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Ask YC: Feedback on my Startup please!

6 points by ericwan ↗ HN
Hi,

This is the startup that I've been developing: www.ledova.com It's a site to help people share what they like/don't like about their job and other people could get an inside scoop of what's going on in the companies.

We have just released it so we definitely need a lot of feedback (and reviews =) ) from you guys! Also, would like to get more ideas for promoting the site, and getting more reviews and users?

If anyone wants to contact me directly you can email me at eric.ctwan@gmail.com

10 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 48.4 ms ] thread
Harkins
Would you say it's more like glassdoor.com or coderific.com?
ericwan
We're focusing on more general, soft issues such as the boss, coworkers, training, etc. On that respect we're more focused on glassdoor.com than coderific.com. Meanwhile now we're focusing just on the tech industry.

Later down the road we're gonna differentiate from both of the companies, in that we're gonna build more social features. Encourage people to participate even though they're not currently looking for a job.

dkasper
What's the business model for the site? I don't even see any ads!
ericwan
Currently there're no ads on the site =) We think it's more important to attract users/content before we put on any ads or other revenue stream.
underscore
First: congratulations on getting far enough to feel comfortable sharing your work with us.

What sort of requirements do you have for email addresses? In help (/help.php) you say that users need an email address, but don't really go into specifics, which is fine. However, one of mine (message me outside the thread if you want specifics, I guess) failed as invalid when I tried to register.

The privacy policy (/privacy.php) mentions that users are encouraged to provide a corporate email address and (or?) linkedIn profile for verification. I didn't see any way to provide this when registering, nor do I see any way to provide this when I go to write a review. If you require this later (e.g., after I attempt to submit my review), it might be nice to say so somewhere. If not, it might be nice to remove that line from the privacy policy, at least until you add that bit of functionality, as it seems a trifle confusing, at least to me.

You're probably planning this already, but some sort of information on the number of reviews for a company in your company list would be nice (or a way to filter out companies that don't have any reviews).

Do you plan on encouraging users to give an overall rating in some easily displayed/read format for their employer (e.g.: the stars of coderific)? Most of the content, of course, is in the text, but I find myself missing the summary stars/number when skimming.

ericwan
Thank you for the feedback!

Just added you on AIM: qcericwan about the email.

Corp email and LinkedIn account: Yes it's on the roadmap but we haven't added it yet. Thanks for telling me.

number of reviews for a company: that too, but I would like to have more reviews before I add that information to the site.

Just added the stars too. =)

ScottWhigham
Feedback: looks like (1) a fast way to get sued, and (2) an easy way to spend a lot of time without being able to make money. I wish you luck but I don't see a business model here. Interesting, yes, but how will you make money? I see only a few ways to make money:

* Advertising (recruiters being the likely choice) * Selling your database to recruiters

What do you see that I don't see?

Good luck though - I hope it works out for you.

ericwan
(1) If I really got sued we're be fairly big. I mean companies would only sue me if I have money to pay. Viacom wouldn't sue Youtube if Youtube wasn't acquired by Google. Who doesn't want to be Youtube? =)

(2) I haven't paid much attention to business model yet, think I'd get more users and figure out. But I am planning to have a targeted, contextual advertising model -- e.g. putting job ads of google in a google review page. =)

whleung
how come there is no user profile?