It seems to me that there is a significant group of users out there that are web app groupies for lack of a better word who will more or less express an interest in anything as long as it is pre-launch or early in the launch cycle. Since these folks are usually not your actual target market, their feedback is pretty worthless unless you're just looking for whether you fit neatly inside a web x.0 box. It seems like a website where people posted ideas for websites would be almost guaranteed to have a high population of these folks.
Of course I'm probably not your target market so my feedback is probably pretty worthless.
There are a lot of users on HN who are positive about new projects (A) because it is nice and often more constructive as a start for discussion (B) it counteracts a prevailing negativity and one-upmanship (C) you actually don't know what is going to pan out in the end.
I wouldn't call that worthless; it's something worth thinking about.
We have a ton of thinking/testing still left to do as we flesh out exactly what the product will be. Gaming/aggregating good vs. bad support ("I'd use it") is going to be crucial.
While traffic from said groupies would be nice, we'd like the actual feedback to be a bit more useful than a group of people marking "I'd use it". A reward system for making the right picks of apps that actually make it (whatever that definition of "make it" ends up being) is probably a worthwhile thing for us to think through.
I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will.
I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.
Yeah, there's no site there. I was fooling around with the CSS trying to get rid of the pesky modal views (sometimes it works), when I got to the page... which was just an image http://launchsky.com/img/bg-app.png. It's a good simulation but I think the author needs to make it a little clearer. I went in and put my email in thinking I was signing up and... nothing. It just refreshed the page I think. Then I went to my email thinking I had to confirm my account and there was no email. So I did it again with the same results. Maybe I'm a noob, but I think perhaps it could be a little more clear.
How is this different from a LaunchRock in essence? I feel like for many consumers, it's very hard for them to imagine the product w/o seeing/touching/interacting with it no matter how great you pitch or describe it. If someone were to describe to me a blog of funny cats or what's essentially Instagram, I don't think I would have cared much and never really appreciate how much enjoyment I would derive from both just from the pitch or description.
On many occasions I've asked people if they wanted x or would it be cool if it did x and lukewarm would be the best description of their reaction. But seeing the live or real version of that x gave a totally different reaction.
LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.
LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.
We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).
In some ways this is similar to Launchrock from the perspective of the poster. However, whether or not it's usually true with most launch pages, when you show people your launch page you are implying that you intend to launch.
The purpose of posting to Launchsky is to get feedback, in the form of interest and comments. One user might post up five ideas (basically visual elevator pitches) and be able to decide from user comments and votes which idea holds the most promise (or which ones don't stand a chance for reasons X, Y).
The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.)
So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive.
1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system.
2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these are just ideas. There's no way you can tell if the idea will be successful even with enough support backers. Takes much longer to develop etc.
3. Give them the option to back good ideas (put their money where their mouth is)? Nope…then it's just Kickstarter.
4. Curate the people evaluating the apps. Gather some people that have skills and well informed about their field. Tech/Design/etc. Then you'll be able to get real feedback from those who knows what they're talking about. It's not a guaranteed hit/miss but I think the result would be better than mass voting from randoms.
I would disagree about needing incentives/rewards to get people voting. You are the counterargument to your own comment. You just commented on this idea here on HN, for free, with no incentive and no reward. People like us often love to see new ideas, and comment on them and join in a discussion with the founders. "This is great", "I don't think this will work", "this would be better if...", "what are you planning to do about..."
LaunchSky is "Hacker News for Ideas Not News"
I've dreamed of having something like this before, and I would love to see LaunchSky do it. I think I would go there often enough to see other people's ideas and provide my own.
I think this is best aimed at the same people that like Hacker News, NOT the general Facebook population.
How about you offer some pricing with the idea and then give backers a discount? Might work with a mail list, people sign up to get an opportunity for discounts on potential products they'd like to use. Would skew the audience but that's going to be the case with any incentive.
Exactly. And the problem with #4 is that in trying to round up people the community trusts/knows by name, you're also going to end up bringing in people that have personal and professional connections that could also game the system.
Steve Jobs famously avoided asking people what they wanted, instead showing them what they wanted. His philosophy was often described as arrogant, but guess what? He was frequently right -- people often accepted his ideas about a product they couldn't imagine until he showed it to them.
I don't think this approach is appropriate for the vast majority of entrepreneurs. Mr. Jobs was a unique character with a perspective on the world that few others (appear to) share.
It seems that entrepreneurs these days are concerned with "building something awesome (to also make money)", and that's not what Steve Jobs did.
When one has a multitude waiting eagerly for pronouncements, then, of course, solving the problem of showing may be left as an exercise for the reader.
"especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research"
you REALLY think so? I agree with your first few points, but I disagree on that last (quoted) bit entirely.
