Y Combinator Feedback on Your Site: It hurts so good

http://genotrope.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/y-combinator-feedback-it-hurts-so-good/

by theremora • 18 years ago

13 12 18 years ago

genotrope.wordpress.com

dkokelley• 18 years ago

I'm glad you've brought your site to be picked apart by the News.YC group. Judging by this blog post you're doing exactly what you should be doing: Listening to the suggestions and adapting as needed. Good luck with this!

theoneill• 18 years ago

it was all web designer input and there was none regarding the actual concept, business model or use of the application

That's not because the users of this site are web designers. Mostly they're developers. It was because the design of the site was so bad that most visitors got held up there. This also explains the low sign-up rate, which you explain as a property of the audience. I think it is more likely a property of the site.

theremora3• 18 years ago

Yes, I did mention exactly that in the post "Granted, the blame is mostly ours, due to a less than attractive design and muddy benefit message, maybe most could not see past that to get to the business proposition."

jgrahamc• 18 years ago

I agree. Based on this posting I went to look at the site and it's clear that this is not ready to be public. It needs a private beta with some really critical thinking going on.

Also, the main page has an it's/its mistake on it which makes it look unready.

It's not surprising that the benefit didn't pop out.

marcus• 18 years ago

Next time when you ask for feedback for a site that requires registration, please provide a few demo logins we can play with.

axod• 18 years ago

Or just make the registration simple. Ask for a username and password and nothing more.

theremora3• 18 years ago

thats all there is to the registration, an email address and password. With that the user can save their work history from which their graph is built. they can then find companies that are in their graph, get feeds from those companies regarding milestones and openings and save companies of interest. keep track of companies they submitted their resume to. they also can edit and add companies to the database,

johnrob• 18 years ago

"Out of 350 or so visitors, we got 4 sign ups"

The ycnews crowd may not be your target audience. Perhaps they they are too busy hacking their own stuff to bother researching other startups :)

sspencer• 18 years ago

This is dead on. A site has to be extremely innovative and useful for me to sink even the time to register into it. Conversely, even a decently useful-looking site with an overly complex registration process usually gets bypassed as well.

Extremely fast-registering sites (like Hacker News, for example) have spoiled me. ;)

edw519• 18 years ago

Wow! This is one of the most insightful and helpful posts ever. (Many of us are in the same boat.)

Your site may not be ready, but you guys sure seem like you're on the ball. Thank you and good luck!

Zak• 18 years ago

"You must log in to access FAQ"

I think the only valid response to that is "WTF?"

theremora3• 18 years ago

Yeah, we have some really secret and highly proprietary stuff in there. :) Sorry, that is just an oversight, not meant to be like that.

Y Combinator Feedback on Your Site: It hurts so good

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