Currently, it takes multiple services and much knowledge to be able to successfully realize an idea into a working concept or product alone or as a team.
Thinkerous provides a creative, social platform to help people network and collaborate as teams to create and realize great projects or products that would otherwise be difficult to do alone. And not only tech related ideas! We aim to answer questions like "What can a chef, medic, and police officer create together to increase high school graduation rate?"
Hey HN, just a heads up: The interface design is still a work in progress! I would say it's about 50% there from the current mockup. If you'd like to refer to it and comment on the UI/UX in prettier form, you're welcome to check out the mockup:
http://thinkerous.businesscatalyst.com/ideas.html
Oh wow! This looks awesome. It's basically a collaboration/connection platform for developers, designers and businessmen. I've seen a lot of other sites attempt to do this, but they fall short of their goal and ends up being incredibly complex (Example: Hit Record by the actor Joseph Gordon Levitt). Based on what I can see (great use of the animated example BTW) thinkerus has a clearer vision and better execution to maybe make this work.
Good luck! I've signed up and look forward to using it.
Yeah, I tried something similar a couple years back. Could not get anyone to help on the website design. I think I went too much with the "social" aspect(buddypress) when I really wanted an engineering collaboration website. All ready signed up and submitted an idea :)
"Could not get anyone to help on the website design" is a HUGE problem for so many startups, even this one when we just started. Hopefully we'll be able to help you find some help on your next project!
yeah, one of my motivation was a friend of mine who wrote a comic book in collaboration with an artist in Argentina. Man I need a mechanical engineer wouldn't it be great if someone could partner with me( an Electrical Engineer) to build an awesome project.
I don't see the feedback link anywhere so I have to tell you here.
I signed up then went to add my real name to my profile from the 'settings' link, but it kicked me out when I tried to save it. Now it won't let me log back in. I use the same username as I do on HN.
I use Lastpass & it has my password correct in it's settings, but it doesn't look like the field is allowing it to all be entered into the field- some characters are missing.
I put the issues into the 'Issues' section. but I see other stuff there that leads me to believe that's the wrong place. Is that where beta issues belong?
When I update my user info it doesn't display on the profile either.
The second time I went to set my user info it didn't kick me out, so I bet it had to do with the fact that I tried to change my avatar, and that I clicked the gravatar looking thing at some point, so I'll let you know that was part of the process that made me get booted.
This login page auto-redirects to the main page called landing or something, where I can't login. So it's useless.
I still have to disable LastPass, login, then re-enable Lastpass for my other sites to keep working.
It's strange, because when the password field loads from the main page, at first it shows it has all the characters of the password filled in, but then something happens and then it only has half of the characters filled in anymore, with tiny dots instead of the bigger dots that were there at first. And I can't click into it and type anything either, unless I disable Lastpass entirely. So I can't just type my password into it, it keeps having the tiny dots there with half the characters of the password in there.
When I have Lastpass disabled it looks like by default you have tiny dots in the password field, & that's what I'm seeing, so maybe Lastpass isn't able to populate the field at all, rather than what it looks like to me where it seems to be populating halfway with those little dots.
I'd like to see something simple for login that works rock-solidly with Lastpass so I can set it to autologin & I don't have to click to get in ever.
I don't see where I can add tags after I add an idea, from the 'Edit' dialog. If I forget from the start I can't add tags after the fact it seems. That's a real bummer.
We'll let you know once we add that. (Which will be soon since it's literally the second thing on our Asana task list!) Thanks for your in depth feedback! Glad you were able to log in. We'll be testing that some more to make sure it's smooth for everyone.
This makes launching a new startup/project seem as easy as creating a grocery list. But it's not.
This app is certainly pretty, but I think the real value is in solving hard problems, whereas this looks like it's just making easy things slightly easier. If it solves any hard problems, I'm certainly not seeing it based on the landing page or video.
That said, there's something cool about this and it looks like it could be the foundation of something interesting.
edit: Also, don't limit passwords to 20 characters.
We totally get what you're coming from, since we had to go through the process to get the project to work (and we're still in the process).
One of the motivating factors for Thinkerous was that in the beginning, I had an idea that I thought was interesting. But... I had no clue how to start. Would people laugh at me if I revealed my idea? What kind of people do I need to get started? Wtf is Node.js?
All in all, we're not going to solve hard problems for our users. But we'd really like to make it easier to start, to GO FOR IT instead of "nah it probably won't even work anyways."
Thanks for your feedback!
Edit: We've also upped the password max to 100 characters.
You can work with LaunchSky.com to facilitate ideas. Both sites help good ideas happen. I can see people use LaunchSky to get feedback and Thinkerous to find resources.
