Neat. I'm going to launch a site where you post an idea to see if it's worth posting it to LaunchSky to see if it's worth posting to Kickstarter...
Seriously, though, I don't see how that's not already handled on Kickstarter. If there's not enough interest in your idea it won't reach its funding goal. What's the point of a pre-screening step?
Well, that's an assumption we're testing: early adopters / curious viewers / other entrepreneurs, will be quicker to give their support (and their email, through a secured gateway to the original poster) than their money.
We'll be investing in the traffic/exposure of those visitors and entrepreneurs, and hope this launch page can help get the creators there.
We're trying to be smart about this. LaunchSky is to test out what you should build and what you shouldn't.
We're currently gauging that interest with the HN community.
If the interest in this product is there, we'll of course invest in the right legal grounds to do what's possible to protect some of the ideas being posted. This can get pricy, but if the interest is there, it's definitely something we're willing to invest in.
If not, it'll simply be a tool for "build it or not" without the legal backbone (at least initially).
I tend to agree with your worry. But I think many have the attitude of "Tough shit... if someone builds your idea before you then it probably wasn't defendable anyway."
How is this different from a LaunchRock in essence? I feel like for many consumers, it's very hard for them to imagine the product w/o seeing/touching/interacting with it no matter how great you pitch or describe it. If someone were to describe to me a blog of funny cats or what's essentially Instagram, I don't think I would have cared much and never really appreciate how much enjoyment I would derive from both just from the pitch or description.
On many occasions I've asked people if they wanted x or would it be cool if it did x and lukewarm would be the best description of their reaction. But seeing the live or real version of that x gave a totally different reaction.
In some ways this is similar to Launchrock from the perspective of the poster. However, whether or not it's usually true with most launch pages, when you show people your launch page you are implying that you intend to launch.
The purpose of posting to Launchsky is to get feedback, in the form of interest and comments. One user might post up five ideas (basically visual elevator pitches) and be able to decide from user comments and votes which idea holds the most promise (or which ones don't stand a chance for reasons X, Y).
I used Launchrock the very first time I tried to "bring an idea to the world" and had maybe 40 signups. Mostly friends. If you're just starting out, you have no idea how to bring traffic to your site, create buzz, or do any kind of online marketing at all, so I definitely see value in being able to submit an idea to a community of early adopters and get at least an inkling if this is something worth pursuing.
LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.
LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.
We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).
This strikes me as a clone of Kickstarter but in place of funding you're giving people the ability to vote, and vote for free.
I think it has its uses but ultimately to me, votes hold no value because they aren't inherently valuable to a user. I would back projects all day long on Kickstarter with someone elses money but I have never backed a project myself.
Think about how downvoting on StackOverflow works. It costs you karma or points to downvote somehting, it's not free.
I think I would probably use LaunchSky as a way to make sure people didn't think it was potentially the worst idea they've ever heard of but outside of that I couldn't place any real faith in the platform for big ideas. I would probably limit myself to posting ideas which I felt I could build in a few evenings.
Steve Jobs famously avoided asking people what they wanted, instead showing them what they wanted. His philosophy was often described as arrogant, but guess what? He was frequently right -- people often accepted his ideas about a product they couldn't imagine until he showed it to them.
You don't need to be Steve Jobs to be a successful visionary. It's all about what is the vision, and how you can implement that vision. Committees take shortcuts, and will approve a lesser quality product because there is no direct ownership. When its you personally responsible, you take more pride in your product. This site will be great for the leeches and bottom feeders, but I would bet everything I have that there will not be one great product that emerges from this site.
I don't think this approach is appropriate for the vast majority of entrepreneurs. Mr. Jobs was a unique character with a perspective on the world that few others (appear to) share.
It seems that entrepreneurs these days are concerned with "building something awesome (to also make money)", and that's not what Steve Jobs did.
> I don't think this approach is appropriate for the vast majority of entrepreneurs.
Only the successful ones. It's one thing to create a product that answers an existing need (and that may already have competition). It's quite another to create a product that people don't realize they need until they see it.
The classic example is the personal computer. Steve Wozniak tried and failed to interest HP (his employer at the time) in backing his personal project, a small, one-board computer that anyone could own. HP didn't see the potential, so Woz was allowed to carry the idea away from his employer and pursue it on his own.