Building/deploying something of real quality (and potential viability) can be very costly.
The point of the app is to make that "cost of comprehensive research" negligible in comparison to what it is today. Either you pay a ton to do it right or train yourself forever on how to do it cheap (which is a cost of time). We want to lessen that burden exponentially.
1. The most obvious: how do you prevent your ideas from being stolen?
2. If your idea is vague ("A site where people can post Hipstamatic-like photos, but easily share them!") then you will get a lukewarm response, even if the actual idea (and implementation) is great.
3. If you spend the time fleshing out your idea into something that excites users...then you've committed enough resources to not need a site like this. Also, see #1.
In other words, users are at a catch-22 here. Your site wants to keep them from launching half-baked ideas by providing them with audience opinion. And yet, in order to get validation, a user will have to show off a well-baked idea.
Interesting approach.
Regarding the idea that users would need something to keep coming back to the site to approve an idea,as said previously, offering a reward might be the best solution, but, to prevent them going around and voting on everything, why not give the power of giving rewards to the owner of the idea?
Once users realized that the owner of the idea was the one assigning points, they may just offer up feedback that panders to the owner in order to receive rewards.
Strange, this is almost like what I thought pvsh should be (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867883) -- you're connecting people who want things with people who are making them. Except instead of letting people generate ideas for entrepreneurs to jump on, you're asking entrepreneurs to lift their skirt before they're ready for the dance. Also, you don't have the monetization I'd expect (or at least you're not talking about it yet).
Edit: I just realized that "If you sign up now, you’ll get to submit your first idea free" implies you're monetizing the entrepreneurs who use the site -- so all content is paid content.
The monetization isn't finalized yet -- we're getting feedback now (mostly with this post).
Our hunch is to charge a minimal amount for each idea submission; something significantly less than the money/time/effort for a splash page / domain / launchrock / ads. The early adopters would never pay; we instead need to figure out a clear way to incentivize them to come to each idea, the dashboard of ideas in general, and back again.
I for one would NOT use this service. There is a lot of mistrust in this industry, and no one wants to potentially give away an idea for the sake of third party market analysis that isn't that well known or confidential.
Point taken, and we do appreciate the feedback. The same can be said for KickStarter/Indiegogog/Everyone else.
We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.
As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"
You wouldn't want to post up something like a "trade secret" on our site, that's for sure. However, living in Silicon Valley I have actually found that most people in the tech community don't have problems sharing their ideas. I like to share my ideas as often as possible, because it helps me evaluate which ones are the best, and often people offer meaningful suggestions. At the end of the day, success comes down to execution, but it's nice to have some confidence that you aren't starting down a path on false premises.
Some feedback. I was curious to read some ideas. Reluctantly, I put my email address in. Then I was asked to spread the word (on what exactly, I'm not sure since I haven't been able to use it yet). Dismissing that message took me back to the screen asking me if I'm interested.
So all that "hidden" content may or may not be real. I'll never know. It looked real though. But at this point I'd probably never use the site again. Felt like I was taken. At least you got my email address, I guess :).
That's all constructive criticism. I know it's hard to decide exactly how to roll out some of this stuff but hope it helps.
It seems to me that this will provide customer validation of questionable quality to the entrepreneur. You can't effectively gauge the viability of an idea by asking people to predict the future. When asked; "Would you use this awesome service?", most people will say "Absolutely"! However, when the time comes to pay for it/download it they will not actually do it. Great looking site, however I feel like the data generated will be less useful than talking to your customers about their past behavior.
We've discussed the idea of gaming good vs. bad support.
Think: Angel investors, but with their likes/sign-up instead of money.
Still, this won't be an easy one to crack, but we're committed to providing feedback/support of actual value, as well as a pool of potential users, to people coming with a new idea.
I see several fatal flaws that are already addressed by other services, like Kickstarter and focus groups:
1. No reward for participation (bad for users)
2. No promise of a finished product (bad for users)
3. Users have no personal stake in anything they "support" (bad for developers)
4. Highly biased and narrow audience (bad for developers)
What people think they want and what they'd actually pay for are often very different things. Contrary to your title, this seems like a great way to encourage developers to build even more crappy apps that no one will ever buy.
I've been giving this some thought (this would be an idea to share on LaunchSky) ... what about a web site where people could go and ask for something to be developed? The ideas get voted and commented on and then developers could go away make it and know it's something that has a market.
It could even evolve into a competition where apps are being developed for the stuff that people want, plus the web site would give exposure to the apps.
Certainly some ideas are different and exciting enough that you wouldn't want to audition them publicly. But for the most part, it's execution that matters. This site seems like a good idea to gauge reaction to those ideas.
