HN Explorer

Attract Investors with Your Website

4 points by ryansam ↗ HN
We're having a hard time getting investors for a hardware/music startup.

Our startup, aloom, is a smart light that visualizes the emotion in audio (music, gaming, tv) to create more engaging experiences, controlled by an app and its smart onboard firmware.

We have finished our first MVP of the app and have our smart light (the hardware) close to being ready for beta testing (like in a week)

My question is how important is having a good website that tells you about the product and our team working on it? Do investors really take the time of viewing a website? Are there better ways of getting investors interested in hardware startups than using a website as a representation of who we are and what we do?

The website is at https://aloom.io

3 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 14.5 ms ] thread
mtmail
I tried two browsers. In the first the animation stops, never finishes. In the second I can reach the main screen, click on 'Product' and the page goes black for 15 seconds. I see the links to blog posts and read https://aloom.medium.com/the-neon-ocean-35016cf2a4d9 (loads fast). Go back to the website and click 'Product' near the end of the page because I still don't understand what the product is. Page goes black for 15 seconds again

"Our smart light visualizes the emotion in audio to create more engaging experiences, controlled by our app.

Using neuroscience, we create content-tailored visual ambiance. This multi-sensory immersion helps you feel more connected to the moment."

Now I see a youtube video thumbnail but I have to scroll very carefully because a bit too high or low and the page goes either completely white or black. Actually, no I can't click the thumbnail, that's frustrating.

Sorry, it's an advanced websites and usually I would've given up after 1 minute. Aha, there's more links below 'Explore Synesthesia'. Click on 'Pitch-Perfect Chromesthesia' which goes to a study https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/fmea/rpme/2019/000000... "Musical phenomena where photisms were elicited consisted of instrument fingering, conducting musical scores and musical sound when the pitch was know" What?

Sorry, I still don't understand what the product is, or why it talks about "Early customer discount, with no-commitment".

From the HN submission:

> We have finished our first MVP of the app and have our smart light (the hardware)

Perfect, show a video of the app and a photo of the smart light. Simple HTML page, team photos, contact details.

mtmail
Example of a hardware product that was very well received by HN users, and I assume investors. The animation, the polishing of the website are probably not needed, it explains what it does well still.

https://www.h3x.tech/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224709

intro - the product - why it matters - about the company - about the team - contact - newsletter signup

ryansam
Thank you for trying. And good catch on the typo. It might be better to go with a simple website similar to our mobile version of the site, we were just trying to do something cool.