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Ask HN: Please Review my MVP - figure which entrepreneurial idea to pursue next

14 points by sandipagr ↗ HN
I wanted to get some feedback for my new web app Shapea (as in Shape Idea).

You can check it out at http://shapea.com first if you like. It would help me understand if message is clear on the webpage.

The main goal here is to help entrepreneurs validate their ideas. Shapea tries to achieve this in following ways:

- Manage your ideas (all ideas are private by default and you can track your ideas, add researched information and so on)

- Receive Feedback : the goal is to build a community where people can share ideas and have a healthy conversation around an idea. I have tried to mimic HN by using voting on ideas, voting on comments, threaded comments

- Landing/Coming Son Page : You can automatically create a landing page for each of your idea. You get a Shapea sub-domain and there is no hosting to worry about.

Plans:

- Inline Tool to edit landing page with ease(right now you can only add css to override, which sucks!)

- better analytics data (What information would you like beside page views?)

- Help promote your landing pages

TLDR: Check out http://shapea.com and let me know what do you think about it.

Thanks in advance!

15 comments

[ 0.34 ms ] story [ 26.9 ms ] thread
revorad
Interesting idea. You need to seed the site with many more ideas. A good place to start might be old Ask HN posts.
sandipagr
Thanks for the comment. Will add more ideas. Did you think the message was clear on what webapp is supposed to do?
revorad
The basic idea is clear but I'm not sure which parts of trying out an idea you will help with. There's just so much! A name for the idea/app, domain name, homepage design, A/B testing, driving traffic, email signup form, etc. So, if you know exactly what you are offering then please put up more details, maybe on another tour or examples page.

Basically, unbounce is doing the same thing but instead of selling the product as "Figure which entrepreneurial idea to pursue", they are just selling a landing page platform. It sounds boring but it's what people are searching for.

She said, "Sell them what they want, give them what they need."

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sandipagr
The goal is not to help you try out an idea. Our goal is only to help you with pre-validation. In other words, Shapea does not do any of name of idea, domain name, homepage design, A/B testing and all those. We are trying to help you decide or provide tools to help you decide which of the many ideas you have you should pursue. There are assumptions like entrepreneurs normally have lot of ideas, it's better to see if people are interested in idea first before building it ...

I am just trying to create a complete stack for idea validation.

revorad
I'm even more confused now.

Your tagline is "Create Landing Pages, collect Beta Signups and receive great Feedback so you can start your next venture with confidence."

Why do you think name, homepage design, A/B testing are not part of idea validation? If you are not A/B testing your landing pages then you may not be evaluating your idea properly.

You need to show a clear example of how one will use your app and how it is better than what people are already doing.

sandipagr
You are right A/B testing to see if people are actually signing up is totally part of idea validation.

Just so that we are on the same page, landing page is same as coming soon page, right? It is not necessarily the home page of your startup when you have actually launched? Because my goal is just coming soon pages with ability to collect beta signups.

(I hope my ESL is not the problem here.)

revorad
Landing page is a general term which people use to mean a coming soon page or home page. It's best to take its literal meaning - a page where a potential user lands.

Did you see this http://soonhere.com? It was on HN in the last few days. It is again just a "coming soon" page tool, but a 1000 times easier to use than anything else I've seen.

Basically, your concept is good but your site is a bit too abstract. Usually programmers are guilty of talking too much about features and not enough about benefits.

You can keep the abstract part as long as you add more substance. Instead of a sign up button, link to a live demo or trial. Or at least put up a video.

pbhjpbhj
Like it generally. Reminds me of brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ in form.

Typo: "a landing page for each of your idea to test" s/idea/ideas

Also, hate the logo. Not overawed with the name (ugly to me) but could settle with it.

sandipagr
I get that about logo from almost everyone. Coming up with a name is just so hard. And since I give a subdomain for each of your idea, it was necessary it's not long. Will fix the typo right away. Thanks!
palguay
I signed up and posted about a website that I have created http://microangels.in . Lets see if someone gives me any feedback

While I was entering the idea details there is a mouse over that says supports markdown, I am not familiar with markdown and I looked up Wikipedia and entered the format suggested there but the comment does not actually create a link, so some help on that input box will be useful.

sandipagr
Remove the space between ] and (