How are you planning to get a good volume of user feedback on these ideas? That seems like a pretty big challenge.
Rather than a "yay or nah" style, I'd rather if the feedback were more open ended. Such as: "What do you like about this idea? What don't you like?"
I do think that's one of our biggest (if not the biggest) challenge.
Our "chicken" in the equation would be the entrepreneurs who post. We need to incentivize them to post to a safe platform that they get something out of, but in a way that saves them time and/or money (otherwise they'd use their own launchpage + adwords and/or the launchrock-esque services).
Our "egg" is the volume of (quality) users for feedback.
Then how do you get more chickens who make more eggs?
There might be a tiered posting service. Maybe one free, one cheap (feedback + full share feature + meta tags for SEO), and one more expensive -- but includes targeted keywords that you choose and targeted feedback from a group of users. Too early to tell at this point, but with enough awesome feedback like this, and eventually some initial users, I'm sure we'll get this figured out.
Just a thought. You could charge for submissions to be displayed publicly as a five star rating based on some metric to obscure the exact numbers. This would protect the submitters to a degree from poachers as people can only see with low resolution if the project is desirable. It would also be a source or revenue.
I think this project is a good idea and look forward to seeing it live.
That's interesting, with two caveats:
- Many people may be wary of giving an idea for which they see a huge potential, but it may not be a problem for side projects
- I don't see what the people giving their opinion would gain. Maybe it's just the thrill of being pitched new ideas regularly?
You've nailed both of the biggest things we'll be tackling.
For people posting: quick, protected, easy, elegant, keeps early adopters so that you can reach out them if it's built.
For those evaluating an idea: Their absolutely needs to be a clear incentive. We'll get this figured out. Maybe a field for "early adopter perks" or a ladder of incentives for how soon someone supports an idea. In any case, this is definitely something we have to nail.
Admittedly, this is one of our biggest challenges.
It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).
Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.
One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.
Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.
Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.
The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.
We intend to borrow some strategies that have made Kickstarter and other sites for funding projects successful. For example, we'll devote a lot of attention to making individual concepts easy to share, which will ultimately bring more users to our site. We'll also keep the process of viewing, commenting, and voting on ideas itself simple and enjoyable. Personally, I enjoy seeing what ideas people are thinking about or working on - it's one of the reasons I spend so much time on Hacker News :)
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
Of course I'm probably not your target market so my feedback is probably pretty worthless.
[+] [-] pekk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
We have a ton of thinking/testing still left to do as we flesh out exactly what the product will be. Gaming/aggregating good vs. bad support ("I'd use it") is going to be crucial.
While traffic from said groupies would be nice, we'd like the actual feedback to be a bit more useful than a group of people marking "I'd use it". A reward system for making the right picks of apps that actually make it (whatever that definition of "make it" ends up being) is probably a worthwhile thing for us to think through.
[+] [-] hiddenstage|13 years ago|reply
I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.
[+] [-] pydave|13 years ago|reply
(Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)
[+] [-] xauronx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)
[+] [-] wushupork|13 years ago|reply
On many occasions I've asked people if they wanted x or would it be cool if it did x and lukewarm would be the best description of their reaction. But seeing the live or real version of that x gave a totally different reaction.
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.
LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.
We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).
[+] [-] atte|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justjimmy|13 years ago|reply
The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.)
So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive.
1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system.
2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these are just ideas. There's no way you can tell if the idea will be successful even with enough support backers. Takes much longer to develop etc.
3. Give them the option to back good ideas (put their money where their mouth is)? Nope…then it's just Kickstarter.
4. Curate the people evaluating the apps. Gather some people that have skills and well informed about their field. Tech/Design/etc. Then you'll be able to get real feedback from those who knows what they're talking about. It's not a guaranteed hit/miss but I think the result would be better than mass voting from randoms.
[+] [-] unreal37|13 years ago|reply
LaunchSky is "Hacker News for Ideas Not News"
I've dreamed of having something like this before, and I would love to see LaunchSky do it. I think I would go there often enough to see other people's ideas and provide my own.
I think this is best aimed at the same people that like Hacker News, NOT the general Facebook population.
[+] [-] ollysb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wikwocket|13 years ago|reply
The other perk to this is that idea-submitters get a home-grown email list for their new app.
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicksergeant|13 years ago|reply
It seems that entrepreneurs these days are concerned with "building something awesome (to also make money)", and that's not what Steve Jobs did.
[+] [-] highace|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
1 steve jobs :)
[+] [-] __abc|13 years ago|reply
Nothing will stop this from happening ... especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research
In regards to the site ...
Asking someone "yeah, I'd use that", vs getting them to download and use (ignoring pay, but that's also key :)) is totally different
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
you REALLY think so? I agree with your first few points, but I disagree on that last (quoted) bit entirely.