As Jobs often said, it's the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary.
Don't get me wrong -- I personally never got along with Jobs and couldn't work with him, but in this respect, he was often proven right.
I don't know if I agree that your Woz example is the best one...it's one thing to not be able to convince management, it's another not to be able to convince the average Joe.
> ... it's one thing to not be able to convince management, it's another not to be able to convince the average Joe.
I agree with your point, but Woz and Jobs convinced both -- they convinced both financial backers and the public. I'm just saying it's possible, and such stories often accompany noteworthy technological breakthroughs.
Exactly. So suggesting to all entrepreneurs that their product is possibly failing because they haven't convinced people why they want it yet, is a bad idea.
Let me rephrase that. We both agree that it's fine in the case of great entrepreneurs, so let's subtract those out from your statement:
> So suggesting to bad entrepreneurs that their product is possibly failing because they haven't convinced people why they want it yet, is a bad idea.
When said this way, I don't see why it would be true. You don't give illiterate people different advice if they want to write a book: you tell them to read lots and lots of books. The fact that they can't, simply means that they can't, if-and-until they change themselves so they can.
Similarly, the fact that bad entrepreneurs can't convince people to want something, simply means they fail as entrepreneurs. They don't get a handicap lane to execute in; there's only one market. If they want to succeed, they don't need a crutch; they need to become better entrepreneurs.
When one has a multitude waiting eagerly for pronouncements, then, of course, solving the problem of showing may be left as an exercise for the reader.
The thing is, he didn't when the iPod came out. There were a million other MP3 players; the market was well saturated and everyone had their favorite which was not an apple product. Nobody was waiting in line.
Ford never said this, and it isn't true anyway. At least in cities, the public didn't want horses, they wanted better cars and more financing options.
In New York City alone, hundreds of horses died in the street every day, and the owners simply unhitched their carriages and left, resulting in streets clogged with horse corpses. Horses generated over a hundred tons of manure daily, which, combined with the dead horses, was a sanitation nightmare that led to typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.
I hear this misattributed quote so often on Hacker News that it makes my head spin. :-)
If you're spending a lot of money on a MVP, and you're devastated when it fails, maybe you aren't cut out for this line of work. There needs to be a happy medium between devoting your life to a product nobody wants and throwing a million ideas at the wall. There's a minimum commitment level somewhere above "Just ask people", that's where you create a reasonable functional prototype and start soliciting feedback.
Admittedly, this is one of our biggest challenges.
It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).
Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.
One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.
Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.
Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.
The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.
Developer A posts there idea, and utilizes their social network to get feedback.
Developer A's social network looks at Developer A's project, then comments etc. then is forwarded to Developer B's project.
You will lose a lot of conversions between A and B, but it would add value to have completely outside people evaluating ideas and signing up for the email list.
You could create a system where the more people come through a link created by developer A, the more referrals they get. That would incentivize developer A to not be a free rider.
We intend to borrow some strategies that have made Kickstarter and other sites for funding projects successful. For example, we'll devote a lot of attention to making individual concepts easy to share, which will ultimately bring more users to our site. We'll also keep the process of viewing, commenting, and voting on ideas itself simple and enjoyable. Personally, I enjoy seeing what ideas people are thinking about or working on - it's one of the reasons I spend so much time on Hacker News :)
I for one would NOT use this service. There is a lot of mistrust in this industry, and no one wants to potentially give away an idea for the sake of third party market analysis that isn't that well known or confidential.
Point taken, and we do appreciate the feedback. The same can be said for KickStarter/Indiegogog/Everyone else.
We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.
As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"
Don't you generally have to show something off (as in hey, look what I'm in the process of, care to join?) with those to get backing? This is just pitching an idea, right?
You wouldn't want to post up something like a "trade secret" on our site, that's for sure. However, living in Silicon Valley I have actually found that most people in the tech community don't have problems sharing their ideas. I like to share my ideas as often as possible, because it helps me evaluate which ones are the best, and often people offer meaningful suggestions. At the end of the day, success comes down to execution, but it's nice to have some confidence that you aren't starting down a path on false premises.
