"Find people around you app - Nobody wants to find people around them and meet them. Trust me."
I've been runing a site the last five years for tabletop gamers to do exactly this. It's busier than ever, I'm spending my nights and weekends hacking on it to keep up, and I expect some of the features I'm working on now to make that growth curve noticeably steeper.
There's huge chicken-and-egg problems in this sort of project, but that difficulty is also why they're valuable.
Niche interest and a reason to socially interact with strangers. It gets creepy when my wife checks into Foursquare and sees that the 'Mayor' and 8 other people are there, too. Who cares? She certainly doesn't. She just wants points or some deal or something.
This might be true in NAm. In other parts of the earth, it might be different. There are different cultural barriers and different things which are considered "normal" for meeting new people. I'm sure "dating" sites are working on ways to integrate this feature into their offering. Or, let's say, find 5 other people around me who want to play some 3 on 3 basketball, or a squash partner, whatever.
>Coupon / Daily deals
Again, true in the US market. Other markets might be ripe for a newcomer. For example, a team in SAfrica could develop something to fit the local market.
>Online Dating Sites.
Sites, yes. But there's still room for innovation. It's far from perfect.
>Book Exchanges for colleges
True. Will there be any physical books in the long run anyway?
The problem is that everyone who's ever used the web ever comes up with these ideas and either thinks it hasn't been done or think they can do it better. The latter almost always end up just cloning something that exists in a way that's shitty. No, it's not sub-par, they're not terribly execute, they're fucking shitty. I'm just finishing up a site that the guy who commissioned it calls "Facebook except for dating". I'm embarrassed to even admit I built it now (I really needed the cash and in hindsight I was paid peanuts). Luckily I was able to steer him towards positioning it as more of a sideshow site for entertainment like Lolcats or something.
But anyway, the problem isn't the ideas it's just that it's incredibly rare that someone executes in a way that brings something worthwhile to the table that hasn't been done at least 100 times over.
> "Or, let's say, find 5 other people around me who want to play some 3 on 3 basketball, or a squash partner, whatever."
I don't think that's really the "people around you" concept he's talking about. There are lots of social sites out there that will find activity partners and groups in your city - Meetup being the most salient example. The "people around you" services are the ones that go "user123 is 3 blocks away!". Hyper-local, if you will.
I'm hanging out with friends at a bar, I couldn't give two shits that cutegrrl123 is a block away and also likes chess. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a single moment in my life where "meet a random stranger based on an algorithm" is a substantially more attractive option than what I'm doing at that moment.
"user123 likes chess and challenges you to a game this week" might work
"user123 is two blocks away and wants to play chess right the hell now" is not a really good use case
This is a concept that really only works in your head - every implementation of it has landed somewhere between "creepy" and "really useless".
"In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a single moment in my life where "meet a random stranger based on an algorithm" is a substantially more attractive option than what I'm doing at that moment."
As someone who hops around the country a fair bit, I can definitely think of one place where this would be an appealing option: airports. I am sometimes able to find a random stranger to engage in conversation, but it's often a crapshoot trying to find someone who's both willing to engage in conversation and interested in the same subjects; I usually settle for just the former. This actually doesn't work too poorly (I've found that on the whole, people who fly tend to be more interesting than a typical cross-section of the population), but I'd be more than willing to spend my hour-long layover with an algorithmically-selected stranger. If I'm also able to find activity partners, all the better; I'd be happy to start packing my portable chess set and Magic the Gathering deck in my carry-on luggage.
This might be true in NAm. In other parts of the earth, it might be different. There are different cultural barriers and different things which are considered "normal" for meeting new people.
Other parts of the earth? Ask your local gay friends about Grindr.
I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.
Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and meet them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people think that this is a need.
Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with this idea now, trust me when I say millions of people have the same idea and are executing on them. It’s a saturated market, do something else with your time.
Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.
Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.
Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.
I really hate stealing page views from the owner, so when the site comes back up, I'll take this down. (just reply here if it does)
In the mean time here's the full text:
[begin]
I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.
> Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and meet them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people think that this is a need.
Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with this idea now, trust me when I say millions of people have the same idea and are executing on them. It’s a saturated market, do something else with your time.
>Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.
>Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.
>Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.
So, let me tell you about my great idea. It's an app for creating social/dating networks for book nerds who can find other book nerds around them, exchange old books, and participate in local group buying deals based around shared interests.
We'll add a Facebook login and a couple of ads and be millionaires.
Don't be too fast to discount this one, maybe not for the US, but as a Dutch student, this is definately something that needs to be built... Something social (friends of friends will often have the books you need) and easy. We have Amazon, Bol.com (Amazon clone), Marktplaats (craigslist/ebay crossover), but none are a perfect fit for textbooks.
But there is such a thing as over-specialisation. The 'long tail' niche is a myth when you have a gorilla that provides an adequate solution. And especially in a small country (i.e., market) and anything social (effectively lots of teeny tiny markets) getting the sort of volume to make it sustainable is going to be almost impossible.
I imagine New Zealand is a similar market as the Netherlands. Here, TradeMe.co.nz completely owns the second-hand sales market (eBay/craigslist). If you want to sell something, that's where you go because you know that's where all the buyers are. Sure it's not a targeted social app for textbooks, but who cares, you don't need it to sell a textbook!
I agree. I'm a co-founder with a start-up that just joined a prominent accelerator, and we do two of the five things listed: book-swapping and daily deals. While my opinion may be slightly biased about book-swapping because of that, I have done a ton of research into the market and there is definitely a market-pull for something that allows simple, intuitive book-swaps. Obviously, it has to be safer and simpler (or at a decent fiscal advantage) compared to craigslist, ebay, amazon etc, but I think that it is do-able with the right business model, team, swapping algorithms...
You often hear about this idea (and maybe the other 4 as well, but I can't say from personal expertise) because there IS a need for a service like this and entrepreneurs know that. But I see two main problems that keep these book-swap start-ups from succeeding, and keep these ideas from going away.
First, there's a TON of variation in the way you can setup this business model. There are dozens of different ways to make your money, a handful of drastically different customers you can try and target, and endless ways to setup/code the swapping process. Not every solution will be successful; most will be unsuccessful.
Second, I don't think this idea works as a stand-alone product for a start-up because of a handful of factors. One such example: book swapping "season" (start & end of semesters) only occurs a few times a year. For a start-up with cash flow like that (or none), each "book season" is going to be swinging for the fences, after months of work, and hoping you can grab the attention of the market during the only few weeks they might care about your product.
Sorry if I was vague at times, I didn't wanna get into details.
Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.
This is interesting. How would you create a hack on top of an existing dating site? Make a deal with said dating site? Provide an unsanctioned plug-in (eg Greasemonkey)? Something else?
One example, not built on top of a dating site but last.fm, tastebuds.fm is a social network/dating site based around music. Old discussion here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1992801
They have an API and devs need API accounts. I don't know much about dating sites but I'm guessing they don't have APIs because exposing the type of data they store would be pretty creepy.
More than a few investors said that about search engines in the late nineties. Just because an area is overrun with competitors doesn't mean it's not promising. There's signal in all that noise.
41 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 86.3 ms ] threadI've been runing a site the last five years for tabletop gamers to do exactly this. It's busier than ever, I'm spending my nights and weekends hacking on it to keep up, and I expect some of the features I'm working on now to make that growth curve noticeably steeper.
There's huge chicken-and-egg problems in this sort of project, but that difficulty is also why they're valuable.
This might be true in NAm. In other parts of the earth, it might be different. There are different cultural barriers and different things which are considered "normal" for meeting new people. I'm sure "dating" sites are working on ways to integrate this feature into their offering. Or, let's say, find 5 other people around me who want to play some 3 on 3 basketball, or a squash partner, whatever.
>Coupon / Daily deals
Again, true in the US market. Other markets might be ripe for a newcomer. For example, a team in SAfrica could develop something to fit the local market.
>Online Dating Sites.
Sites, yes. But there's still room for innovation. It's far from perfect.
>Book Exchanges for colleges
True. Will there be any physical books in the long run anyway?
