I was working on a very similar idea, only got as far as a prototype before getting pulled onto something else...so kudos if you are able to run with it.
In alignment with your benefits, I just feel that in this day and age, as a buyer I shouldn't have to spend countless hours looking for the best deal. Especially if I know exactly what I want, people with it should be able to give it to me and compete for my business.
I envisioned showing only information about the requested item, and then charging sellers for access to contact the person...this helps to weed out people that aren't serious about selling/don't have the item in question.
Obviously you could use this for any tangible item, but I saw a big benefit when buying a car. As the process stands today, you submit via the manufacturer's website that you are interested in model X, then you get hit with a ton of emails from dealers in your area, typically offering you everything but the exact make/model/color you want. Cut through the noise and management of those emails and get what you want.
Feel free to hit me up if I can help in any way: shawn.arnwine at gmail.com
I'd simply suggest that you post here a little bit about what you are working on and the skill set you are hoping to bring onboard, with your contact information as there are always folks on HN interested in connecting.
Fair point. Our only hesitation is that on our website using a pseudonym wouldn't add much to our credibility as folks using the app want to know more about us and what we are about so they can feel some sort of confidence in their purchase.
He works for a large corporation that prevents him (has him sign a clause) from having outside businesses. That, plus they are in downsizing mode, so he figures if they catch wind that he is hoping to eventually leave by having the side business, this just gives them cause to boot him now.
Yes. I had a similar thought last year, registering ideaserving/ideaservingsize.com, but obviously never did anything with it. My thought was to have folks post their ideas, and each day you'd see/get a list of 3-4 new ideas. If you liked one of the ideas you could then connect with the submitter. All the best.
Eric: Thanks for sharing, and great tips. As someone who is in the same boat, I'm always curious as to how others handle the situation. I'm assuming your goal is to leverage the success of your startup so that you can leave your day job? If so, how do you keep focused on your day job, when the excitement of your startup keeps pulling more at you, especially if you are as you start to see success? I'm in a day job that I hate (its soul crushing), but that gives me the flexibility to work on my startup. The allure of my startup is always calling, but its going to be a while before we see profit, and I've got a wife and bills waiting for me at home so I do what I can to stay sane. All the best.
Congrats on getting the product built. The key now, before you perform any additional work on it, is to determine if there is a need/want for your product outside of your current user and potential user, that warrants additional time spent, and can subsequently provide you with the ability to earn some cash.
I'd suggest looking at some of the writing around the Lean methodology, especially Customer Development. For example, you can create simple surveys and send them out to potential customers (find customers on forums, FB, wherever), during which you can gauge interest and if they'd be willing to pay.
HN Readers: I've learned a ton over the years by reading about others who have bootstrapped. Whether its via 37Signals, Bootstrapped and Profitable series, or other blog posts. But I haven't found a blog/site dedicated to bootstrappers, and the challenges they've had to overcome or weren't able to.
Everyone has a story to tell, big or small, success or failure, so if you'd like to participate, please visit http://leanboots.posterous.com and drop me a line.
Or if anyone has any specific thoughts on stories or direction, I'd appreciate it.
You may want to look to leverage a PHP framework (i.e. CodeIgniter, Yii, Zend, etc.) to help facilitate some of the heavier lifting for you. I prefer CodeIgniter, and have had good luck using ion auth (https://github.com/benedmunds/CodeIgniter-Ion-Auth) for user management.
Thanks. I've been following the lean lessons, and agree that its worked well. And I have learned my own lessons, the hard way with respect to using a new technology...I recently picked up RoR, but it was an uphill climb and cost me 2-3 months.
Thanks everyone, encouraging so far. I'll be honest, one of the frustrations/fears is not being able to currently commit 100% of my time to my idea, which inevitably leads to it taking substantially longer (months) to get something out the door...in the mean time, I look on Techcrunch or HN and others has developed something similar in a matter of weeks and raised $$. If there is one thing I've learned, is that hard work does pay off...onward and upward.
We attempted something similar in my previous company. I can tell you it failed, and why so as not to make the same mistakes we did. For starters, they are an IT services company so it was difficult to implement from the get-go when you are dependant on your employees being billable. We were hoping to build software products, and we knew that we would need to provide support and incentives b/c we were essentially asking those involved to work hours outside of their normal schedule. We set up a fairly streamlined, gated process which provided the teams the ability to receive mentorship throughout each gate. They would formalize an idea/concept, then run it by the CEO and sales team to ensure it had buy-in and would be marketable to our established customer base. If at any point it wasn't viable they could either pivot or stop. The wheels quickly fell off when the CEO (after signing off on it) decided it was too heavy handed, then the sales team was too busy to meet with any of the teams, and none of the teams could see the incentive to working on something that lacked support and required them to work off-hours to build. Needless to say, this is the opposite of how an YC clone should be inside of a company.
In alignment with your benefits, I just feel that in this day and age, as a buyer I shouldn't have to spend countless hours looking for the best deal. Especially if I know exactly what I want, people with it should be able to give it to me and compete for my business.
I envisioned showing only information about the requested item, and then charging sellers for access to contact the person...this helps to weed out people that aren't serious about selling/don't have the item in question.
Obviously you could use this for any tangible item, but I saw a big benefit when buying a car. As the process stands today, you submit via the manufacturer's website that you are interested in model X, then you get hit with a ton of emails from dealers in your area, typically offering you everything but the exact make/model/color you want. Cut through the noise and management of those emails and get what you want.
Feel free to hit me up if I can help in any way: shawn.arnwine at gmail.com
Good luck.