Idea Feedback: CMS Vault

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3359356

by Slmnhq • 15 years ago

2 3 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

A few ideas have been bouncing around my head for a while now so I decided to codify them on a Osterwalder-style business model canvas.

This particular concept is called CMS Vault. It addresses hosting disasters that I personally faced with clients' sites over the past few years, including failed upgrades, hackings, site-jackings, and buggy plugins.

What I'm looking for from the HN community is the following:

- intuitiveness of the overall concept.

- validation of stated problem.

- viability of the solution.

- tips for execution.

- market segmentation.

- cautionary tales.

The canvas can be viewed here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/75834784/CMS-Vault

I will appreciate any and all feedback from the HN community.

trussi• 15 years ago

The problem I think you are trying to solve isn't much of a problem.

I've been developing with CMS applications for 12+ years and have never once ran into any of the issues you described above (failed upgrades, hackings, site-jackings, buggy plugins) to such a degree that I wanted/needed to completely switch the CMS platform.

I'd urge you to NOT build a product for developers. I know it's tempting because the ideas we (developers) come up with follow the 'scratch your itch' advice. I wrote a blog post about this: http://www.travisdoes.com/you-itch-sucks-scratch-somebody-el...

I'd highly recommend you focus your efforts on building a B2B SaaS product. There are millions of great opportunities to build boring, but profitable niche products.

If you need help finding some ideas, shoot me an email.

Slmnhq• 15 years ago

First of all... good blog post. Money quote: "Your universe is small and very hard to sell to."

Secondly, I hope I am not misunderstanding your comment, "... completely switch the CMS platform." While it may not be clear in the slide, this is not a new CMS. It is a backup and security service for popular CMSes.

Secondly, I am not aiming this service at other developers. It's partially omitted in the slide but the market segment is administrators of sites that receive >15K uniques per month.

Administrators != Developers. 15K+ uniques per month implies traffic is high enough to monetize which means uptime is critical.

Does that alter your opinion? Or generally, are there any parameters on the slide that could be tweaked to reach a threshold of viability in your opinion?

scottyallen• 15 years ago

Clickable: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75834784/CMS-Vault

Idea Feedback: CMS Vault

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