>Apps that create Apps
Ok.
0.02
But anyway, the problem isn't the ideas it's just that it's incredibly rare that someone executes in a way that brings something worthwhile to the table that hasn't been done at least 100 times over.
> Ok.
Lisp for the masses!
I don't think that's really the "people around you" concept he's talking about. There are lots of social sites out there that will find activity partners and groups in your city - Meetup being the most salient example. The "people around you" services are the ones that go "user123 is 3 blocks away!". Hyper-local, if you will.
I'm hanging out with friends at a bar, I couldn't give two shits that cutegrrl123 is a block away and also likes chess. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a single moment in my life where "meet a random stranger based on an algorithm" is a substantially more attractive option than what I'm doing at that moment.
"user123 likes chess and challenges you to a game this week" might work
"user123 is two blocks away and wants to play chess right the hell now" is not a really good use case
This is a concept that really only works in your head - every implementation of it has landed somewhere between "creepy" and "really useless".
As someone who hops around the country a fair bit, I can definitely think of one place where this would be an appealing option: airports. I am sometimes able to find a random stranger to engage in conversation, but it's often a crapshoot trying to find someone who's both willing to engage in conversation and interested in the same subjects; I usually settle for just the former. This actually doesn't work too poorly (I've found that on the whole, people who fly tend to be more interesting than a typical cross-section of the population), but I'd be more than willing to spend my hour-long layover with an algorithmically-selected stranger. If I'm also able to find activity partners, all the better; I'd be happy to start packing my portable chess set and Magic the Gathering deck in my carry-on luggage.
Other parts of the earth? Ask your local gay friends about Grindr.
I hope one of the startup ideas he is sick of is not reliable blog hosting...
I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.
Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and meet them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people think that this is a need.
Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with this idea now, trust me when I say millions of people have the same idea and are executing on them. It’s a saturated market, do something else with your time.
Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.
Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.
Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.
Could have said the same thing about "apps that create blogs" or "apps that do financial calculation in tabular format"
[begin]
I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.
> Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and meet them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people think that this is a need. Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with this idea now, trust me when I say millions of people have the same idea and are executing on them. It’s a saturated market, do something else with your time.
>Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.
>Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.
>Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.
[end]
We'll add a Facebook login and a couple of ads and be millionaires.
Don't be too fast to discount this one, maybe not for the US, but as a Dutch student, this is definately something that needs to be built... Something social (friends of friends will often have the books you need) and easy. We have Amazon, Bol.com (Amazon clone), Marktplaats (craigslist/ebay crossover), but none are a perfect fit for textbooks.
I imagine New Zealand is a similar market as the Netherlands. Here, TradeMe.co.nz completely owns the second-hand sales market (eBay/craigslist). If you want to sell something, that's where you go because you know that's where all the buyers are. Sure it's not a targeted social app for textbooks, but who cares, you don't need it to sell a textbook!
You often hear about this idea (and maybe the other 4 as well, but I can't say from personal expertise) because there IS a need for a service like this and entrepreneurs know that. But I see two main problems that keep these book-swap start-ups from succeeding, and keep these ideas from going away.
First, there's a TON of variation in the way you can setup this business model. There are dozens of different ways to make your money, a handful of drastically different customers you can try and target, and endless ways to setup/code the swapping process. Not every solution will be successful; most will be unsuccessful.
Second, I don't think this idea works as a stand-alone product for a start-up because of a handful of factors. One such example: book swapping "season" (start & end of semesters) only occurs a few times a year. For a start-up with cash flow like that (or none), each "book season" is going to be swinging for the fences, after months of work, and hoping you can grab the attention of the market during the only few weeks they might care about your product.
Sorry if I was vague at times, I didn't wanna get into details.
http://textbookcentral.com.au/
Dave
This is interesting. How would you create a hack on top of an existing dating site? Make a deal with said dating site? Provide an unsanctioned plug-in (eg Greasemonkey)? Something else?
I am assuming last.fm has an API and/or is scrapeable without having to log in? Neither is typically true for dating sites.
Install Grindr on your phone and you'll find that a huge number of people are very interested indeed in finding and meeting people around them.