Show HN: My Start-up for managing roommates

by rschmukler • 14 years ago

18 28 14 years ago

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

Would love any and all feedback. Ideas, features, UX problems. Whatever you guys have I'd love to hear!

aeeeee• 14 years ago

i doubt this audience is going to be receptive to a site that requires a facebook login. it's probable you have other demographics in mind though.

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

Yeah, the facebook authentication is kind of a double edged sword. We want it because it will make it easy for users to invite their roommates, and more importantly, it allows us to have the concept of an "identity" to tie actions to. Going forward this could let us create a sort of roommate-resume tied to your identity.

dylanvee• 14 years ago

As a hacker, sure, I'd rather not have this potentially spam my wall with posts. But as a college student living with other college students, it's the perfect choice. This could prove to be really useful, I'm looking forward to trying it.

ernestipark2• 14 years ago

It's funny, I was talking with a friend about making something like this since I might be moving into a place with almost 10 people. I won't be able to use it for real for a few months, but it would be nice to test out the system without having to invite someone. The overall design looks very nice and clean though.

Edit: I can't see what my house name is when I'm logged in. Is this because I haven't invited anyone yet? I invited a friend and they entered my house name but it was not recognized.

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

Thanks, it's mostly Twitter bootstrap based. We definitely think that this application gets way more useful as a house has more roommates.

The problem with letting you browse around before inviting is that all of the tasks require some other user. I am very open to the idea of doing something so that people can somehow get use to stay dedicated so they don't forget about us while they wait for their roommates to join up.

Any ideas? Maybe a little preview video or something?

akaalias• 14 years ago

Greetings, having lived with 2 roommates for a good time period, I was very interested checking out how you are trying to solve some of the issues surrounding it.

Here is my immediate feedback:

1. Overall looks good, professional enough to trust. (Personally, not a big fan of vanilla Bootstrap 2.0. But I'll hopefully be one in thousand users who even know what that is)

2. Awesome, a clear call to action! However, I was hesitant because besides a bunch of icons and paragraphs of promises, it's not tangible how it works and how you are solving issues better than a bunch of magnets, a fridge and small pieces of paper. Add a walk-through or at least a few screenshots.

3. Login with Facebook only (as noted by others) makes sense but I'm not a big fan of this being the only option. Case in point, one of my past roommates did not have a facebook account.

4. Join or create a "Room" -- Errr... This naming made no sense (to me) whatsoever. Why are you replacing 'shared residency' or 'house' or 'apartment' with 'room'? To me, this is silly and - in my interpretation - seems like an overly clever play on the words 'room' and 'roommates'. Unless of course, you think we all sleep in bunk-beds in the same physical room (which, if you live in New York City is a possibility).

Okay, so I am now on my dashboard, I understand that my other roommates need to be invited. Okay. Instead, I'd like to poke around a bit first. I'd like to schedule/add chores, some existing bills, todos etc. so that, when they join, there is something to use/look at. Hm, that doesn't work because of some before_filter requires me to have them join first. That's a no-go for me.

Right now, I still have _no_ _idea_ how this thing works, what kind of forms/options you are going to give me and if they apply to the specific real-world situation (since there was nothing to be seen or checked-out pre-registration).

Because of the requirement of invitation, I can't move forward checking out what it does, so I'm losing interest quickly and am bound to leave and possibly never return.

Keep up! Looking forward to the next iteration :)

p_sherman• 14 years ago

Please add another type of login.

pdufour• 14 years ago

Maybe adding some screenshots of the app could help people sign up.

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

Good idea. Will add something to the home page.

dotBen• 14 years ago

I guess I'm going to sound like a Debbie Downer* but this feels like a great example of when talented software engineers have too small a universe of personally experienced problems, and end up building solutions for things that don't really need to be solved.

Dealing with roommates is no doubt a venerable problem to solve, but is there really a 'market' here that people will pay to address? There are so many lucrative and important issues out there, solving roommate management seems way down the list in terms of building a viable business. I base that last bit on the fact the OP describes this as a "startup" not a project.

I would emplor the OP to get out into the world more and find better problems to solve.

* = I use the term "debbie downer" after the recent HN post about searching for the weird terms people use in their comments. Debbie Downer was one of them.

parvinsingh2• 14 years ago

ha ha dotben :). I had the same opinion, but I refrained myself thinking that these might be some students who are pretty excited with their school project or something. Ofcourse I second you, but if this was a way to test twitter bootstrap, or just checkout their own capabilities with web development, then great. As far as market is concerned, I have never felt a need myself, because I never stayed with roomies.

hpvic032• 14 years ago

The problem itself may be small but the number of potential users is fairly large. The majority of Americans live with other people. This would probably be more useful for people living with friends rather than for families, but that's still quite a large number of people.

Utility = Size of problem solved * Users

Do you have a good plan for how to get users other than counting on TC and virality?

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

I appreciate the feedback! We are still playing with the idea of how viable this is as an actual business. For me this gave me an opportunity to escape from the more standard tasks of freelance development and a chance to implement all the new toys (MongoDB, Backbone, CoffeeScript, Bootstrap, etc.). That being said, I think there are some interesting ways that this could become quite profitable. If not, it's still a great way to put my name to something when applying to incubators on other ideas

178• 14 years ago

I agree there may be no 'market' making money from students who have to live together, but the problem of 'shared ownerships' applies to much more people (even incubators themselves!).

parvinsingh2• 14 years ago

I would rather say, a 45- 60 secs max, video with a screenplay, would be just awesome. If you can tell the pain of whiteboarding the tasks, or roomies arguing over the tasks, and then the advantage of using GoodMate. This is a pretty simple idea, but a damn needy one.

Cheers!!

code_pockets• 14 years ago

I'm not sure if this is a product that will become profitable soon. I am quite sure that you did learn from building it (and you did a good job!), so that may be worth more in the long-run than what this may end up being worth.

It takes guts to launch, more to show them on HN, and even more to keep launching until you strike gold (but you still keep on launching...)

The best of luck!

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

Thanks for the praise!

ezl• 14 years ago

Nice work. I like the logo and its a great idea. This space seems to be getting crowded, I feel like I've seen a few apps in this vein recently, most notably RentShare (http://rentshare.com), which a few of my friends in NYC use.

My biggest question to you (and anyone else here): What's your strategy for differentiating yourself from others in the market?

rschmukler9• 14 years ago

One thing we are looking into is building a sort of roommate resume. We have data on how much you borrow from friends, how long you take to pay back, how often you do and don't do your chores, etc...

I find as I am transitioning out of college, I am about to move again to a new place and now I'll need to find new roommates. I personally would pay a fee to have access to good roommates to choose from, especially if its backed up by some sort of tangible history (badges, analytics, etc.) There's also a lot of opportunity here to make a game out of something not fun. Game mechanics are perhaps a bit over done, but none the less, it could be fun to compete against roommates for the title of best roommate. Hell, we could even incorporate something where all the roommates take a pool ($10 each for example) and the roommate with the highest points at the end of the month gets it.

urthos• 14 years ago

Splitwise (http://splitwise.com) also has a roommate bill-tracking tool, of which I'm the co-founder. We have Android and iPhone apps that sync with the cloud, and you don't need to connect with Facebook to sign up. Doesn't do chores or to-dos though, if that's something you want in your roommate site.

Let me know if you'd like to meet sometime @rschmulker, I'm based in Cambridge MA and Providence RI. You can reach me at hello@splitwise.com.

Show HN: My Start-up for managing roommates

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