I can't ever see myself using a service like this for fear of somebody developing my idea first. Many of the good 'apps' out there quickly generate copy-cat apps, this will just take the originators out of the loop :)
Everyone has ideas, and some even have the ability to execute.
We're trying to marry the two.
Full disclosure: My team needs this product. We've built apps no one wants. We don't want to to do that again. We're hoping others are in the same boat.
For the second, no I didn't see that until now. Hmmm. I wonder if that's somebody being clever to prove a point of how easy ideas are to steal? If so, kudos for the irony :)
I wonder if your statement is equivalent to the famous, "existence is essence" claim? I think a good idea is a plan, and we certainly believe plans are worth something :-)
That's interesting, with two caveats:
- Many people may be wary of giving an idea for which they see a huge potential, but it may not be a problem for side projects
- I don't see what the people giving their opinion would gain. Maybe it's just the thrill of being pitched new ideas regularly?
You've nailed both of the biggest things we'll be tackling.
For people posting: quick, protected, easy, elegant, keeps early adopters so that you can reach out them if it's built.
For those evaluating an idea: Their absolutely needs to be a clear incentive. We'll get this figured out. Maybe a field for "early adopter perks" or a ladder of incentives for how soon someone supports an idea. In any case, this is definitely something we have to nail.
one thing though, i tried clicking the area outside the 'pop-up' box there countless time trying to get rid of it and see whats behind it. I initially even entered my email in hope to get rid of the pop-up before realizing how stupid I was.. maybe this is intentional, but still, confusing.
The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.)
So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive.
1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system.
2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these are just ideas. There's no way you can tell if the idea will be successful even with enough support backers. Takes much longer to develop etc.
3. Give them the option to back good ideas (put their money where their mouth is)? Nope…then it's just Kickstarter.
4. Curate the people evaluating the apps. Gather some people that have skills and well informed about their field. Tech/Design/etc. Then you'll be able to get real feedback from those who knows what they're talking about. It's not a guaranteed hit/miss but I think the result would be better than mass voting from randoms.
Exactly. And the problem with #4 is that in trying to round up people the community trusts/knows by name, you're also going to end up bringing in people that have personal and professional connections that could also game the system.
We definitely don't have the product figured out to 100% just yet, but the assumption is that people are quicker to support (and give their email if it's secured) than to pay (a la kickstarter).
The rest of the details, we surely have to figure out. That's why I've got the link here, for amazing feedback like the original comment we're both replying to :)
The problem I see with it is a scenario like this, which others have brought up:
1. User X (a non-technical) posts an idea that gets a little traction, but not enough for them to feel confident enough to build it out, especially when it means finding a team to do so.
2. Named Techie sees the project, likes the premise a lot, and knows User X doesn't have the resources.
3. Named Techie's friends post their concept with beautiful mockups and a more defined description and Named Techie highlights the project and it hits the front page -or- Named Techie's friends just launch the site without needing the validation, and through their network are able to have a fairly successful launch.
4. User X sees this, rages all across the internet, and you get bad press (and more trolls to boot).
In the event that Named Techie has the advantage of seeing all of these new concepts coming in and the public only sees them once they're approved by him, that's going to spawn some conflict of interests.
Even if all entries are public, you'll run into what we see on Show HNs.. like the one for 2u.fm yesterday where some idiot thought it would be a good idea to reply to as many people as possible who liked the concept to tell them that it was a complete ripoff of some other site (which it wasn't) or all of the people that constantly hate on the fact that someone would even think their project was a good idea.
Additionally, most of the concepts on the site aren't going to be exclusive to the person that's posting them, and having to deal with trolls or 'ownership' wars isn't something I'd want to bother with. Trying to fight this by only allowing members with some form of 'clout' to comment creates the issue I have with Kickstarter, where until you've put money into the project, you can't ask a question about it publicly.
I'm also concerned that too many people will place too much weight on the feedback they receive. The idea may very well be game-changing, but there's no way to know unless it's fully fleshed-out. Knowing how people react to having their dreams shattered, I just don't think this site is a good idea. If you really need validation, use a site like Reddit with a broad enough userbase (or a specific subreddit) to get the feedback you need.