"Mobile site is not available at this time
Please browse the full site on your desktop."
No option to use the desktop/full version via my mobile device? Maybe some information about your offerings that compel users to open their laptops and check it out would be beneficial.
Did you try spoofing your user-agent? IMHO mobile browsers should have a "pretend to the server I'm not accessing this website from a mobile device" button...
Looks cool. My little feedback point: I clicked contact and it directs to a page with a button that is just a mailto link. Unless you plan on re-doing the contact page soon, skip the extra click and page request and just have the contact link be the mailto. Not super insightful on my part but something I noticed.
I wish people would start focusing their efforts on "ideas" and start focusing on solving problems people are willing to pay for. Every StartupWeekend I coach at, I see a handful of ideas that people work on that solve no problem, and no purpose. They don't have a shot because they have no reason for existing.
So maybe if this were to be adjusted so that it was more of a place to talk about problems you wish people would solve. PG wrote a good post where he briefly talked with problems, and he wished people would solve them. Why not structure it as a place for people to complain about inefficiencies.
I'll start right now with a complaint of my own:
Startups are best started by people who can build things themselves. Unfortunately, people also tend to work on problems they know really well. As a result, a lot of startups are focused on tech-focused problems, and completely ignore broader world problems. Create a place for regular people to complain about issues in their business they wish worked better, and you'll allow builders of technology to understand problems they never would have encountered.
You're right on point! which is why we have an "Issues" section (apart from "Ideas") which specifically serves that purpose of "a place to talk about problems you wish people would solve"
Totally agreed! That's the mindset we had when we added the "Issues" section on the site. One of the features we have planned is the capability to link Ideas/Projects with Issues, so that it encourages people to consciously consider the problem they are solving.
A side effect of this is that they will also get to see how relevant this issue is, and how many people are affected by it.
I see where you're coming from, and I've also seen similar results at local StartupWeekend Events. But to me it's more than just the idea and the problem they're solving; It's having the right Team. I've seen many "Builders" do a Startup with a Great Idea, a Product that people would pay for, and the ability to Execute. These all seem like a recepie for success, but then somehow they overlook something. Maybe it's the importance of the Business aspect. Or the Marketing aspect. Or the <insert whatever here> aspect. Anyway, not trying to downplay what is being said here, but I do believe the Team is key. And building the right Team is probably one of the hardest things to do. Anyone interested should check out BOSI
I really identify with this project. This is actually a super hard problem to solve, and I commend you guys for taking it on. Here is some genuine feedback / constructive criticism; If you want to attract quality Idea Guys, you should probably address Intellectual Property (IP). I hate to generalize, but most of the Idea Guys I know are somewhat protective of their Ideas, because they don't want them to be "stolen" (which may or may not be a misconception). If you can figure out how to solve this (perceived) problem, you're probably going to end up with more quality Ideas. Another thing here is the potential for white noise. Most of the Developers I know are too busy to scroll through multiple pages of ideas, especially if the quality is inconsistent (great idea, fart app, great idea, fart app, etc). Maybe consider implementing an upvote / downvote system similar to what they do here at HN, or at StackOverflow. This would allow the community to dictate what ideas they think kick ass, which not only validates the ideas, but helps the Developers identify the good ideas. Keep up the good work!
Hey thanks! Those are some really great tips. Currently we are trying to utilize this equilibrium of
{ share more: get more feedback and possibly great allies }
vs.
{ share less: no feedback, no exposure, it doesn't even appear on the homepage }
but as this is untested, we'll see how it goes. I definitely agree with you though, the IP issue is huge and is/will be one of the biggest things we'll have to deal with.
Regarding the upvote/downvotes, I agree also! I just pushed it up on my task list. :)
The important and hard part(if you want this to solve problems and create businesses) is to expose creators/entrepreneurs to good problems , and connect them with domain experts and the relevant knowledge.
This way, you leave the details of the solution(IP) private, which should help motivate the creation of a product and a business
By making it as a business creation platform, and highlighting the companies it started, or even the groups that that formed and are working through this, you create a very strong incentive to domain experts(which are usually very busy people, think doctors, lawyers, etc) to publish problems on the platform, preferably in some detailed, and interesting way.
And by having interesting content about really good problems, you gather high quality entrepreneurs and creators, which also post resumes and details about themselfs, to make creating good connections easier.
And by making you're content interesting, you could get much wider readership(which helps with marketing), also among people who are not entrepreneurs but might hold useful knowledge. If you'll figure someway to incentivise them to contribute, the better, but you'll have to be very carefull with signal to noise.
EDIT:also , by creating a different stream of important problems, you create stuff for bloggers/journalists to write about , which is great for marketing.
