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Review my NYC startup

1 points by ryankals ↗ HN
I finally built my first product with the help of a few friends. It's a classifieds network primarily for students and professionals in NYC. The goal isn't to make money, but to actually generate a spam free community - I don't run advertising and I don't plan on charging members. Paul Graham says to scratch your own itch... this is my attempt to do so.

Anyways I'm having a difficult time getting traction with the site. It's been up for a while and all the posts that are listed are from friends who did me a favor. I tried contacting recruiters about posting open positions, but nobody seems interested...

Is my site too derivative to Craigslist? Is there a function that should be included? I appreciate any and all feedback you guys have.

connectiii.com

login: ryan@connectiii.com password: ryan1

Thanks!

6 comments

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camz
its to similar to craigslist without the benefit of the audience.

but, if you can use it help your group of friends then it could grow organically.

i think your main issue is making sure that people are actually getting what their looking for. if you can help facilitate transactions then you'll succeed to a small degree.

angryasian
Theres many many issues with this. First, barrier is to high. I'm not mailing you my drivers license or giving you my work email, I'll just head over to craigslist. You have a chicken and egg problem, which one are trying to solve first and how are you going to solve it. Interface is simplish bordering on very amateurish. If you want people to take you seriously spend some money on design. You've built something, but haven't give one good reason why to use it. No way you're going to be craigslist with something like this. best of luck
ryankals
Thx for the feedback. Yeah I really don't want people's Driver's Licenses - I just wanted to be able to let people access the site without having a corporate or student email address. If I just open it up to all email accounts, it'll be just as spammy as Craigslist.

You're definitely right about the design also. thx again.