I would disagree about needing incentives/rewards to get people voting. You are the counterargument to your own comment. You just commented on this idea here on HN, for free, with no incentive and no reward. People like us often love to see new ideas, and comment on them and join in a discussion with the founders. "This is great", "I don't think this will work", "this would be better if...", "what are you planning to do about..."
LaunchSky is "Hacker News for Ideas Not News"
I've dreamed of having something like this before, and I would love to see LaunchSky do it. I think I would go there often enough to see other people's ideas and provide my own.
I think this is best aimed at the same people that like Hacker News, NOT the general Facebook population.
I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side.
It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle.
edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.
I commented below regarding this issue of voting for free and it not costing them anything.
I feel like, after reading your comments parent and your reply that I'm replying to, I feel that it might be beneficial to have each user on the site have a weight calculated from various criteria (that probably doesn't exist yet).
Firstly let's assume that submitted ideas have a lifecycle, something like this:
Inception (posting to the site)
Green-lit (threshold of submitters required Yes votes)
Lack of Interest (threshold not met)
Released (product launch)
Let's say a project reaches Release (from our above defined lifecycle), all users who voted "Yes, I would use this" for the project might need to verify they've used the app or risk having their weight ratio degraded (thus making future "Yes, I would use this" votes count for less). If the project they 'backed' fails then there is no change to the weight.
This solves one side of the problem for idea submitters. They should be able to view something like an "Interest Index" which takes into account the weight of users who have stated they would use it.
Eventually if I clicked "Yes, I'd use this" on 40 projects and 20 of them reached release and yet I never followed through with using them, my vote might not count for squat any longer.
Of couse there is an incentive for me to comment here on HN.
1. It's a community, there's give & take. Who knows one day I may need HN's help. I want to be treated the same way others treat me - golden rule.
2. This place is full of smart people. I'd listen carefully to what everyone has to say. If it's just mass voting from randoms, it'll get nowhere. Hence my 4th point in the original comment.
3. Being part of the community, actively, builds connects and networks. If LaunchSky is going to be community oriented, I think that'd be a great avenue to explore.
So I'd disagree about how there's no incentive or reward for me to comment here.
How about you offer some pricing with the idea and then give backers a discount? Might work with a mail list, people sign up to get an opportunity for discounts on potential products they'd like to use. Would skew the audience but that's going to be the case with any incentive.
Interesting approach.
Regarding the idea that users would need something to keep coming back to the site to approve an idea,as said previously, offering a reward might be the best solution, but, to prevent them going around and voting on everything, why not give the power of giving rewards to the owner of the idea?
Once users realized that the owner of the idea was the one assigning points, they may just offer up feedback that panders to the owner in order to receive rewards.
"especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research"
you REALLY think so? I agree with your first few points, but I disagree on that last (quoted) bit entirely.
Building/deploying something of real quality (and potential viability) can be very costly.
The point of the app is to make that "cost of comprehensive research" negligible in comparison to what it is today. Either you pay a ton to do it right or train yourself forever on how to do it cheap (which is a cost of time). We want to lessen that burden exponentially.
It's definitely a tool if you want "a" data point "really fast". I won't argue against that. However, I would use it for "just" that and nothing more. I wouldn't use it to drive the entire decision.
Per your point of disagreement, and depending entirely on the type of app, I stand by my point. You're anchoring the disagreement "quality". A down and dirty "test the waters" app is a lot less expensive than a "quality" app (ignoring apps that can't really have a down and dirty, like complex video games or something).
I would agree, that on average, a "quality" app would take longer then a down and dirty "test the water" app. However, so long as you can get a down and dirty out the door so easily, we will see crap in the app stores.
I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will.
I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.
You're wrong. And I vow to talk down your site to everybody around me if you think you can simply sacrifice my comfortability in browsing just for conversions.
There are tons of people who called Quora annoying for doing the same thing. They also have a tendency to go around in public talking about how they won't use it because it's so annoying. Annoying or not though, it gets people to sign up and many of those same people who claimed to not want to join because of it being annoying end up on the site. Maybe it is annoying but the concept works.
Good thing I am not so insecure about my ideas that I need others to give me validation for them.
