Ask HN: What is my company doing wrong?
My startup, MarksMenus.com, has been growing a product in beta for about a year now. It started as a side project, but I've devoted myself to it full-time for the past 5 months.
I submitted a "Rate my startup" entry yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1693274) and got some good feedback, but very little criticism.
This is pretty typical of the feedback I've received all along (i.e., "nice. great idea!") but despite this I feel like our product has been very slow to get traction. I'm looking for critical feedback on why.
Possible reasons, in my mind:
1) It just takes a lot of time. We're on the right track and simply need to patiently move forward.
2) Poor execution (please point out specific deficiencies).
3) Memphis (our location and current target market) is too small.
4) Missing market (we're simply wrong in thinking there's a need for this).
Other ideas?
http://marksmenus.com
38 comments
[ 640 ms ] story [ 3873 ms ] threadThere is a difference between providing something that seems interesting and cool and actually making a point of frustration go away.
In my opinion, it's highly likely that your app doesn't solve any real problem that people have right now. It's executed well, it's clear at what it provides, but it is unclear as to why this is a benefit to me as a user.
1) For consumers outside of NY and SF (which seem to be covered by menupages.com), there is no searchable menu database. Since their acquisition by NY Magazine, menupages appears to have little/no growth plans.
2) For restaurateurs, we aim to solve the difficulty of getting menu content online in a conventional way by providing simple, free menu content management.
Point number 1 can be difficult to see for folks outside of the top few major metro areas, but there is honestly no other solution currently in place if you want to search for "salmon in downtown Denver".
2) How many restaurateurs are active users?
Restaurateur response in Memphis has been okay: 5 paying customers at $30/month and 10-15 that are non-paying but have entered their own menus and participate in discussions.
Most of the activity and content submissions have been from diners/foodies.
A pain point is the identification of the problem a specific customer has to which you can apply a solution that removes this problem.
In identifying the pain point, you need to validate the entire scope from the user's perspective - their entire perspective.
What I'm trying to say is that you need to be very, very clear on what benefit you are bringing to the user, what other options they have, and most importantly whether or not the "pain point" is worth their investment in finding a solution.
I say the last point because I fear it may be directly applicable to you and your situation, and you even provide the evidence to support this in your comment.
Ask yourself this question: Why doesn't menupages.com appear to be seizing the growth opportunity?
I don't have the answer for that question, but in order to be successful, you need to confirm that the answer is not - in any way - related to the market, or lack of one.
It is highly possible that getting menu content online is just not enough of a problem for enough people to be worth investing in the solution you have developed. I know I eat out a great deal, yet see no use for this particular function beyond casual knowledge. (i.e. if I couldn't find a menu, I'd probably just go to the restaurant anyway).
I think, honestly, you should backtrack to the start point here and go through the process of nailing the customer identification process. It's very possible that my hunch is incorrect, but you need to find out - exactly - how if you are to be successful here.
Good Luck.
I still believe we're onto something, but you strike right at the heart of what we need to do to make sure. Thanks.
Because of this, we recently added a new feature where "foodies" can recommend restaurants and dishes to make it much more effective to browse area restaurants.
Would a feature like this make you any more likely to use the service?
Why stay only at Memphis? Why not the wikipedia of restaurants menus?
Cheers
For me to ever actually come to this site specifically (and risk missing out on good info from another site), I would need a strong reason to do so. An example would be, a blog where you guys go "undercover" and review restaurants. Or where you have a funny twist of some sort, or maybe take a strong POV.
Or maybe something like: I'm a vegetarian, so maybe every reviewer enters their dietary constraints or preferences, so I can search for people "like me" and see where they are eating and what they like.
Lastly, until I read the reviews her, I wasn't even clear that this was providing searchable menus, it looks like another review site. The primary point to use Google still applies. If the restaurant has a main website, I'd rather go there. If they host their menu with you, Google should fine it.
Good suggestions re: SEO and social features. Thanks!
I'd focus on a few major markets and work hard to get as many menus up as possible. People are always looking for free advertisements and having their menu online is one form. I'd push that as much as possible. Since this is your full time effort, you may need to spend money on marketing to get the ball rolling. Perhaps enter the menu's yourself (or hire a VA to do it) and then drop the restaurant a note saying that their menu is now online and they can make changes at this website for free.
Other ideas, perhaps white label it to newspapers and/or city websites? In San Diego, there is a dining guide section at signonsandiego.com and this would fit into what they are doing. They also have someone who is doing reviews weekly, which could now include populating the full menu.
Some things that you could try:
1. Add more data (restaurant phone numbers, email, do they have take aways, do they have a delivery service, do they have kid friendly menus etc)
2. Why not categorize the restaurants by the food type? (Italian, Indian, Chinese etc)
3. More photographs - why not contact the restaurant owners and get photos of their restaurants, foods etc?
4. Promotions - Sign up with restaurants and promote one restaurant (or even one dish from a particular restaurant) a day. A coupon that gives big discount (50% +). You get more visitors to your site and the restaurant gets more biz
Good luck.
1. It doesn't look particularly good, visually.
2. It's not immediately clear what it does. I just saw a list of recipes, so I assume it's yet another recipe site (there are 1000s).
3. After making the effort to dive in further, the "restaurants tab" seems to give me a random map with some random restaurants. I don't get it: what does the site do for me?
4. This is a startup about local restaurants, right? Local is very, very hard. And restaurant reviews just aren't very compelling, particularly because the few reviews I looked at where pretty meh, not really worth reading, quite honestly. "Seven dollar lunches -- including soda and tax -- served in about seven minutes have made Celtic Crossing an incredibly popular Memphis lunch stop." -> booooring, and not different from restaurant reviews I can read in 100 other places. I think you're on the wrong track. Sorry to be harsh.
Re: the reviews, we're actually trying to differentiate from other websites by offering "recommendations" instead of "reviews". For example, when I'm simply looking for a place to eat lunch today I don't necessarily want to read pages and pages of long-winded exposition (i.e., reviews) -- I simply want those in the know (local foodies) to point me in the right direction.
What do you think of that approach?
The team currently consists of tech/business talent -- no designers. And it shows.
I think this is the wrong question. The right question is 'what can my company do better?'. In your case, there is not much value-add over a google search. Tell me where I can get 2 for 1 pizza right now, who makes the best lasagne, give me coupons, loyalty schemes, 'say marksmenus.com sent you' calls to action, 'do you like ramen? try these 3 local joints' features. Bury yourself deeper into both the restaurants and users. Your app is good....it could be better.
To make your site create a pull, you could have users register and identify themselves at the restaurant for a free give-away or a discount. Then the restaurant could upload the details of what you had and paid, to a password protected area. It will be a history of my personal spending, what I liked and where. Reward the heavy users etc etc.
Build a social network of foodies, would be foodies and the folks who feed these foodies.
Have you figured out yet why menupages.com and allmenus.com have a lot of traffic, but your website don't.
Their websites rock on search engines, but your website is nowhere to be found.
I search for restaurants a lot and I never saw your website before this thread. Mostly, I go to Google and search for "$cityName restaurants" or "$restaurantName menu". This is where you want your website to rank, and this is what is going to bring you tons of free traffic.
I went through your website, and figured that search engines can not crawl 99% of your website's content.
Your website has a nice idea, product and content; but inefficient design in terms of SEO. I see that with a lot of startups. SEO is not something that you can just get it done from a consultant at a later stage. It has to be built right in to the product, your product/website should have a Search Engine friendly structure and design.
I have years of experience building SEO friendly websites and web applications. We leverage search engines to get traction and tons of free traffic. I can help you with SEO. Contact me at ravish at realgeek.com