I agree that knowing how to pull your own data is important. While you are doing the tedious work of pulling data your brain will often spot a good idea for a new experiment or see a new relationship in the data structure.
26% of Oracle's expenses are sales and marketing. (Those strip club trips add up.) In all seriousness, is it just a necessary evil? If you could hold your nose and do it would it not be a barrier to entry for your competitors also? Could you do enterprise software without the sales army?
You might have a list of top users that I could friend and get their tabs. Furthermore if I could search the users by tag and get a list of active users for that tag who I could friend, that would be beneficial. I.e. I might search for "delta blues" and see ten guys who have put up tabs using that tag. This also gives me something to do on the front page other than just registering. I like the icon. Good luck.
In testing a MVP I submitted to several of the startup websites (1). The quality of traffic was bad. Their audience were people who were interested in kicking the tires on startups and not people in the industry I was targeting who needed a solution.
Having people try the site and give feedback on Mechanical Turk also doesn't work.
I like the suggestion of others on this thread to post to a focused subreddit. Another good idea is to find a blog through AllTop for your industry. I've found most bloggers will accept a direct ad for less than $100 a week.
What worked the best for me was good old AdSense, monitoring, and a/b testing. It is pretty easy to get a $100 coupon for new AdSense accounts and you can find out much about your site for that amount. Good luck.
Can you HNers think of a way to separate the teaching aspect of university from the research aspect?
They seem to serve two different customers. Teaching is really for students to educate them and season them up for life. Research is for the government or business and makes the professor and university money.
I think we can all remember a hard core research professor who could not teach a class worth a damn. On the other hand having students proximal to research projects is good for both; students receive early job experience and research projects have access to cheap educated labor.
What business model in the future should universities follow?
I'd caution making your survey "Hey would you use Web app A?" The Mechanical Turk users want to blaze through the survey as fast as possible and get paid. Clicking "Yes" gets them through the fastest and also lets them please the surveyor (the same bias as your friends or family).
Force them to make a choice. Present Web app A (real), Web app B (dummy), and Web app C (dummy). Make them rank which web app is best.
Set up the survey three ways: A, B, C. B, C, A. and C, B, A. Have a third of the sample take each survey. You would be surprised at the first choice bias with Mechanical Turk. Actually you wouldn't be surprised when you remember that these people just want to get the thing done.
Finally a good secondary survey is to make them rank order features for their worth. This helps find your MVP. (Read more about "conjoint analysis" if this interests you.)
My eye first went to the screen cap (which could have the white space at the bottom of it cropped off). Then I read the "Sign up for Atombox for Free" link. At this point I am still wondering what is going on. Finally I find the first sentence "Atombox keeps your GTD...". I suggest the first time you mention it, spell out 'Getting Things Done'. I would also like to see more use examples.
I'd like to ask what is everyone using for accounting? Anyone have an elegant solution? Does anyone's web app hook into one of the online accounting apps using the accounting app's API?
I'd like to give a plug for playing bridge. It is the best card game there is. Texas Hold 'Em : Checkers :: Bridge : Chess.
It can be a sociable game and yet it can also be a game that holds you interest as you try to achieve perfection.
To anyone who wants to get started there is a bit of learning curve. There are good guides online, computer games to help practice with (Bridge Baron is good and is even available for the iPhone), and there are local clubs that would love to see you come out (check out ACBL).