I can imagine though that the kind of person who goes to networking events on eventbrite, who starts talking about his 'great and orignal' 'idea' to create an app where people can take pictures of food in restaurants and then let others search these pictures to see whats for dinner around them, does need this validation. (I have actually been to numerous events where more than one person at a single event had this 'idea'. )
I think when your idea is crap, you secretly know it, but after quitting your job and investing all of your savings, it becomes really hard to cut your losses.
It's actually a little inception-esque. You're pitching an idea for an app about ideas for apps.
I think it's essentially light-market fit testing but it actually kind of blew my mind that the site itself poses the same question it hopes to answer for others, "Would people use this?"
Do users have to be registered to vote? How will you bring in the non-developer person to sign up to LaunchSky? If I was building a SaaS type app, this would be awesome because my target market would actually be voting. But any other type of app I'd like the avg consumer to be voting.
NOT SIGNED UP: likes/up-vote; something basic
SIGNED UP: the above + "i'd use it" + feedback; still have to figure out how to effectively incentivize these users and keep them coming back for more.
This is a great question. Our primary crowd will initially be tech-focused, so if you pitched an idea where your target market is restaurants, you're not going to get people from the community clicking "I'd use it." That said, you would probably still get some useful feedback (other apps in the space, technical challenges, etc), just like you would by posting here. Later down the road, we might be able to offer access to other markets by posting to our site (e.g. select by a market category when you post, we push out your post to a group representing that market).
Yeah, there's no site there. I was fooling around with the CSS trying to get rid of the pesky modal views (sometimes it works), when I got to the page... which was just an image http://launchsky.com/img/bg-app.png. It's a good simulation but I think the author needs to make it a little clearer. I went in and put my email in thinking I was signing up and... nothing. It just refreshed the page I think. Then I went to my email thinking I had to confirm my account and there was no email. So I did it again with the same results. Maybe I'm a noob, but I think perhaps it could be a little more clear.
“Make sure decisions are fact-based, not faith based.” - Steve Blank
If you're trying to get a lot of user opinions in the US from normal people who buy stuff, that phrase at the top of the site is not going to go over so well if its also displayed on the public comment page.
Strange, this is almost like what I thought pvsh should be (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867883) -- you're connecting people who want things with people who are making them. Except instead of letting people generate ideas for entrepreneurs to jump on, you're asking entrepreneurs to lift their skirt before they're ready for the dance. Also, you don't have the monetization I'd expect (or at least you're not talking about it yet).
Edit: I just realized that "If you sign up now, you’ll get to submit your first idea free" implies you're monetizing the entrepreneurs who use the site -- so all content is paid content.
The monetization isn't finalized yet -- we're getting feedback now (mostly with this post).
Our hunch is to charge a minimal amount for each idea submission; something significantly less than the money/time/effort for a splash page / domain / launchrock / ads. The early adopters would never pay; we instead need to figure out a clear way to incentivize them to come to each idea, the dashboard of ideas in general, and back again.
Ok, suppose you have entrepreneurs that are ready to use launchsky, they've created a bunch of projects to evaluate. What about end-users ? I don't really care what other entrepreneurs think about the idea, I do want to get in touch with potential users !
It seems to me that this will provide customer validation of questionable quality to the entrepreneur. You can't effectively gauge the viability of an idea by asking people to predict the future. When asked; "Would you use this awesome service?", most people will say "Absolutely"! However, when the time comes to pay for it/download it they will not actually do it. Great looking site, however I feel like the data generated will be less useful than talking to your customers about their past behavior.
We've discussed the idea of gaming good vs. bad support.
Think: Angel investors, but with their likes/sign-up instead of money.
Still, this won't be an easy one to crack, but we're committed to providing feedback/support of actual value, as well as a pool of potential users, to people coming with a new idea.
142 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadI'd love to hear feedback/criticisms/advice from the HN community!
It could be used to find out if an idea is worth persuing and if it is, you could then go to kickstarter... that's how I see it.
Seriously, though, I don't see how that's not already handled on Kickstarter. If there's not enough interest in your idea it won't reach its funding goal. What's the point of a pre-screening step?
