HN Explorer

Ask HN: Would you use this?

12 points by jmonegro ↗ HN
I see this a lot on HN: people want their projects/startups reviews. A nice, simple site with a small but knowledgeable community willing to review/beta test your latest venture, project, startup...

I thought this might be a nice little project, personally, and was wondering if HN users would use it. I'm not interested in profiting from such (which means, no ads), though I'd have to find a way to offset server costs (micro-donations from each pitch?).

Along with the comments, each pitch would be supplemented by ratings, charts, etc.

Not only for HN users to pitch their stuff, but also for HN users to review. Would you take part in such community?

Thanks. If you vote no, please let me know why :)

24 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] thread
Scriptor
What incentives would there be for reviewers to stick around and keep participating in the site?
jmonegro
Never really thought of it, but what incentive is there for Digg users? For Reddit users? The community helps each other. Because I would be looking to build a close, small, but knowledgeable community like HN, many of the reviewers might end up as pitchers one day.
Scriptor
Digg, Reddit, etc. provide new content people can read. People don't have to comment. On the other hand, a review site depends entirely on people commenting in some way. Compounding on that is the fact that the only content would come from product launches.

Of course, on the plus side you would only need a very small number of reviews to be of value. Any benefits for reviewers would probably be very easy to come up with.

jmonegro
How about the more you review, the higher your own pitches appear?
Scriptor
That might work, though of course the reviews would have to be constructive and useful. This is where having a small community is a problem, if you use a vote system even a few votes will be enough to game the system.
jmonegro
The poster of the pitch decides which comments he likes the best, maybe?
dschobel
In the case of digg/reddit the payoff is interesting content. It would be a harder sell in this case because looking at commercial sites is usually less interesting especially if the quality is mixed.

If you implement a mechanism where the best sites float to the top, well then the sites which need criticism the most (coincidently the least interesting to review) never get it.

I think it's a good idea but you really need to think out the incentives more thoroughly instead of just hoping for good-will and communal feelings to keep it going.

icey
Personally I think there is incentive just in getting to see what new things people are working on. Bleeding edge is always interesting.
eds
Set it up so the participating sites can give away rewards to the people who beta test. Free accounts, discounts, whatever. You could organize all that.

Even if only a fraction of reviewed sites do it, you'll have enough people coming through that sites with nothing to give away will get attention too.

jmonegro
Not a bad idea... let's say they make, for example, 20 coupon codes for the 20 most useful reviews...
zackattack
Not really, I don't like to visit more than a handful of sites. I'd rather just see the posts on News.YC. (sorry)
TweedHeads
Or maybe have a lower section on HN's frontpage with the latest 10 startups.
mediaman
I think it's OK to have some ads on there to defray your costs. No annoying ads, of course, but I'm sure a Valley law firm would be happy to sponsor it.

And I think people would be happy to use it as long as it's well-moderated. The only problem may be building up a user base that is qualified.

jmonegro
Exactly, that's why I wanted to start with people from the HN community, where most are qualified, and the reviews here are mostly very constructive.
jmonegro
I just thought about a karma system similar to HN. The next step would be what to do with those numbers. Free incentives from startups to users with good karma who vote/comment/review on their ventures?
run4yourlives
Why wouldn't you charge the companies to post, and then allow your select membership to make a buck with their reviews?

You could limit participation in the site to those that can "prove" their credentials in some way.

If the service that you provide is accurate and needed, start-ups would tumble over themselves to get their product in front of your crowd. It's like techcrunch with an added value beyond publicity.

jmonegro
It then becomes way too complicated. Plus, the more the reviews on a post, the less money each commenter would make, because the profits would have to be redistributed.
run4yourlives
Don't underestimate the value of being in the "in group" though. You could also have the company (or the community) designate the top X reviews that would get money.
jmonegro
I pointed out in another comment, that companies could give away free stuff to the top comment authors for their product as an incentive. The problem with monetary rewards is that I don't want to have to manage that, since this is a side project and is not meant to be a startup (for now, at least :)
djafaricom
I think the original idea and several of the additions made in this thread are excellent. I've been wanting something along those lines just to have an avenue to present ideas to people whom I actually care about hearing from (will make intelligent criticisms). Ask HN is amazing because of the community, but I've always wanted a little more.

I would be up for doing this as a side-project as well if you would like some company. You can get me under the same username @gmail if you're interested~

thekevinscott
Agreed, here too. This would be a great resource to use and also to browse. I could also donate my time if you're looking for more hands - my name @ gmail
Jem
There are plenty of people on my site - http://rev.iew.me - that would be able to offer you in depth reviews and testing.

(And, the site is constantly growing to accommodate new audiences - I would be happy to take feature requests from HNers to make it more 'start-up friendly'.)

sgrytoyr
I created something very similar to this about three years ago. As usual, the project went nowhere because I sucked at attracting users and moved on to other things, but I still think the project has merit. So, on the off chance that it will work this time I’ve revived it from the repository and set it up again:

http://projectank.grytoyr.net/

Let me know what you think. Note that everything is three years old and it was hacked together in my spare time, so there are bound to be bugs.

(It used to have its own domain, but I let it expire.)