Help us spread our site to your school

[symbiotic]

If you want to skip the BS and see the final product here it is: http://www.collegeacb.com

So it’s been 4 months since we had our interview with the YC in Mountain View CA. It was a really exciting experience and although my partner and I were really upset that we didn’t get funded, I decided to continue developing the project. I remembered reading a bunch of posts after the interviews were over from many of the teams who did not make it. What I haven’t seen thus far is the story of what happened after the rejection, so here it is…

My co-founder and I were both seniors nearing the end of our college careers when we applied for YC. By the time we heard the amazing news that we had been invited to interview in Mountain View neither of us had even a potential job offer lined up for after graduation. We were pretty much banking on getting accepted.

After we were rejected we pretty much put the project on hold as we scrambled to find jobs. Luckily I was able to get a position as and my co-founder got accepted into the google summer of code program. My employers wanted me to start work at the beginning of June (only a few days after my graduation) but I knew that once I started work I would have no time to continue development on the potential startup. Luckily, I was able to push off my starting date for a month. At this point my co-founder was busy and wasn’t able to help with the programming. But where he failed to deliver in lines of code, he made up in sound advice and encouragement. I moved back home and coded away for the first 3 weeks of June. At that point I had a buggy version of what I had hoped to create, minus a few features, that I chose to drop/postpone. I started my “real” job early July and have been fixing all the bugs up until now.

So if you’re still reading at this point here is a description of the idea from my YC application:

“Our product is an anonymous social network geared towards the college community. The site is centered around a forum where students can vent their frustrations, talk about taboo subjects, or tell stories about their lives. However, as users interact with one another and post their thoughts to their community at large, they have the option to reveal their true identity or request the true identities (verified by University e-mail) to and from people whom they would like to reach out to in real life. It is our hope to connect our users not by their already established social identities, but by their common interests and character.”

PG and company were worried that it would be too difficult to spread our idea. We have observed an incredible viral effect when launching the site at a few test schools. Usually we are able to reach 50% or more of the university within 3-5 days. The problem is that the viral effect does not spread from school to school, only within the specific school. It requires a friend or other contact at the school in order to spread the word. That means that we need a friend or contact for each school we want to launch at.

So this is where I do the shameless plug for help. If there are any college students out there who had the attention span to get to this point then we would love it if you would help us spread our site to your school. We are willing to offer you 100% of our advertising profits (from your school) for the first 2 months for your help. Usually all that it takes is for you to create a facebook group and invite all of your friends, and maybe put up some fliers. Were expecting that our contact will make between $25 and $500, so its not a bad deal for the little amount of effort it takes.

If your interested in helping out please email me: aaron [at] collegeacb [dot] com

Here a link to the site if you want to check it out: http://www.collegeacb.com. I’d definitely love to hear feedback (especially on design and usability or other ways to spread to new schools).

[Alex3917]

What makes your service better than all the other startups offering anonymous conversations among college students? All of them have basically been proven to be fads, popular for a brief time among gay kids looking for hookups and people looking for vicodin, but then rapidly losing popularity after a few months. (I'm thinking specifically of boredat.net and juicycampus.com.) I'll admit I've never used the competing sites so I don't know much about them, but I also don't see much that differentiates your site either.

[steveplace]

1) I know it's probably overplayed, but this is one instance where a facebook app would definitely help your exposure. Having a random rant from your school on your wall every day would be interesting to me at least.

2) Lower your barrier to entry to allow people to post without logging in. Then offer to create an acct to see if anyone replies to your post. Also, there is no "register" button on the front page.

3) The img on top doesn't link back to home. Might want to change that.

Some design comments:

You have extra spacing on your login box. I'm on firefox with ABP.

A random quote at the bottom of the forms would be nice.

And you could have a site-wide feed that transcended schools. That might help eliminate the isolation between colleges.

A description/slogan to the right of your top_text might be helpful. Also, tighten up the copy when your explaining what your site is.

You need an about and a privacy page on your footer.

[symbiotic]

Thanks for all of the comments everyone. To address some of the issues:

You don't have to log in to view posts, only to make them. This is one thing that I think guides the discussion in a more meaningful direction than boredat/juicycampus. We have community moderation, so that if your post is reported a couple times by other users then it is removed and your posting privileges are temporarily suspended. This helps cut down on the excessively slanderous posts that you see on juicycampus.

As for it being a fad... At my school we had a live journal board and it has remained popular for at least 3 years now. I'm pretty convinced that if done right, we will be able to keep the attention of the student body. Not to mention that each year there's a whole new class of freshman who the idea may be completely new to.

PS: My co-founder was on NPR talking about some of these issues. You can check it out here... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9394823...

Click on the "Listen Now" button at the top (next to the red button)

[rtf]

At UC Santa Cruz there is a Livejournal community with an end-of-quarter "post anonymous secrets" thread. Exactly what is described here, and very popular. I think other campus LJ communities did the same as well.

I'm surprised at the critical attitudes -- that there are two competitors is reason for encouragement and indicates that the market you're targeting is no illusion. All you have to do is make your site better and better-known than the other guys.

[eventhough]

Don't make me have to sign up or log in to see stuff. Let me into a school and let me read what's going on right away. Let me peruse your content.

[netcan]

Not sure if I'd make that a rule.

[dslydel]

you don't have to login to see stuff, just to post I think.

[dslydel]

I personally think this is a great idea. Reading through the posts, its obvious that this offers something that juicycampus does not, mainly, actual conversations. You might consider expanding tools, I notice you can private message people, which is cool, but it would be nice if there were a couple "special" reasons to come to your site other than what I just mentioned.

[symbiotic]

We have been considering a "crush list" feature where students can add the email address of their crush to a private list. If two people add each other then their identities are revealed. The one thing we are worried about is the possibility for abuse (like someone adding everyone they know to see if there are any matches).

[cbrinker]

It just doesn't seem like something that will catch on. It offers a single particular service that is probably only useful to some people a minimal number of times before it gets old and/or their question(s) is answered.

Maybe it's just me personally, but I don't see a use for it really.

[mstefff]

why would people want to talk to each other anonymously? instead of talking to my friends in person or on one of the other million social networks, I would want to speak to people I don't know anonymously?

[Alex3917]

The Harvard Crimson had a decent editorial explaining the appeal:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515684

[steveplace]

See "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory"

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

[maxklein]

You're out of touch. Not everyone is like you.

[netcan]

Well many people do. But I think it's hard to keep things civilised that way.

[pageman]

think GOSSIP GIRL :)

[sharpshoot]

www.juicycampus.com and www.boredat.com already have this down.

[hooande]

juicycampus isn't doing great according to compete and boredat is down. Seems like there is definitely still room in the market.

[steveplace]

It's not the idea, it's the execution.