We'll be investing in the traffic/exposure of those visitors and entrepreneurs, and hope this launch page can help get the creators there.
Thanks for the kind words! people like you (and like us) are exactly why we're building this product.
If you have any feedback, feel free to email me directly --
Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com
We're currently gauging that interest with the HN community.
If the interest in this product is there, we'll of course invest in the right legal grounds to do what's possible to protect some of the ideas being posted. This can get pricy, but if the interest is there, it's definitely something we're willing to invest in.
If not, it'll simply be a tool for "build it or not" without the legal backbone (at least initially).
Just the worry that I/another user might share a game changer idea and someone else builds it before I/we do.
You'd be really surprised the "ideas" i've seen some throw my way after making me sign an NDA.
Ironically enough, I guess I can't talk about those...
On many occasions I've asked people if they wanted x or would it be cool if it did x and lukewarm would be the best description of their reaction. But seeing the live or real version of that x gave a totally different reaction.
LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.
LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.
We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).
I think it has its uses but ultimately to me, votes hold no value because they aren't inherently valuable to a user. I would back projects all day long on Kickstarter with someone elses money but I have never backed a project myself.
Think about how downvoting on StackOverflow works. It costs you karma or points to downvote somehting, it's not free.
I think I would probably use LaunchSky as a way to make sure people didn't think it was potentially the worst idea they've ever heard of but outside of that I couldn't place any real faith in the platform for big ideas. I would probably limit myself to posting ideas which I felt I could build in a few evenings.
1 steve jobs :)
Vlad (at) DarwinApps.com for details.
It seems that entrepreneurs these days are concerned with "building something awesome (to also make money)", and that's not what Steve Jobs did.
Only the successful ones. It's one thing to create a product that answers an existing need (and that may already have competition). It's quite another to create a product that people don't realize they need until they see it.
The classic example is the personal computer. Steve Wozniak tried and failed to interest HP (his employer at the time) in backing his personal project, a small, one-board computer that anyone could own. HP didn't see the potential, so Woz was allowed to carry the idea away from his employer and pursue it on his own.
As Jobs often said, it's the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary.
Don't get me wrong -- I personally never got along with Jobs and couldn't work with him, but in this respect, he was often proven right.
I agree with your point, but Woz and Jobs convinced both -- they convinced both financial backers and the public. I'm just saying it's possible, and such stories often accompany noteworthy technological breakthroughs.
Thats called "being a great entrepreneur". And yes I agree, few people share.
> So suggesting to bad entrepreneurs that their product is possibly failing because they haven't convinced people why they want it yet, is a bad idea.
When said this way, I don't see why it would be true. You don't give illiterate people different advice if they want to write a book: you tell them to read lots and lots of books. The fact that they can't, simply means that they can't, if-and-until they change themselves so they can.
Similarly, the fact that bad entrepreneurs can't convince people to want something, simply means they fail as entrepreneurs. They don't get a handicap lane to execute in; there's only one market. If they want to succeed, they don't need a crutch; they need to become better entrepreneurs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock
In New York City alone, hundreds of horses died in the street every day, and the owners simply unhitched their carriages and left, resulting in streets clogged with horse corpses. Horses generated over a hundred tons of manure daily, which, combined with the dead horses, was a sanitation nightmare that led to typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.
I hear this misattributed quote so often on Hacker News that it makes my head spin. :-)
The most popular site was still http://www.LiveCourtChat.com for the Casey Anthony trial.
Prototypes no one wants can be costly AND devastating.
It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).
Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.
One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.
Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.
Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.
The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.
Developer A posts there idea, and utilizes their social network to get feedback.
Developer A's social network looks at Developer A's project, then comments etc. then is forwarded to Developer B's project.
You will lose a lot of conversions between A and B, but it would add value to have completely outside people evaluating ideas and signing up for the email list.
You could create a system where the more people come through a link created by developer A, the more referrals they get. That would incentivize developer A to not be a free rider.
We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.
As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"
Don't you generally have to show something off (as in hey, look what I'm in the process of, care to join?) with those to get backing? This is just pitching an idea, right?
Not to piss on your parade, but you can't protect anything.
We're trying to marry the two.