45 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadThinkerous provides a creative, social platform to help people network and collaborate as teams to create and realize great projects or products that would otherwise be difficult to do alone. And not only tech related ideas! We aim to answer questions like "What can a chef, medic, and police officer create together to increase high school graduation rate?"
We'd appreciate any and all feedback!
Interesting concept
Good luck! I've signed up and look forward to using it.
We're hoping that with a little less friction and a lot more diversity, some incredible things can me made.
Thanks so much!
"Could not get anyone to help on the website design" is a HUGE problem for so many startups, even this one when we just started. Hopefully we'll be able to help you find some help on your next project!
I signed up then went to add my real name to my profile from the 'settings' link, but it kicked me out when I tried to save it. Now it won't let me log back in. I use the same username as I do on HN.
I use Lastpass & it has my password correct in it's settings, but it doesn't look like the field is allowing it to all be entered into the field- some characters are missing.
If I log out of Lastpass I can log in.
http://www.thinkero.us/login
When I update my user info it doesn't display on the profile either.
Issues section is for posting civic or other issues you find in day-to-day life that can be solved through community involvement or discussion.
As for the info not showing up when you view your profile, we're aware of the issue and will fix it as soon as possible!
I still have to disable LastPass, login, then re-enable Lastpass for my other sites to keep working.
It's strange, because when the password field loads from the main page, at first it shows it has all the characters of the password filled in, but then something happens and then it only has half of the characters filled in anymore, with tiny dots instead of the bigger dots that were there at first. And I can't click into it and type anything either, unless I disable Lastpass entirely. So I can't just type my password into it, it keeps having the tiny dots there with half the characters of the password in there.
When I have Lastpass disabled it looks like by default you have tiny dots in the password field, & that's what I'm seeing, so maybe Lastpass isn't able to populate the field at all, rather than what it looks like to me where it seems to be populating halfway with those little dots.
I'd like to see something simple for login that works rock-solidly with Lastpass so I can set it to autologin & I don't have to click to get in ever.
This app is certainly pretty, but I think the real value is in solving hard problems, whereas this looks like it's just making easy things slightly easier. If it solves any hard problems, I'm certainly not seeing it based on the landing page or video.
That said, there's something cool about this and it looks like it could be the foundation of something interesting.
edit: Also, don't limit passwords to 20 characters.
One of the motivating factors for Thinkerous was that in the beginning, I had an idea that I thought was interesting. But... I had no clue how to start. Would people laugh at me if I revealed my idea? What kind of people do I need to get started? Wtf is Node.js?
All in all, we're not going to solve hard problems for our users. But we'd really like to make it easier to start, to GO FOR IT instead of "nah it probably won't even work anyways."
Thanks for your feedback!
Edit: We've also upped the password max to 100 characters.
http://launchsky.com
No option to use the desktop/full version via my mobile device? Maybe some information about your offerings that compel users to open their laptops and check it out would be beneficial.
http://thinkero.us/ideas
FYI - The link you posted hangs up on:
"Loading... (or you have javascript disabled)"
Using Chrome / iOS
So maybe if this were to be adjusted so that it was more of a place to talk about problems you wish people would solve. PG wrote a good post where he briefly talked with problems, and he wished people would solve them. Why not structure it as a place for people to complain about inefficiencies.
I'll start right now with a complaint of my own:
Startups are best started by people who can build things themselves. Unfortunately, people also tend to work on problems they know really well. As a result, a lot of startups are focused on tech-focused problems, and completely ignore broader world problems. Create a place for regular people to complain about issues in their business they wish worked better, and you'll allow builders of technology to understand problems they never would have encountered.
The important and hard part(if you want this to solve problems and create businesses) is to expose creators/entrepreneurs to good problems , and connect them with domain experts and the relevant knowledge.
This way, you leave the details of the solution(IP) private, which should help motivate the creation of a product and a business
By making it as a business creation platform, and highlighting the companies it started, or even the groups that that formed and are working through this, you create a very strong incentive to domain experts(which are usually very busy people, think doctors, lawyers, etc) to publish problems on the platform, preferably in some detailed, and interesting way.
And by having interesting content about really good problems, you gather high quality entrepreneurs and creators, which also post resumes and details about themselfs, to make creating good connections easier.
And by making you're content interesting, you could get much wider readership(which helps with marketing), also among people who are not entrepreneurs but might hold useful knowledge. If you'll figure someway to incentivise them to contribute, the better, but you'll have to be very carefull with signal to noise.
EDIT:also , by creating a different stream of important problems, you create stuff for bloggers/journalists to write about , which is great for marketing.