what sites actually have the videos.

If you can do this, I'd use the website. Maybe it's a pivot point. Here's what I'd like to see: 1. A list of every video related to Gary V, Seth Godin, Alexis, etc, on the web. Start with big names and then tag these videos. 2. Now that they are tagged you can start to search for SaaS and I can watch everything ever said about SaaS on the internet. I like this idea, but the website is less than ideal. You need to foc…

[deleted]

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#75

Post by ABrandt »

citizenkeys wrote: post #38
ABrandt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it simply, your value proposition doesn't exist. Maybe after years of seeding the site with content, but right now I cannot "find a continually evolving list about whatever topic." In order to gain traction among users, you must provide me value _now_. I know you might feel like you're getting beat up in this thread, but every comment I've read has been constructive criticism. Take it in stride and don't disco…

The paradox, as is frequently explained, is that many of the most successful sites are those that people spend almost no time on. Lets say you go to google, find a search result, and click to leave google. If you do all that within a coule seconds, then google was successful even though you spent almost no time on google. This is similar to that. Remember, too, to paraphrase paul graham for at least the fourth time i…

citizenkeys, how can I can contact you? I feel like you're missing some key points--I want to help you.

You remind me of myself a couple years back. If you're willing to give it a shot, I could probably save you a lot of time and hassle...abrandt@bradley.edu

Re: My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?

#76

Post by slouch »

citizenkeys wrote: post #23

I think many of you are missing the forest for the trees. If the idea were profitable, I wouldn't be looking for seed money. If the implementation of my idea were very refined, then it would be a mature product and not a working prototype. The idea now is a working prototype of a site where users can create lists of videos. That's all the idea is supposed to be. Right now, it's very rough around the edges with lots o…

the average computer user doesn't know what a torrent is, and a google or bing video search is easier for them everytime.
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