Full disclosure: My team needs this product. We've built apps no one wants. We don't want to to do that again. We're hoping others are in the same boat.
You need 2 things: Landing page to describe product/etc and a community to support say yes/no
BTW did you see http://www.startuprocketlauncher.com/ on HN today as well?
For the second, no I didn't see that until now. Hmmm. I wonder if that's somebody being clever to prove a point of how easy ideas are to steal? If so, kudos for the irony :)
Cool idea in any case.
For people posting: quick, protected, easy, elegant, keeps early adopters so that you can reach out them if it's built.
For those evaluating an idea: Their absolutely needs to be a clear incentive. We'll get this figured out. Maybe a field for "early adopter perks" or a ladder of incentives for how soon someone supports an idea. In any case, this is definitely something we have to nail.
one thing though, i tried clicking the area outside the 'pop-up' box there countless time trying to get rid of it and see whats behind it. I initially even entered my email in hope to get rid of the pop-up before realizing how stupid I was.. maybe this is intentional, but still, confusing.
The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.)
So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive.
1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system.
2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these are just ideas. There's no way you can tell if the idea will be successful even with enough support backers. Takes much longer to develop etc.
3. Give them the option to back good ideas (put their money where their mouth is)? Nope…then it's just Kickstarter.
4. Curate the people evaluating the apps. Gather some people that have skills and well informed about their field. Tech/Design/etc. Then you'll be able to get real feedback from those who knows what they're talking about. It's not a guaranteed hit/miss but I think the result would be better than mass voting from randoms.
We definitely don't have the product figured out to 100% just yet, but the assumption is that people are quicker to support (and give their email if it's secured) than to pay (a la kickstarter).
The rest of the details, we surely have to figure out. That's why I've got the link here, for amazing feedback like the original comment we're both replying to :)
1. User X (a non-technical) posts an idea that gets a little traction, but not enough for them to feel confident enough to build it out, especially when it means finding a team to do so.
2. Named Techie sees the project, likes the premise a lot, and knows User X doesn't have the resources.
3. Named Techie's friends post their concept with beautiful mockups and a more defined description and Named Techie highlights the project and it hits the front page -or- Named Techie's friends just launch the site without needing the validation, and through their network are able to have a fairly successful launch.
4. User X sees this, rages all across the internet, and you get bad press (and more trolls to boot).
In the event that Named Techie has the advantage of seeing all of these new concepts coming in and the public only sees them once they're approved by him, that's going to spawn some conflict of interests.
Even if all entries are public, you'll run into what we see on Show HNs.. like the one for 2u.fm yesterday where some idiot thought it would be a good idea to reply to as many people as possible who liked the concept to tell them that it was a complete ripoff of some other site (which it wasn't) or all of the people that constantly hate on the fact that someone would even think their project was a good idea.
Additionally, most of the concepts on the site aren't going to be exclusive to the person that's posting them, and having to deal with trolls or 'ownership' wars isn't something I'd want to bother with. Trying to fight this by only allowing members with some form of 'clout' to comment creates the issue I have with Kickstarter, where until you've put money into the project, you can't ask a question about it publicly.
I'm also concerned that too many people will place too much weight on the feedback they receive. The idea may very well be game-changing, but there's no way to know unless it's fully fleshed-out. Knowing how people react to having their dreams shattered, I just don't think this site is a good idea. If you really need validation, use a site like Reddit with a broad enough userbase (or a specific subreddit) to get the feedback you need.
I got this saved for the team to look through and digest.
I also tried to find your email/contact info to personally say thanks for the feedback, but I failed at that. Hopefully this will do.
LaunchSky is "Hacker News for Ideas Not News"
I've dreamed of having something like this before, and I would love to see LaunchSky do it. I think I would go there often enough to see other people's ideas and provide my own.
I think this is best aimed at the same people that like Hacker News, NOT the general Facebook population.
I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side.
It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle.
edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.
I feel like, after reading your comments parent and your reply that I'm replying to, I feel that it might be beneficial to have each user on the site have a weight calculated from various criteria (that probably doesn't exist yet).
