Cofounder Wanted: www.timeoffhq.com

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601202

by ryandotsmith • 15 years ago

35 25 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have personally developed this web app over the last couple of years. I have a few serious users but it is only by luck that I have any at all. I have done 0 marketing. I am looking for someone with some mad biz-dev skills to partner with me in turing this project into a revenue generating business. I would even consider selling it outright if the situation was good. My email address is on the front page of www.timeoffhq.com

kmort• 15 years ago

Does it integrate with any HRMS or payroll systems? It may be a nice bolt-on to such systems which have rather dated interfaces, and would allow you to target past the small business focus you have at the moment.

ryandotsmith3• 15 years ago

It does not. Perhaps this is a great first step towards increasing signups.... But I am looking for someone who knows weather or not this would be a good idea.

gridspy• 15 years ago

Cute, I like it.

You should consider some simple avenues to get sales before paying the huge equity cost of getting someone else to do it for you.

- Get all of your friend's employers to use it (even within subsets of their business)

- Write some blog articles about what you learn and post them on HN

- Get some blog coverage about your product

- Even pay for some ads or adwords

You might also find a cofounder as you drive up your traffic.

What (I think) you need to do now is to stop trying to improve the product and concentrate on getting friends and family to use it.

mikelbring• 15 years ago

I made something just like this for work (internal). Looks pretty good!

andrewtbham• 15 years ago

where do you live? Kansas City, MO?

ryandotsmith3• 15 years ago

I used to. Now I am living in San Francisco.

kbrock• 15 years ago

Looking Good It seems most HRMS/Payroll systems do a poor job of this.

Integration with Google Apps is nice / key. ( https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr... )

cheez• 15 years ago

Hey, good luck.

Just one small suggestion: that video... You scared the hell out of me.

ryandotsmith3• 15 years ago

LOL. Like i said, I have not idea what I am doing when it comes to marketing. I made this video after 3 days of relentless hacking.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

oh god, please remake the video with less smiling. exaggerated smiling ALWAYS looks bad in marketing material.

drats• 15 years ago

I agree with the OP, I got a weird vibe off it. I suggest you just chuck a logo over the front bit. I.e. replace it with the logo on a background maybe with a still picture of you stamping down/appearing next to it when you say your name.

joseakle• 15 years ago

Maybe you should talk about the benefits before the features.

adolfojp• 15 years ago

You've got a good voice so you can do the narration yourself. And you look decent so you're not going to scare little children away. But you've got the intensity of a hyperactive geek who overdosed on Froot Loops. Don't take this the wrong way. As a proud geek myself I know that this can be intimidating. The other problem with the video is that it looks home made. (Yes, I know that it is home made) This is OK for technical tutorials but not for a sales presentation. Potential customers might think that this is a sign of an unsuccessful company. And they might associate this apparent lack of success with a bad product. Yes, people are shallow. The video contrasts with the professionalism of your website. Your website looks good and professional. Tone your intensity down a bit and remove yourself (and your room) from the video and you'll make your software look a lot more trustworthy.

Another recommendation is to not use your gmail account... sort of. It makes you look like a kid in a basement instead of like the owner of a small software company. But you can use gmail for your domain for free so you can still get the greatness of Gmail with the legitimacy of your own domain.

Good luck.

ChuckFrank• 15 years ago

What? I loved the video. 1 min / concise / detailed. Having run remote teams and managed time off, something like this would have helped tremendously. Good luck, and well done.

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Spelling error in the video - "Email notificaiton" (I always make similar typos).

What a good idea!

scottkrager• 15 years ago

Link: http://www.timeoffhq.com/

TamDenholm• 15 years ago

Just curious, what's it coded in?

Edit, actually nvm, I'm guessing rails since your blog is on heroku.

nhannah2• 15 years ago

A system like this is nice, but IMHO it needs to be aimed at larger corporations and/or those that deal with limited skill job sets(many employees). Being an engineer my team has always been small enough that getting time off just takes mentioning it to my boss 20ft away and making sure I email him the dates after. If you can tell me how this will save a company money I would completely agree you can sell the service. This may sound odd but once again IMHO your pricing is too aggressive, seeing the product and putting my take of going after larger corporations on it I would say you would want to have a sales force pushing a specialized version of this to each customer. Essentially you would go to a Hospital for instance, pitch them on how much they could save in time and $ using this, add some zeros to the end of your current rate and do the full install making sure it works with their current system for scheduling, a support contract is in there somewhere as well.(huge run on sentence but that's how my mind works) My biggest question is who is your competition? I could go on, but I would like to hear your take on competition and who you believe your customers are.

nhannah2• 15 years ago

Sorry just spotted small businesses on your page, so my question then is why small businesses only? Back to your competition with that question I guess.

johnsocs• 15 years ago

Looks like a great product, I do have to agree the video did freak me out a bit.

I've worked for mid to small businesses in the past and this could integrate great with them, yet the missing part if you want daily users of your system you need to have time tracking functionality, and this plays in perfect with 'timeoff' as an employees time off accumulates based on hours worked at some defined rate.

apush• 15 years ago

Hey Ryan, your product looks quite interesting and I think it is especially good that you have done no marketing yet: It shows that users are intrinsically motivated to use your product and are even willing to pay for it. You should be proud of that! Before you make all your family and friends use the product or pay for ads, you should start off having a conversation with your existing customers. - Try to get suggestions off them for new features - Understand what other problems they have (it was already pointed out that HRMS or payroll systems for small businesses do a poor job with automatisation of such simple tasks) --> Your existing customers are the business experts you are looking for and they would be able to tell you whether or not your ideas are what they value - Understand how much money/time they save by using your product and what they value about it (put it on the front page instead of the features) In the next step you could think about paid ads, but before using them, your frontpage needs a clearer focus on people coming in from ads. This is the case as those people will likely be less educated in terms of their needs and thus your page has to display and tell them what exactly they are looking for! Some things to consider and then measure: - Your page talks in terms of features and not solutions. You might want to consider to change that. - it should mirror the feedback from your customers and have a proactive tense e.g. consider your “sign up & pricing” button → you might think about changing it to “Sign Up Now” - look at the big screenshot → you might want to think about using this prominent space for your video as it tells much more and is much more convincing that the current screenshot. Obviously, those are the little things in the beginning but they might have a significant impact. Other thing to consider are pricing: It is not clear whether or not the prices are total per month or per user per month (as is usually the case with such products). As you can see there is a lot of work in front of you, but you should be proud of yourself, as I have pointed out! In terms of a business cofounder: It is great that you have realized that you need those skills in your team. I have worked in biz dev with quite successful start-ups and can tell you from my experience that HN is probably not the best place to find those people as it has a very technical focus (what I like about it). Best of luck, Alex

imjonathanlee• 15 years ago

I don't think its a bad idea- but like others mentioned, the video is a turnoff for me. I like your enthusiasm, but I suggest a remake of the video. The video to me seems like it's an unprofessional product made by someone on a whim. It's great if it were a testimonial, but when used to describe your product- It could be less personal.

Keep up the good work and let me know how it turns out.

Cheers

venturebros• 15 years ago

yeah that video is creepy

ramiyer21a• 15 years ago

Cool idea. Very well narrated and concise. The 1 min next to video convinced me to spend one min on it.

dhruval• 15 years ago

Visiting http://www.timeoffhq.com/accounts - shows a xml dump of all your accounts and users!!

I can tell from your blog that you are a good coder, but need to be careful with little things like the routes file as this can lead to big problems.

All the best!

Cofounder Wanted: www.timeoffhq.com

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