Building/deploying something of real quality (and potential viability) can be very costly.
The point of the app is to make that "cost of comprehensive research" negligible in comparison to what it is today. Either you pay a ton to do it right or train yourself forever on how to do it cheap (which is a cost of time). We want to lessen that burden exponentially.
[+] [-] skisly|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
1. The most obvious: how do you prevent your ideas from being stolen?
2. If your idea is vague ("A site where people can post Hipstamatic-like photos, but easily share them!") then you will get a lukewarm response, even if the actual idea (and implementation) is great.
3. If you spend the time fleshing out your idea into something that excites users...then you've committed enough resources to not need a site like this. Also, see #1.
In other words, users are at a catch-22 here. Your site wants to keep them from launching half-baked ideas by providing them with audience opinion. And yet, in order to get validation, a user will have to show off a well-baked idea.
[+] [-] tdtran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] friendly_chap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acabral|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tchock23|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pydave|13 years ago|reply
Edit: I just realized that "If you sign up now, you’ll get to submit your first idea free" implies you're monetizing the entrepreneurs who use the site -- so all content is paid content.
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
Our hunch is to charge a minimal amount for each idea submission; something significantly less than the money/time/effort for a splash page / domain / launchrock / ads. The early adopters would never pay; we instead need to figure out a clear way to incentivize them to come to each idea, the dashboard of ideas in general, and back again.
[+] [-] gyazbek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.
As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"
[+] [-] atte|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmathai|13 years ago|reply
So all that "hidden" content may or may not be real. I'll never know. It looked real though. But at this point I'd probably never use the site again. Felt like I was taken. At least you got my email address, I guess :).
That's all constructive criticism. I know it's hard to decide exactly how to roll out some of this stuff but hope it helps.
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
The product isn't there yet, so our goal is the email drop -- so that we have a way to contact a user-base once the product is built.
But your concern is definitely heard, and we'll be sure the real product never evokes that kind of emotion out of the users. Promise :).
[+] [-] bringking|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
Think: Angel investors, but with their likes/sign-up instead of money.
Still, this won't be an easy one to crack, but we're committed to providing feedback/support of actual value, as well as a pool of potential users, to people coming with a new idea.
[+] [-] Irregardless|13 years ago|reply
1. No reward for participation (bad for users)
2. No promise of a finished product (bad for users)
3. Users have no personal stake in anything they "support" (bad for developers)
4. Highly biased and narrow audience (bad for developers)
What people think they want and what they'd actually pay for are often very different things. Contrary to your title, this seems like a great way to encourage developers to build even more crappy apps that no one will ever buy.
[+] [-] steve_j|13 years ago|reply
It could even evolve into a competition where apps are being developed for the stuff that people want, plus the web site would give exposure to the apps.
Maybe this could be a section of LaunchSky?
Just an idea.
[+] [-] joeld42|13 years ago|reply
Certainly some ideas are different and exciting enough that you wouldn't want to audition them publicly. But for the most part, it's execution that matters. This site seems like a good idea to gauge reaction to those ideas.
How are you planning to get a good volume of user feedback on these ideas? That seems like a pretty big challenge.
Rather than a "yay or nah" style, I'd rather if the feedback were more open ended. Such as: "What do you like about this idea? What don't you like?"
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
Our "chicken" in the equation would be the entrepreneurs who post. We need to incentivize them to post to a safe platform that they get something out of, but in a way that saves them time and/or money (otherwise they'd use their own launchpage + adwords and/or the launchrock-esque services).
Our "egg" is the volume of (quality) users for feedback.
Then how do you get more chickens who make more eggs?
There might be a tiered posting service. Maybe one free, one cheap (feedback + full share feature + meta tags for SEO), and one more expensive -- but includes targeted keywords that you choose and targeted feedback from a group of users. Too early to tell at this point, but with enough awesome feedback like this, and eventually some initial users, I'm sure we'll get this figured out.
[+] [-] jontaylor|13 years ago|reply
I think this project is a good idea and look forward to seeing it live.
[+] [-] georgeorwell|13 years ago|reply
How do you plan to make money?
[+] [-] louischatriot|13 years ago|reply
Cool idea in any case.
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
For people posting: quick, protected, easy, elegant, keeps early adopters so that you can reach out them if it's built.
For those evaluating an idea: Their absolutely needs to be a clear incentive. We'll get this figured out. Maybe a field for "early adopter perks" or a ladder of incentives for how soon someone supports an idea. In any case, this is definitely something we have to nail.
[+] [-] toddmorey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlokshin|13 years ago|reply
It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).
Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.
One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.
Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.
Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.
The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.
[+] [-] atte|13 years ago|reply