Firstly let's assume that submitted ideas have a lifecycle, something like this:
Let's say a project reaches Release (from our above defined lifecycle), all users who voted "Yes, I would use this" for the project might need to verify they've used the app or risk having their weight ratio degraded (thus making future "Yes, I would use this" votes count for less). If the project they 'backed' fails then there is no change to the weight.This solves one side of the problem for idea submitters. They should be able to view something like an "Interest Index" which takes into account the weight of users who have stated they would use it.
Eventually if I clicked "Yes, I'd use this" on 40 projects and 20 of them reached release and yet I never followed through with using them, my vote might not count for squat any longer.
Just a thought.
It may complicate the initial product, but we could always keep this less exposed to end users (or at least the voters/reviewers).
Thanks for the awesome feedback / insight / thought -- I really appreciate you taking the time to think though it for us!
1. It's a community, there's give & take. Who knows one day I may need HN's help. I want to be treated the same way others treat me - golden rule.
2. This place is full of smart people. I'd listen carefully to what everyone has to say. If it's just mass voting from randoms, it'll get nowhere. Hence my 4th point in the original comment.
3. Being part of the community, actively, builds connects and networks. If LaunchSky is going to be community oriented, I think that'd be a great avenue to explore.
So I'd disagree about how there's no incentive or reward for me to comment here.
The other perk to this is that idea-submitters get a home-grown email list for their new app.
Why did this get downvoted? It was #2 on the front page and is suddenly gone.
Can you please let me know what happened?
Nothing will stop this from happening ... especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research
In regards to the site ...
Asking someone "yeah, I'd use that", vs getting them to download and use (ignoring pay, but that's also key :)) is totally different
you REALLY think so? I agree with your first few points, but I disagree on that last (quoted) bit entirely.
Building/deploying something of real quality (and potential viability) can be very costly.
The point of the app is to make that "cost of comprehensive research" negligible in comparison to what it is today. Either you pay a ton to do it right or train yourself forever on how to do it cheap (which is a cost of time). We want to lessen that burden exponentially.
Per your point of disagreement, and depending entirely on the type of app, I stand by my point. You're anchoring the disagreement "quality". A down and dirty "test the waters" app is a lot less expensive than a "quality" app (ignoring apps that can't really have a down and dirty, like complex video games or something).
I would agree, that on average, a "quality" app would take longer then a down and dirty "test the water" app. However, so long as you can get a down and dirty out the door so easily, we will see crap in the app stores.
I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.
(Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)
It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?
To hell with ya. This is MY internet.
Now I don't think having an idea is the same as executing it well, but I could imagine people being hesitant.
Oh and because of the annoying landing page I vow to never to use your site, nice try.
I can imagine though that the kind of person who goes to networking events on eventbrite, who starts talking about his 'great and orignal' 'idea' to create an app where people can take pictures of food in restaurants and then let others search these pictures to see whats for dinner around them, does need this validation. (I have actually been to numerous events where more than one person at a single event had this 'idea'. )
I think when your idea is crap, you secretly know it, but after quitting your job and investing all of your savings, it becomes really hard to cut your losses.
I think it's essentially light-market fit testing but it actually kind of blew my mind that the site itself poses the same question it hopes to answer for others, "Would people use this?"
It sort of seems like a Quora-esque "you must sign up to see more" type of thing right now.
But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)
NOT SIGNED UP: likes/up-vote; something basic SIGNED UP: the above + "i'd use it" + feedback; still have to figure out how to effectively incentivize these users and keep them coming back for more.
If you're trying to get a lot of user opinions in the US from normal people who buy stuff, that phrase at the top of the site is not going to go over so well if its also displayed on the public comment page.
Edit: I just realized that "If you sign up now, you’ll get to submit your first idea free" implies you're monetizing the entrepreneurs who use the site -- so all content is paid content.
Our hunch is to charge a minimal amount for each idea submission; something significantly less than the money/time/effort for a splash page / domain / launchrock / ads. The early adopters would never pay; we instead need to figure out a clear way to incentivize them to come to each idea, the dashboard of ideas in general, and back again.
Think: Angel investors, but with their likes/sign-up instead of money.
Still, this won't be an easy one to crack, but we're committed to providing feedback/support of actual value, as well as a pool of potential users, to people coming with a new idea.