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Ask HN: Review my startup

9 points by cmurphea ↗ HN
I'm working on a startup idea, zoomforth.com , which I envision to be where a non-traditional Vault Guide meets vimeo. Basically, I want to create a career search engine that profiles jobs through thousands of videos of short informational interviews, and provides users a search tool that uses tagged values to expose users to appropriate jobs. Ultimately, Id like it to be largely user sourced content.

In addition to general reactions to the idea, I'd love to get feedback from the HN community on specific UI suggestions for laying out content - i.e. how best to have a user navigate the video, as well as text content, that will embody each "job" page.

I'd also love some suggestions (as I have no development experience) for tools that might help to generate search capability in the same way that something like 8tracks.com does.

Thanks for the help! Chris

12 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] thread
revorad
This is a very interesting idea. Can't wait to try it out!
cmurphea
Thanks! Eager to hear thoughts on search functionality, and whether an 8tracks style UI and functionality would make sense for this.
revorad
I would have to try it out to say anything specific. I signed up, but haven't got in yet.
m4rkuskk
Video looked promising. Can't wait to try it out. How many people have you already interviewed?
cmurphea
There have been about 40 interviews so far. I've refined the process a good deal so that they actual interview and editing process is pretty quick and easy. But, increasingly, I'm looking to work with companies or conferences to gather content in bulk. I plan on getting another 40 interview over the next month before I launch the beta.
cmurphea
Also (I dont think I mentioned this in the post), I'm prototyping it by focusing on green jobs (and specifically cleantech and green buildings) in the bay area. I figure I need to narrow it down to make a prototype like this relevant. Again, thanks for the comments!
markhall
I too would need an actual demo to see how to best accomplish what you are striving for. I think the concept seems very intriguing! Your video looks great too! Did you use any tool to create the intro video?
cmurphea
Yeah, working on creating the demo. I'm just trying to sort out in advance what OTS tools I need (or whether this is something I can even do independently with no technical skills) to create an 8tracks style search feature.

Thanks for the comment on the video. I just took some of the most recent videos I had shot and edited them together on final cut pro.

Pass it around if you know of anyone who might find this interesting! Id love to see it get some traction on hackernews!

apsurd
I think your video explains it better than the text you have here. This is a very useful thing imo. I don't know if you intend to monetize this but I hope you consider that this would be great for high school and college students to learn about careers.

Building up your video base would be key here. So I'd build a framework that people can follow to upload their job. Make it ridiculously easy for people to post videos for their job and I'm sure people will be interested in helping out. Especially if you take the "stackoverflow" approach and use a creative commons license so everyone benefits from everyone else's work.

As for searching and filtering, you can start with something like sphinxsearch.com, and scale up to lucene, or if you have a budget indextank.com is worth a look.

IMO you need the data before you can worry about how good your search is. You can omit search entirely by just showing "recommend tags" and have people browse that way. Also you can/should implement voting so that the best vids for the best/popular jobs will bubble up to the top.

Please email me (in my profile) if you'd like some help with this - i think this would be a great asset to young people.

Amnity
Love the IDEA!

If I may, only saw the LP

On each Job page, are you going to stick to your guns and stay the passionate site that is really about finding your dream job? How about having continuing Text Q&A under the video interview about the job? Or do you go and show graphs that share salary averages for the market?

Maybe some bait and adds on the end of it like additional content on how to sell yourself in that field. Tips/Strategies Rankings and sharing also...

Let me know if that helps or how I can help

jdonato
I like the idea!

However, the people in the video all sound like they're making a sales pitch rather than really talking about what they do all day.

Are you going to encourage people to talk about the mundane or undesirable parts of their job? The paperwork, the late hours, the time away from family, the competition, the politics, the discrimination, etc?